Series / Survivor

"Outwit. Outplay. Outlast."

—US Series tagline

Survivor is... it's...

Well, if The Real World is the grand-daddy of the reality show, Survivor is the daddy. It debuted in 2000, proved to be a huge hit and a big moneymaker for CBS, and launched a wave of reality shows that, even in The New Twenties, we're still recovering from.

The story is as follows: a fixed number of men and women are stuck in a wilderness setting (typically, but not always, a deserted tropical island; all the better to get the contestants out of their clothes), where they're divided into at least two tribes (mostly random, but sometimes by gender, age or race). Then they must build a shelter and make fire so they can safely eat food and drink water. Oftentimes they get to take in a luxury item from home, or they'll have to win it. Each week, the tribes compete in a series of challenges, where they win rewards and Immunity, which allows them to avoid Tribal Council. The losers (who attend Tribal Council) then have to decide which of them will be Voted Off the Island. When a sufficient amount of time has passed, the tribes are merged into one and nearly all the challenges, rewards, and immunities become individual, rather than tribe-based. After 39 days, 2-3 people are left for the Final Tribal Council, where the recently eliminated contestants from the merged tribe form the Jury and vote to decide who wins the $1,000,000 prize.

A guilty pleasure if ever there was one, although some actually do watch the show for sociological purposes, like with Big Brother.

Several podcasts dedicated to contestant interviews, remembering past seasons nostalgically, and discussing strategy exists online, including Rob Has a Podcast, Armchair Survivor, Survivor Oz, Dom And Colin, and Survivor Historians.

A list and summary of the US seasons can be found on the Recap page.

Based on a format created by Charlie Parsons. The first produced show based on the format was the Swedish reality game show Expedition: Robinson. The original concept was said during All-Stars to have been inspired by William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies.

Not to be confused with that one show that's actually about surviving. Or the third series from Erin Hunter. Or the band best known for "Eye of the Tiger". Or the game about trying to escape from a fire.

Note: The Australian and South African versions now have their own pages.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead are unmarked. You have been warned.

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Previously on... Survivor!

General Tropes

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • As seen on the seasonal logos, the show's usual tagline is "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast", and in Heroes vs. Villains it was replaced with another alliteration, "Return, Revenge, Redemption". China is the only season without an alliterative tagline, as the usual one was loosely translated into Chinese.
  • Some subtitles and formats have it too, such as Fans vs. Favorites, "Brains vs. Brawn vs. Beauty", Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers, Edge of Extinction, and Island of the Idols.
• All or Nothing: While all the contestants get something for their time (ranging from around $2,500 for last place to $100,000 for the runner-up,) and one can still win the Fan Favorite prize in seasons where it is offered, the prize structure is still essentially winner-take-all.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: Just before dismissing them from Tribal Council, Jeff Probst will add a brief remark about that vote or the tribe's prospects in general. Most are rather obvious, but the best may be the line from ep. 12 of Micronesia: "You guys are perfecting the art of the blindside. That is the good news, and that is the bad news."
• Anti-Rage Quitting: After two players quit at the same time in Nicaragua, a rule was introduced that considers quitting a violation of the players' contract, and allows the producers to withhold their consolation prize, and if applicable, their spot on the jury.^note Voted out players leaving the Edge of Extinction is considered okay. This may be waived if the producers feel the quitter had a valid reason for doing so, such as an injury serious enough to demand treatment, but not life-threatening to necessitate a medical evacuation. Also note that no player has reappeared on the show after quitting the game.
• Anyone Can Die: Well, not actual death, but anyone can get eliminated no matter how safe they seem:
  • Ever since Gretchen Cordy was booted off it was made clear that even the strongest competitors could go home.
  • Ever since Michael Skupin fell in the fire, it's been revealed that people can be medically evacuated from the game.
  • Ever since John Carroll went, even members of majority alliances could be overthrown.
  • Ever since Pachal was voted out, the purple rock ensured that people could be eliminated without receiving any votes.
  • Ever since the immunity idol was introduced in Fiji, there is literally no way to call anyone completely safe^note Since people will try to vote for any of their opposition to get around the idol, even if they aren't the biggest threat unless they happen to be wearing an immunity necklace...
    • ...Most of the time, because Erik from Micronesia was voted out after giving up immunity! Even an immune person isn't 100% safe from themselves. (Brandon made this mistake as well)
  • Cirie Fields from Game-Changers was voted out despite receiving no votes and no purple rock. Everyone else pulled out immunities and she was eliminated by default.
  • Dan Spillo from Island of the Idols was voted out without being injured or going to tribal council, thanks to getting handsy with a producer.
  • Gabon in particular is a season where no one is safe from elimination.
• Apple of Discord: Some individual rewards force the winner to choose a couple of tribemates to join him/her (or put another way, has to choose a bunch of people to get nothing). "Three strikes" challenges are also good for this, as they put the social pecking order on display. In both cases, there's a good chance for someone to get offended.
• Auction: This was a commonly recurring "challenge" up until Worlds Apart (Season 30).
  • Mystery Box: Jeff typically pulls out several covered items during auctions. It's usually either something absolutely disgusting (pond water, plant roots) or the best thing at the auction (steak and fully loaded baked potato, a full breakfast plate).
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Some seasons' auctions have sold advantages in Immunity Challenges. These bonuses may take the form of a guaranteed spot in the challenge's last stage, a second chance at its overall goal, or partial credit towards the user's progress in the challenge. In Worlds Apart, one of these turned out to be not a challenge advantage but a Tribal Council advantage, an extra vote to be cast in a future Council. (Unfortunately, this is probably what caused the end of the auctions, as the increasingly cutthroat nature of the game made it too common for contestants to hoard money for a possible advantage.)
  • Zonk: At least one useless item shows up per auction, always hidden in one of the above-mentioned Mystery Boxes. Subverted in Worlds Apart, where Will bought himself a disqualification from the auction and was sent back to camp... where production had hidden a large stash of extra rations for him to find.
• Ascended Fanboy: Unsurprisingly, most people who sign up for the show are already fans of it, and thus any given cast probably has several of these. That said, it wasn't until John Cochran appeared on South Pacific and informed the audience that he had written a prize-winning essay about the show that "superfan" became one of the show's favorite casting archetypes.
• Beach Episode: This is more or less a Beach Series, and the reasoning behind such episodes is part of why there will never be Survivor: The Arctic. Even the ones not actually on beaches tend to be in tropical climates, encouraging players to show some skin.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: While men are given no beauty products, women are provided the means to keep their legs and pits shaved throughout the season.
• Bilingual Bonus: Most of the tribe names that aren't simply the names of local islands or cities are words in the native language. Our recap page lists all the tribe names and their meanings. In an interesting twist, occasionally a merged tribe is named something that a contestant claims to be meaningful, but is really just a bad pun or a shout-out to their family.
• Bitch Alert: If - or rather, when - there's someone (of either gender) that's going to spend the month in the wilderness acting nasty, the editors will let you know quickly.
  Corinne in Gabon: I'm gonna be a total bitch, and I'm gonna get rid of who I have to get rid of, and I'm gonna hurt people's feelings and I'm gonna laugh when people cry.
• Bittersweet Ending: For everybody who lost the Final Tribal Council. As expressed by several losing finalists, it would be sad when you realize that you lost the title of the Sole Survivor, but at least it is rewarding that you have survived till the final day in an unfamiliar location, and still won some cash.
• Blessed with Suck: Assuming they make the merge, players who are considered unimpressive or unpopular are likely to be brought to the end because they are considered easily beatable. This is occasionally subverted, as other players recognize that others wanting to take these "goats" to the end actually made them threatening because it increased one's own likelihood of getting voted out; examples include Courtney from Panama and Abi Maria in Second Chances.
• Butt-Monkey: Every season has at least one.
  • Poor Boo of Fiji was one. He not only hurt himself numerous times on the same day (which was actually pretty funny) but later tore his ACL - then it went into the unfunny territory.
  • The Ulong tribe in Palau lost every single Immunity Challenge and were reduced to only one member.
  • The appropriately named Matsing (meaning "monkey") tribe in Philippines lost all four challenges it participated in and ceased to exist only eleven days into the game. Ironically, one of its two surviving members went on to win the game.
• Can't Catch Up: If one tribe does poorly enough in the pre-merge game, then they wind up entering with a severe minority and are (usually) easy pickings for the majority.
  • Ulong and Ravu are the most famous and prominent examples. Ulong in Palau lost every single immunity challenge and were reduced to just one member. Ravu in Fiji was intentionally given much fewer supplies than the Moto tribe as part of a "have vs. have not" setup; and they never were able to catch up to the much better fed and rested Moto. The producers admit that Fiji was a failed experiment.
  • More generically, when one is down a member, the other tribes are forced to sit someone out. Competing in back-to-back challenges without any rewards can easily cause tribemates to get tired out and be unable to perform in the immunity challenge. Instinctively, the players who are ahead sit out their weaker players for the immunity challenge because that's the more important one.
  • Some seasons subvert this when a winner comes from a tribe that was in a minority during the merge. Such as the awesomeness of the post-mutiny Aitu Four in Cook Islands that soundly whooped the eight-strong Raro tribe after realizing their weakness in numbers.
• Captain Obvious: Jeff whenever he announces for a challenge; usually in the form of "Player X, doing Y." After Jonathan Penner got irritated at his announcements during a Cook Islands challenge and told him to shut up, Jeff broke the fourth wall for the first time with this immortal line:
  "Jonathan, getting frustrated by me!"
• Catchphrase: Jeff Probst has several, to the point where he's ritualized half his dialogue. Some of the Tribal Council lines fall under Rules Spiel. For example, "Everybody, drop your buffs" is said by Jeff every time there's a tribal switch or merge. This one was played with a bit in Heroes vs. Villains as Jeff said "drop your expectations" due to the Villains tribe incorrectly guessing that there would be a merge with 12 castaways left; the merge was later done at 10 castaways instead.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each tribe has a color given to its buffs, flag, challenge props, etc. Starting with Tocantins, a tribe's entire wardrobes are more-or-less color-coded in its color.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: As good as reason as any to kick someone out early, or keep them around as a goat sure to lose in the finals. For example, why Jimmy T. was booted in Nicaragua.
• Confession Cam: As in most reality shows, the contestants constantly give confessionals. Thanks to Manipulative Editing, it's hard to tell when they are actually filmed. Also, the contestants give confessionals while voting, usually stating why they're voting for a specific person.
• Cool Old Guy: Anyone who played a good game at the age of 40 and beyond. Special mention to Tina Wesson, Tom Westman, Bob Crowley and Denise Stapley for winning their respective seasons, Terry Deitz for having an awesome immunity streak and Rudy Boesch for playing twice in his seventies.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Often happens (or is at least attempted) post-merge, when the larger former tribe gangs up on the smaller one.
  • Marquesas, where Rotu destroyed Maraamu in all but 1 immunity challenge.
  • The most infamous is most likely Koror vs. Ulong in Palau. Ulong was for a long time the only tribe in Survivor history to exist for more than a week but never win a single Immunity Challenge (and they lost all but three of the Reward Challenges as well). When the tribes merged, it consisted of eight Koror members and Stephenie LaGrossa, the only Ulong left.^note If we're being technical, there was never even an actual merge; Stephenie simply joined Koror.
  • Fiji had Ravu, which was 0-8 in immunity challenges (beating Ulong's streak by one loss) and 1-4 in rewards, for a total of one win and twelve losses. This was thanks to a "have vs. have not" gimmick that gave Ravu the worst campsite in the show's history while their rival Moto had one of the best.
  • Redemption Island was played up as a grudge match between Boston Rob and Russell, but turned into one of these when Russell's tribe unceremoniously threw a challenge to get rid of him after only a week. They were promptly Pagonged right after the merge.
  • Philippines features Matsing, which became the third tribe to never win a single Immunity Challenge and the first with no challenge victories at all to their name, losing four times in a row until only two members remained. Tandang went on to be the first tribe in Survivor history to never lose a single member before the merge, winning every one-on-one Immunity Challenge against Kalabaw.
  • Sometimes, Final Tribal Council can be this. One notable example is J.T. vs. Stephen in Tocantins, where J.T. won 7-0.
  • Some players who prefer Honor Before Reason will take a more deserving player to the end with them, in hopes that such a move will impress the jury. This almost always backfires, and the losing player rarely lives it down. Examples include Colby from Australia and Woo from Cagayan.
• Cursed with Awesome: Players considered to have strong athletic, social, or strategic prowess are likely to get voted out before making it to the final jury. This led producers to move from a Final 2 to a Final 3, so there would be more than one compelling choice in the finals.
• Dark Horse Victory: Vecepia, Jenna, Sandra (twice), Amber, Danni, Natalie White, Fabio, Sophie, Denise, Tony (twice), Natalie Anderson, Michele, Adam, Ben, and Chris Underwood were all unexpected winners, at least from a narrative perspective. Most of them did, however, receive a suspicious amount of focus from the editors. Questionable casting choices that went on to win all-stars seasons include Parvati, Cochran, Tyson, and Sarah.
• Deadly Game:
  • While not outright life-threatening, the physical exertion required in challenges combined with the near-starvation conditions and oppressive heat present in many seasons have definitely taken their toll on the contestants.
  • Not to mention the possibility of contracting foreign diseases. Lex from Africa was apparently sick for months after the game with a variety of illnesses and Daniel Lue, an early castoff from Amazon contracted malaria. Sandra was asked to return to All Stars from Pearl Islands but said she was still recovering from parasites she had contracted in Pearl Islands. Marquesas, while not deadly, still had discomfort caused by bugs so the location will never be used again.
  • However, some contestants have had brushes his death mid-season, including Mike Skupin in Australia who got dreary from smoke inhalation while working on a fire and partially FELL INTO IT. Fortunately for Skupin, his glasses and hat hit the fire before his face, but he still took third-degree burns to his arms and spent three weeks in a burn unit.
  • All of the medical evacuations fall into this - Jonathan's Knee and Joe's leg probably count as well; seeing as these were considered life-threatening.
  • It's actually mentioned there's quite a bit of Dangerous Terrain; which is a bit of a risk and often an obstacle to finding good places to film the show. Samoa, for example, is a good place for a show, but the contestants have been apparently ordered to stay within 20-30 feet of the shore (in the ocean) because the waters are actually quite turbulent, and there's the risk of riptides and undertow. It didn't show up much in Samoa and Heroes vs. Villains, but one of the show's best swimmers (Ozzy) in the South Pacific season shows exactly how big the waves are...and how beautiful the ocean around the islands are.
  • Some contestants actually have sustained injuries that followed them outside the game. The first person eliminated from Guatemala had torn his bicep in a challenge (after the hike). Months later, he was interviewed, and his arm was still in a splint. (It should be noted that he was actually one of the oldest contestants that season, which slowed down the healing process) Ian from Palau stated that he has nerve damage in parts of his feet from the nearly-12-hour-long-endurance challenge.
  • Heck! In the Bulgarian version of Survivor, one of the contestants died mid-season and the show still rolled along.
  • One contestant in the French version of the show (Koh-Lanta) died on Day 1, causing the cancellation of the season.
  • In addition to disgusting water and oppressive heat, Africa also featured the unique risk of being eaten by lions. The tribes were actually responsible for building a barrier around their camp to keep predators out and Mark Burnett actually yelled at Boran for not doing so and risking the lives of his crew.
  • In the fourth episode of Kaoh Rong, THREE people went down after the reward challenge due to intense heat and strain on their bodies and the entire crew had to get involved to check on the contestants, with one ultimately getting evacuated after his kidney and liver failed.
• Deadly Scratch: An occasional cause for medical evacuation, as limited access to medicine and bandages can make an otherwise controlled cut seriously infected. Jonathan Penner (Micronesia) and Neal Gottlieb (Kaoh Rong) both had to be pulled for infections that could have costed them their leg, if not their life, while James Clement (also Micronesia) had to be removed for an infection on a cut no wider than his finger.
• Decided by One Vote: As a whole, the show averages about two votes per season decided on this margin^note This number increases if you include two vote differences (one person in the majority is enough to force a tie), idol plays (which throw off the vote count entirely), or the penultimate vote in seasons with a final two (where only one vote is even cast). Typically, such a divided vote sets a precedent where the side in the majority is in power going forward, but at times, this works the other way, kicking off a string of chaotic gameplay. A few notable examples include:
  • Cook Islands featured an unexpected turn of events, where after an offer to change tribes, Raro was up 8-4 against Aitu. However, between a winning streak and a double elimination twist, Aitu was able to make merge without losing anyone. Then, with none players left in the game, Jonathan, who was on the bottom of his side anyway, was convinced to flip when Yul revealed he had the idol. In a 5-4 vote, Nate was sent to the jury and Aitu went on to become the final four.
  • Three seasons later, Micronesia saw an infamous example, wherein Ozzy, a physical and strategic threat with an idol, was vulnerable, and with Jason on the outs, Parvati and Cirie were able to bring in Jason, Alexis, and Natalie, blindsiding Ozzy in a 5-4, flushing the idol, and securing power for the rest of the game.
  • Cagayan saw another infamous example, where at the merge, swap Aparri was up one member at the merge. However, Sarah, who had connections on the other side, made too big a deal out of being the swing vote and alienated Kass. When it came time to read the votes, LJ and Tony played their idols on each other, but instead, it was Jefra who got votes. Nonetheless, all three managed to survive, as Kass flipped to vote out Sarah, firmly cementing the top and bottom for the rest of the season.
• Delicious Distraction: Jeff pulls out a couple of variations once or twice a season during immunity challenges. In one version, he tries to get players to abandon long, uncomfortable endurance challenges by bribing them with snacks. Other times for quickly-completed challenges, he offers the choice up front: play for immunity or get to eat as long as the challenge lasts.
• Deserted Island: The stereotypical setting for the show is on an island, though several seasons are instead in other sections of wilderness, such as The Australian Outback and Gabon.
• Designated Girl Fight: Some challenges require certain numbers of male and female players, especially those played in rounds of only 1 or 2 players per tribe. Unsurprisingly, the rounds are mostly man vs. man and woman vs. woman.
• Divide and Conquer: Allowing an Individual Reward winner to bring at least one other player along for the ride isn't about generosity. It "spreads out" the resulting envy from the remaining losers (and defensive efforts of the winners) onto multiple targets, which usually makes upcoming Tribal Councils less predictable.
• The Dog Bites Back: Players that are on the outs of the dominant alliances or are picked on by the resident Smug Snake sometimes find themselves in the position of turning the table on their abusers. See South Pacific, where tribal alliances were even and both were so solid that everyone on both tribes resigned themselves to random-chance elimination by purple rock. During the revote, team Butt-Monkey Cochran turned on his own tribe to avoid that situation. Jim immediately called him a coward, but Brandon said that he might not have flipped if they had treated him better than that.
• Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: Standard operating procedure every season. Noted nearly word-for-word in episode 7 of Blood vs. Water: Tina reveals to Monica that Kat wants Monica to be voted out, which would clearly break the Galang women's alliance. Monica has a grim realization:
  Monica: I teach my kids "do unto others as you would want them to do unto you"... but you know what? In Survivor, I figured it out: it's "do unto others before they do unto you".
• Drunk with Power: For future contestants, beware of becoming this. For example, Sarah Lacina from Cagayan and Christy Smith from Amazon fell into the trap of openly declaring their status as the swing vote and flaunting it, resulting in their eliminations.
• Due to the Dead: In the earlier seasons (last seen in Season 26, Caramoan), the finale usually included a part for the finalists to reflect on all the people voted out (and for said people voted out to reflect on their time in the game), which is often presented like this.
• The Dulcinea Effect: There's occasionally a guy whose thought process amounts to "whatever the pretty girl wants to do".
  • Chase and Sash's loyalty to Brenda in Nicaragua, for example, as lampshaded by Brenda herself:
    Brenda: "You wanna know what's funny? I have people on my side without doing anything."
  • When the Villains lose Heroes Vs Villains ep. 3's combo challenge, Randy says this is one of the reasons he predicts he'll be the next to leave; the other is even more common. (He is indeed evicted that night.)
  • Parvati made this her strategy, to great effect. She's very smart, very ruthless... and very, very pretty. Men have a habit of falling in line around her (unless they're named Yul Kwon or part of the Heroes tribe).
  • This was a heavily referenced trope in the Amazon season, where the men and the women were separated into different tribes which increased the sexual tension between both.
  • Ozzy in South Pacific seemed to have an odd infatuation with Semhar.
• Dumb Blonde: There are usually several. Kat Edorsson from One World and Heidi Strobel from The Amazon and are probably some of the best examples (although it is found out in the Amazon reunion that Heidi actually has an IQ of 165, she just had a habit of putting her foot in her mouth). Subverted by Natalie White from Samoa, who acted like a Dumb Blonde but did so deliberately because the smart ones were being targeted; she then used her position to manipulate Russell and she eventually won. Zig-Zagged by Jud "Fabio" Birza from Nicaragua, who was already kind of a ditz in real life, and intentionally flanderized himself so the other team would know him as a dumb blonde, and like Natalie, he eventually won.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • Most winners, as they have to survive all the harsh backstabbing and Island conditions.
  • Jerri Manathey has one of the longest, and simultaneously heartbreaking, and finally heartwarming examples over three seasons. When The Australian Outback aired, she was seen as one of the most despicable people in America thanks to the editors and Tina's manipulations. In All-Stars she became Reformed, but Rejected and was booed off the stage after making a fairly accurate comment about people not being the Audience's playthings. Many many years later she came back for Heroes vs Villains where after being put on a tribe of Villains, being one of the nicest people out there (even compared to the Heroes), and comes so close to winning, she's finally cheered by the audience and has finally become a fan-favourite.
• Eat That: There's was usually one "disgusting food" challenge every season, before they became less common after All-Stars (but never completely went away). Memorable individual examples include Boston Rob throwing up the Farafu from a challenge in Marquesas and Denise screaming at the Balut in another challenge in China, and Tina throwing up the cow intestine in The Australian Outback.
• Elimination Catchphrase: Among Jeff Probst's many catchphrases is the Trope Codifier: "The tribe has spoken; it's time for you to go." In seasons with Redemption Island, this is altered slightly.
  • Subverted with the game's very first quitter, Pearl Islands' Osten. Having never had his head in the game from the start, he asked his tribe to vote him out on Day 19. After confirming that Osten was indeed quitting, Jeff, clearly annoyed, snuffed out Osten's torch with a curt "Go home!"
• Elimination Statement: The contestants' final words vary from being encouraging words to the remaining tribe, reminiscing over things they regret, or bitter words towards the people who voted them out.
• Endurance Challenge: These appear a few times every season; putting contestants in an uncomfortable position and seeing who is the last to falter either physically or mentally.
• Enemy Mine: Sometimes people who don't get along realize they can take out a common enemy by working together. NaOnka and Fabio in Nicaragua, for instance, spent weeks despising each other, but when it became clear that Brenda had achieved a dangerous level of power, they were able to work together to eliminate her.
• Every Episode Ending: Episodes almost always end up with one, or more, contestants sent home and lamenting their fate on a final Confession Cam.
• Evil Gloating: The game is built on backstabbing equipped with a Confession Cam, this is expected to happen. Russell Hantz took this up to eleven.
• Evolving Music: The series' Theme Tune, "Ancient Voices", has many seasonal remixes. Various regional instruments, spirited grunts, chants, shouts, and drums are woven into the main track each season. Averted with Nicaragua, which defaulted to the first season's theme, and Island of the Idols, which lacked it entirely. Russ Landau did create a version for Nicaragua, but it was tossed out.
• Finale Production Upgrade: A given for each season from Australian Outback (Season 2) onwards. The contestants/jury are brought back and cleaned up, the votes are taken back to the United States to be read at CBS Television Studios, the families of all the contestants are brought in, and in at least one occasion, the final vote reading took place in a giant theater with a giant audience.
• The Flame of Life: The show symbolically has the players light torches the first time they visit Tribal Council, and whenever someone is Voted Off the Island their torch is snuffed out.
  Jeff Probst: This is part of the ritual of Tribal Council. In this game, fire represents your life; and when it is gone, so are you.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: The source of the most contentious drama on the show, where contestants typically choose to cut loose from their alliance for, what they believe to be, a better shot at winning.
• Gambit Pileup: The number of plots, schemes and other forms of backstabbing can become absurd, especially as the number of contestants dwindles.
• Game Show Host: Jeff Probst is second only to Bob Barker and Alex Trebek in fame for this one. ...and was hosting "Rock and Roll Jeopardy" when his more famous gig began.
• Game Show Physical Challenge: Most, but not all, immunity and reward challenges involve physical exertion. While the most common challenges take the form of an obstacle course with a puzzle, or a test of physical endurance, other formats may be present, such as head-to-head combat and slingshot golf. Perhaps the tamest was a self-moderated game of bocce ball, while the other extreme includes an obstacle course in the blistering heat, requiring one player to be evacuated for heat stroke while two others needed medical themselves.
• Guile Hero:
  • The "under the radar" winner archetype is the passive example, with Natalie White from Samoa being a rare subversion. They frequently are called "bad" or "undeserving winners" by the fans, ignoring that it seems they've been doing something right if they were in the finals and outlasting their rivals.
  • Tina Wesson from Australian Outback and Yul Kwon from Cook Islands both played absurdly good strategic games that won them the million dollars over flashier challenge threats.
  • Sandra from Pearl Islands and Heroes Vs Villains is one of the prime examples. She didn't stand out in any way, neither in challenges nor in strategy. She just flew under the radar, voted whichever way the wind blew... and won the million dollars after her rival(s) were skewered by the final juries.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Mark Burnett, the executive producer of Survivor and the one who brought the show to the United States, has said more than once that when casting the show the producers always try to pick "sixteen A-Type personalities", or in other words, sixteen Indian chiefs and no Indian followers. And of course, the entire point of all-star seasons is to pick the biggest Large Ham characters from previous seasons and try to see who can out-ham the others the best.
• Hard-to-Light Fire: With fire critical for survival, nearly every season puts special focus on the effort the tribes make to first light fire at the beginning of the game (and on occasion, a second time after bad weather). A fire-making race has also been used as a challenge, both for tiebreakers at Tribal Council and, beginning in the late-30s seasons, as part of determining the Final Three.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: When a "hero"/"villain" switches on their supposed "perspective". However, these are typically not true "turns" but strategies to gain an advantage.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The hidden immunity idol is sometimes a blatantly visible item that the contestants simply don't realize is the idol, notably in the China and Philippines seasons. Adam Klein attempted to pull this off in Winners at War, but the item (a fleur-de-lis decoration on Jeff's podium at the Tribal Council area) turned out to be just that: a decoration. Adam was voted out that night.
• Iconic Item: The contestants collectively share the tribe buffs as a signature clothing item, as they're basically required to wear them in some way or another.
• I'm Not Here to Make Friends: Quoted word for word on more than one occasion. Ironically, the social aspects - especially alliances - mean players actually have to make friends (or at least not make enemies) to win, and those who do make lots of friends are considered huge threats. In the premiere of Season 43, Morriah quotes the trope word-for-word, saying that she is there to make friends.
  Morriah: I always hear people get on this show and they say "I'm not here to make any friends." And I'm, like, "Well, I am. Be my friend. Let's have an authentic and genuine connection and bond. That way when I get to the end, you can vote me the million. And then we can go out for pizza and coffee afterwards.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Theoretically, this happens within an alliance once it knocks out all opposition. In practice, it gets messy since most people have different ideas of who to betray and when.
• Interface Spoiler: Meta-example; if a former contestant that frequently uses some form of social networking suddenly stops using it for over a month, chances are they're going to be a returning player for an upcoming season.
• It's All About Me: Many contestants adopt this attitude. It's clearest when jury members give their speeches at the final Tribal Council, as several either bitterly tear into the finalists for betraying them or basically ask the finalists to suck up to them. As a Television Without Pity recapper put it, most final Tribal Council questions come down to, "My question is 'I want an apology'" or, "My question is 'You suck!'"
• Jerkass: Almost every contestant, especially when you consider alternate perspectives. However, Manipulative Editing leaves the truth of any of these questionable.
  • Fiji had a lot of these people. Sylvia wasn't very nice when the game started, Rocky and Lisi had a pretty bad temper as well. And at the Jury, pretty much everybody except Yau-Man and Michelle was a complete Jerkass to Dreamz and Cassandra.
  • There are several on every season, and it seems that in every following season, the requirement is to cast people who are even more horrible than the jerkasses of earlier seasons. One of the clearest examples was Corinne from Gabon, whom many people compared to Jerri early in the season. By the time the season wrapped up, Corrine had displayed herself as one of the nastiest, most vile and despicable people in the history of the show, displaying zero redeeming qualities and even mocking Sugar's dead father. Those who compared her to Jerri ended up saying Corrine made Jerri look like a saint. She even complained at the reunion that they didn't portray her negatively enough!
• Jerk Justifications: With the best one being that it is only a game, which many contestants fail to truly digest. Depending on your perspective, every Jerkass in the show is justified. Lex Van Den Berghe is infamous for making paranoid or hypocritical (or both) rationalizations for why he votes the way he does.
• Kingmaker Scenario: Those voted out post-merge become a jury of kingmakers for the final vote. Additionally, the player who wins the Final Immunity Challenge often gets to decide who to bring to the end with them.
• Lesser of Two Evils: There isn't always a "good guy" to vote for at the end. This quote by Sean Kenniff of Borneo pretty much sums up most Final Tribal Councils:
  Sean: It's been a long contest. The general sentiment of the jury is that this contest has degenerated from a contest of who's more deserving to the least objectionable. I don't think either of you are truly deserving, but I'm voting for... [in this case, Rich].
• Limited Wardrobe: Justified, since the contestants only get to bring the clothes on their back. However in some seasons contestants, typically female, use buffs in new and interesting ways to create the appearance of different clothing.
• Locked Out of the Loop: This is the basic premise of a blindside. Letting a player (or their allies) know that they're getting votes runs the risk of an idol play, or bar that, outright talking their way out of trouble. On notable example came in Fiji, where the majority alliance had to play around the idol. After Dreamz waffled between sides too much, the majority voted yet-unmentioned Edguardo, leaving Dreamz out of it.
• Loners Are Freaks: Not staying with the group makes people paranoid - or at least, not inclined to save you over their friends - so isolate yourself at your peril.
• Long-Runners: Over forty one seasons (21 years) and counting. To put it in perspective: the youngest contestant from season 33 (Millennials vs. Gen X) was only 2 years old when the first season was airing. Starting around Survivor 41, contestants who weren't even born when Survivor first aired started to appear.
• Manipulative Editing: A source of contention for fans every season, who claim everything from alternative character interpretations to scenes being chronologically "adjusted". Admittedly some amount of this is a necessity, as they have to fit three days' worth of stuff into a single hour (Tribal Council alone takes hours in itself) and present a coherent "storyline" for the episode. It'd take a lot to list the examples that aren't just the most egregious ones.
  • The show showed Courtney yelling "Break her arm" as Foreshadowing for when Stephenie dislocated her shoulder in that challenge. She had actually said it after the injury in jest of what just happened.
  • The "Mary Who?" from Micronesia was Played for Laughs. It looked like the cast had absolutely no idea who Mary was; when they were actually asking for clarification (Kathy's case; since she was away on Exile Island most of the time so far) or in Eliza's case, expressing shock at how she was specifically voted out over Chet, who had underperformed.
  • And according to Lex, the shot of his face on All-Stars after Kathy refuses to give him her immunity necklace actually had nothing to do with Kathy. It was more him expressing his disgust with Boston Rob than with him thinking that Kathy owed him or something.
  • Christine appeared to be Flipping the Bird at Rick during a duel in South Pacific, but apparently she was actually doing it to Jeff.
• Metagame: What was once a simple game of numbers and alliances has evolved into a highly sophisticated competition that tests a variety of physical, mental, and social skills. Players now have to juggle several factors at once when they play: where a player ranks in their alliance, who's working at camp, who's an asset in tribe challenges (or a threat in individual ones), who's digging around for an idol, who is a potential goat to bring with you to the jury, who's a goat that someone else is trying to bring to the jury, who looks eager to flip on the alliance, and who can you vote off without costing you their jury vote. Oh, and by the way, you have to do this all with almost no food, water, sleep, shelter, and with TV cameras pointed at you every waking moment and all your tribemates scrutinizing every word you say. Good luck.
• Mundane Luxury:
  • Almost all rewards are something commonplace outside the game, but they are certainly worth playing for, especially after the first few episodes when the contestants have become hungry.
  • In the first season, the contestants almost rebelled when they heard that the final reward would simply be a bottle of beer after Sean had gotten to go on a trip aboard a yacht during the last reward and the fact that the rewards were escalating in quality the more people left the game.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: In the early stages of every single season, there's a mentality that strong young guys should be kept over old guys or women to help win immunity. In reality, physical force is rarely a deciding factor in challenges. There's also the flip side in that when the game moves into the individual stage, those seen as immunity allies become seen as immunity threats. But all this said, the physical game always ends up trumped by the social one; being annoying or arrogant can undermine a physical advantage and being a reliable vote can overcome a disadvantage.
  • Part of the reason is that if a guy has a bunch of muscle and no fat, then his body will start eating the muscle for energy. This was especially present with Jaison in Samoa who started very well but got weaker later on because he didn't have much fat.
  • One World has a good example of the perception vs. the reality of this. Matt, an alpha male, picked out some other alpha males to work with and believed they ran the tribe; at one point describing them as "roosters" leading the "chickens" around. Then the tribe actually had to go to Tribal Council, and it was pointed out to him that there were five "chickens" and only four "roosters". Goodbye, Matt.
  • Played straight for a change in Worlds Apart, with lone-wolf Mike surviving an alliance of almost everyone else (and eventually winning) by pulling out win after win at the immunity challenges (five in total), plus one hidden immunity idol.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: In the short run, being fit might help, but in the long run, it rarely stays like that, especially given the small food supply. Competitions deeper into each season tend to further de-emphasize physical challenges. More people have won by social skills, scheming or surviving the scheming of others than by sheer physical prowess. And there is on average at least one contestant each season who's best described as a Dumb Muscle: not just in terms of being bad at strategies, but just a plain, if strong, dummy that's a liability more than a boon to the tribe.
  • Richard Hatch from Borneo is the Ur-Example for the whole show. A cheerful, laid-back, bit chubby gay man who spent his first day just observing his tribe... and then proceeded to outplay everyone. He even directly used his image of a weakling in the final immunity challenge, by simply letting it pass and watching Kelly sweat, with a drink in hand.
  • Yau-Man Chan from Fiji is another prominent example, further compounded by his age. While he didn't win, he consistently stayed on top of the game and in many cases proved that it doesn't matter how strong you are, but what you know. His famous crate-cracking even reached a status of minor meme.
• My Greatest Failure: Several players failed at the game and admit they failed. The producers likewise failed with a couple of twists, such as the "Have and have not" tribes in Fiji.
  • The Redemption Island mechanic is considered a pretty big failure, its initial season and the follow-up, South Pacific, were not well received due to several reasons, including diminishing the "finality" of Tribal Council and duels replacing Reward Challenges and taking episode time away from other things such as strategy. It and its successor, the Edge of Extinction, are commonly considered to be among the worst twists in Survivor history.
  • Cook Islands was another massive failure, at least from an "out-of-universe" perspective, due to dividing the initial tribes by race. This lead to massive backlash and sponsors dropping the show. It especially didn't help when it was looking like it was going to end up with the Final Five being the entire white tribe.
• Neutrality Backlash: Occasionally, a player will find themselves between two equal alliances. Ignorant ones will consider themselves a swing vote with the luxury of choosing who to align with, but in reality neither side will trust them. On multiple occasions this has ended up with the swing vote-getting taken out. Christy in The Amazon and Big Tom in All-Stars were both in a swing vote position but misplayed it so badly that the two sides came together to take them out instead.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Discount most of what a preview or commercial tells you will happen next episode except for an injury or medical emergency. This was particularly obvious during Russell Hantz's first two seasons, where every preview made it appear that he was in mortal danger of being voted out next week and he rarely was.
• Nice Guy: The producers seem to go out of their way to make certain contestants seem like the kind of guy/girl everyone wants to be friends with. Depending on the season, these guys are usually eliminated for being jury threats (as everyone likes them and would prefer them) or manage to make their way far into the game.
• Non-Gameplay Elimination: Several examples but these two deserve special mention-
  • Brandon earns himself one in Caramoan with a sudden outburst during which he pours out his tribe's rice and beans. Later, during the Immunity Challenge, his tribe announces that they wish to forfeit the challenge to vote him out. After a heated discussion, Jeff becomes worried about allowing Brandon to return to camp, so he holds the Tribal Council right there at the challenge site, having the tribe give their votes out loud with the opposing tribe watching. Brandon later states that he is proud of the way he left the game, as the "author of his own fate."
  • In Island of the Idols, Dan Spilo got ejected. He'd already been given a warning about sexual harassment earlier in the season due to fondling his female tribemates, and apparently there was an incident with a crew member that served as the last straw.
• Nothing Personal: Most of the eliminations that take place are strictly due to gameplay or strategic purposes. As shown on social networking sites, many players who go after each other in-game are (usually) on good terms with each other outside of it.
• Obstacle Exposition: Before every challenge with very few exceptions, the players (and the viewers) are informed of the challenge's rules through an expository spiel by Jeff.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • The Hidden Immunity Idol has been subject to a few patches since its introduction:
    • In Panama and Cook Islands, the idol could be played up until the final four, and could be played after the votes were read, sending the person with the next-most votes home. This was changed for Fiji and all later seasons because the idol effectively made Yul untouchable in the latter season. The ability to play after the vote would occasionally return in later seasons, but was explicitly a more powerful but harder to obtain "Super Idol".
    • In Nicaragua, the clues were visual cues because Russell was smart and was finding them before clues were given. It was called "The Russell Factor" by producers. Even this would eventually fall by the wayside, as in nearly every season since the idols have been found almost immediately, often without clues.
    • In the early days of the "modern" idol format (excluding Tocantins,) idols expired after the final six. Redemption Island had a contestant returning to the game and becoming a member of the final 5, resulting in idols becoming playable for one more round.
  • The "purple rock" tiebreaker is used in all situations... except the final four. This is because only one person would be eligible to draw a rock, eliminating them by default.
  • One of these was announced during the Nicaragua finale in response to Naonka and "Purple" Kelly quitting and landing on the jury; in future seasons if a player quits the game on their own, they can be taken off the jury at the producers' discretion.
  • Early in the series; the contestants got a "luxury item" that was basically a personal comfort item. This practice died out over time due to players abusing the Exact Words on what items they could bring and getting a cheap source of fire or shelter or an advantage in the game. For example, Colby's flag in Australian Outback was used as part of the shelter, Kim J used her paints to basically win the SOS challenge in Africa, and Vecepia wrote down everything in her journal to help her win the Fallen Comrades challenge in Marquesas. (But on the other hand, Big Tom brought a raccoon penis and Robb Z brought a skateboard to a beach.)
• Oddly Named Sequel: Most early seasons were named after their location, but then we have the returning-contestant seasons of All-Stars and Heroes Vs Villains. Panama is also known by the subtitle Exile Island, its gimmick. (Micronesia similarly used to be known as Fans vs. Favorites, but with Caramoan using the same gimmick and subtitle the location is now necessary to differentiate.) Eventually, due to most seasons filming in Samoa or Fiji, titles based on the gimmicks became commonplace and are no longer "odd". Then, in a first for the series, the season after Winners at War was simply titled Survivor 41.
• Oh, Crap!: You can spot a couple "Oh Crap" faces, as well as people saying "Oh Crap" when they realize they underestimated everyone, like Russell to Brett, Rob to Ashley, and Chase, Sash, and Holly to Fabio.
  • Lex's expression just before getting voted out during All Stars probably takes the cake as the biggest "Oh Crap" face on Survivor.
  • Edgardo and Alex◊ have one in Fiji that must be seen to be believed.
  • Everyone except the Three Amigos when Malcolm plays two idols for himself and Eddie, preventing any of them from being voted off in that tribal since Reynold had immunity.
• Once a Season: Not every example is used in every season, but some of CBS' favorites include:
  • Family members showing up for a visit, often accompanied by a reward challenge where the winner gets more time to spend with their loved one.
  • The "three strikes/coconut chop" challenge, where correct answers to questions (either trivia or about each other) allow the players to "hit" each other, with three "hits" leading to a loss for that player; the "last one standing" wins, as usual. This challenge was retired following San Juan del Sur, where a very annoyed Jeff cancelled the challenge after watching the majority alliance negotiate who was going to win.
  • The Survivor Auction, where contestants bid for various foods or other items (until it was retired after Worlds Apart).
  • The tribe merge, where all the players are brought together into a single tribe for the rest of the game. This also includes a feast for everyone on merge day in place of a reward challenge.
  • Breakfast (e.g., eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit, wine, etc.) provided for cooking on the last morning for the final contestants.
• Once per Episode: Every season has been so standardized that you can almost always expect the same things happening in every episode. There are scenes of camp life spread across the tribes, an Immunity Challenge, the losing tribe strategizes and then heads to Tribal Council and votes someone out of the game.
• One-Steve Limit: Production doesn't really care whether they cast multiple people with the same or similar names on the same season: Africa had two Kims, Marquesas had two Robs, Pearl Islands had two Ryans, All-Stars had two Jennas and two Robs, Vanuatu had two Johns, Samoa had two Russells, Heroes vs Villains had two Jameses, Nicaragua had two Jimmys and two Kellys, Blood vs. Water had two Lauras, Cambodia had Kelly Wigglesworth and Kelley Wentworth, Millenials vs. Gen X had two Jessicas, Ghost Island had two Stephanies, David vs Goliath had Natalie and Natalia, Edge of Extinction had Julie and Julia, and Island of the Idols had Tom and Tommy. Usually, one or both players get around it by using their last names, initials, or nicknames. One World has an odd example, with Greg using the nickname "Tarzan" - which peeved Troy, who wanted to be called "Troyzan". Both nicknames wound up being used.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: It happens fairly frequently. In a lot of cases, the fact that a grown person introduces themselves to strangers with a silly nickname is a sign of having a bit too much ego (see: "Jonny Fairplay", "Coach", "Dreamz", "Shambo"). Also Cochran of South Pacific - it's his last name, but he specifically requested it on grounds that Probst calls his favored contestants by their last names. "Sugar" and "Fabio" are two of the exceptions, being some of the game's nicer contestants (and the name "Fabio" wasn't his idea anyway, it was coined by his tribemates). Note that while "Boston Rob" has an ego to spare, he's also justified in having a nickname as his first two seasons (Marquesas and All-Stars) ran up against the One-Steve Limit.
• Out of Focus: What makes a good Survivor game does not necessarily make a good television show - in most seasons, some people get left out of the camera's focus due to a) keeping quiet and not causing trouble at camp, or b) being boring and unable to attract attention that would warrant screen time on the show. This is much a much more prominent trope in recent seasons since more attention is paid to strategy and twists than character development.
  • Thanks to under-the-radar players who keep quiet and don't stir up trouble, this can be unintentionally invoked when a relevant contestant doesn't give the camera much to work with. One can watch the entire season of Marquesas up until the final episode and notice that Vecepia did not share as much of the camera as fellow finalists Kathy and Neleh, then watch Samoa and wonder why Brett was practically invisible before he started his small immunity streak. Both of them actually kept their mouths shut, and it not only won Vecepia the game (though everyone was mad at Neleh) but got Brett pretty far.
  • Danni Boatwright weaponized this in order to win Guatemala. She deliberately withheld her strategy from Jeff Probst and the production team, giving them little opportunity to give her screen time, but preventing them from hinting to the other players what she was up to.
  • Andrea, Grant, Natalie, and Ashley were given this treatment in Redemption Island, since more attention was given to the pagonged Zapatera tribe, Matt, Phillip and Boston Rob.
  • There's a rumor that "Purple" Kelly got the Living Prop edit in Nicaragua as punishment for quitting. (Fellow quitter NaOnka didn't because she had a lot of attention-grabbing antics.) Purple Kelly's case she was recruited for the show to basically be the cute girl who gets voted out early and then goes on vacation, but she ended up actually doing very well at getting in the majority alliances. The only clothes production gave her were a little sundress, so she was physically suffering which is why she quit (and why the odd times you do see her she is usually wearing Fabio's jacket.)
• Pixellation: The editors blur out part of the screen when clothes are too small or tight or slip off or a contestant otherwise gets exposed, when contestants make rude gestures, and occasionally when a dirty word is said. But mostly for exposure. The most notable instance was in the Heroes Vs Villains premiere, when Sugar gave Sandra a double finger while topless, leading to three large blurred patches on the screen.
• Player Elimination: Besides the show itself taking the form of Voted Off the Island, several challenges feature elements of players whittling down over time:
  • Several individual endurance challenges, such as "Hands on Hard Idol" and "Simmotion" require players to hold still and/or repeat a continuous process for a long period of time, testing their willpower (and physical ability). Players who mess up are out of the challenge until only one remains, winning immunity, or occasionally, reward.
  • Several individual challenges have multiple legs, but only a finite number of players who continue onto the next one. For example, only the first four people to cross the balance beam get a shot at the puzzle.
  • One recurring challenge saw two tribes each carry a set amount of weight while pursuing each other in a loop, continuing until one caught up to the other. Players could drop front the challenge at any time, but they would leave their weight to the other players, making it important to decide when the player themself is a bigger liability than the extra weight.
• Playing Both Sides: An effective, but tricky, strategy is to float between multiple large alliances. Done well, this gives the person in the middle a lot of leverage, but if done poorly, the player in question will effectively lose the game due to a lack of trust. Notable players to have pulled off this strategy include Rob Cesternino of The Amazon, Jonny Fairplay of Pearl Islands, and Tony Vlachos of Cagayan.
• Plot Tumor: In some seasons, the influence of the Hidden Immunity Idol becomes so important that it's hard to imagine the boot order occurring even remotely like it actually did if the idol wasn't in place. It must be slightly jarring for modern viewers to imagine that once upon a time, there were no idols.
• Previously on…: There is a recap nearly every episode, but it has been accused of being biased and not very truthful.
• Product Placement: The occasional reward will be provided by a sponsor, in which case the name brand will be mentioned prominently. For the most blatant example, Nicaragua had an episode where the challenge itself was themed after the then-upcoming Gullivers Travels movie, with the players having to drag a giant "Gulliver" dummy through an obstacle course - and of course, a movie night was the reward. The contestant not participating sat in a 10-foot-tall chair.

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Many tribes on Survivor comes across this way, and even more tribes are verified as such by contestants post-show. It only makes sense, being that Survivor is an individual game at the end of the day.
  • Casaya from Panama was one of the most dysfunctional tribes the show has ever seen, with the yoga instructor who tried to start fire with his mind alone and the couch potato who was scared of leaves on her first day being the sanest members of the bunch. The other members? A Manchild with a Hair-Trigger Temper and Sanity Slippage made ten thousand times worse by severe nicotine withdrawal, a fire dancer who annoyed everyone on her tribe with her Talkative Loon and Cloudcuckoolander ways, an easily irritated woman with the world's heaviest Boston accent, who was just a cut below said fire dancer on the Most Annoying scale, a lawyer who spent an entire night drinking wine in the camp's new outhouse, and a ridiculously Asian guy who made his own Zen garden and practiced martial arts on the beach. In spite of all this and their alliance almost coming apart at the seams multiple times, the Casaya tribe were still able to stick together to pick off the more harmonious and peaceful La Mina tribe and turned on each other only when the Last of His Kind continued his immunity run.
  • In One World, all the males on Manono who aren't "Roosters" align with each other, and Colton, the leader, refers to them as misfits, which they most definitely are. They proceed to vote out the head of the "Rooster" alliance.
• Ratings Stunt: Survivor has pulled many stunts throughout the years, to avoid the usual complaint against such a Long Runner; the Hidden Immunity Idols and the initial tribe divisions (by gender, race, or age) are probably the most notorious.
• Reality Show Genre Blindness: Very few people coming on the show seem to have an idea how these things tend to work. For example:
  • Being able to start a fire.
  • Being able to swim.
  • Wearing clothes suitable for the game environment. Although, this is somewhat justified - in seasons like Pearl Islands, Palau, and perhaps China, they weren't actually told they were going right to the game, they were told they were going to a promo event. Do you think Andrew Savage or David would have worn business suits if they knew they were going straight to the game in Pearl Islands and Redemption Island respectively, or that Ashley would have worn high-heel boots if she knew she was going directly to the game from the plane?
  • Another justification for the above list is that some contestants are "recruited" to be on the show, some of which have never watched it before, such as most of Fiji's cast. This is lampshaded by Taj from Tocantins:
  "They were casting for an NFL wife and I responded to the call".
  • They also manage to not realize that there is a social aspect to the game too. The Jury players have to like you or at least respect you if you want to have any chance of winning. They also have not figured out that the producers may be unable to fix the game, but they can slant it, so, therefore, returning players become a liability.
  • Returning players. One would honestly assume after Micronesia that they'd toss the returnees ASAP, yet every time they've done one returning player per tribe, they haven't (hell, in Redemption Island, it's almost as if all the other castoffs wanted Boston Rob to win).
• Realpolitik: At the end of the day, everyone's in it for themselves. Good players recognize this, but too many players don't and they get offended when things happen at their expense.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Any Jury who does a Take That! speech/statement to the finalists count. One contestant basically told another: "If I am walking across a desert and find you dying of dehydration, I will not give you water... I will just let you die."
  • In One World, Colton and Alicia each gave one to Christina, harping on how hopeless her situation was and that she was going to be eliminated next, but they suffered a vicious Karmic backlash: Colton instead was eliminated in a medevac, Alicia didn't get his immunity idol, and Christina ended up making it to the Final Four and outlasting Alicia by one round.
  • In Blood vs Water Jeff gives a scathing speech to Colton after he decides to leave the game for pretty much no reason while insinuating that he faked his One World injury.
• Recap Episode: Recaps were once per season for a while, up until South Pacific. Usually, the fall seasons' recaps were on Thanksgiving and the spring seasons' were sometime during March Madness. Stopped, for the most part, after a change in airing schedule from Thursday to Wednesday.
• Reunion Show: A reunion show is part of every season's finale (barring Winners at War due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) All seasons with returning players also qualify in a way.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: When someone sells out their alliance and joins another one. The result? Your only shot to the finals is going to be individual immunity since you'll be the third wheel/outsider to the new alliance. If you do make it to the finals, expect to be called out on it.
• The Runner-Up Takes It All: Sometimes, a non-winner will be the fan favorite over the winner, or otherwise get more mileage out of their appearance. Notable examples include Elizabeth Filarski (now Hasselbeck), who went on to have a ten year gig on women's talk show The View after placing fourth on The Australian Outback and Russell Hantz, who went on to have multiple return appearances and win the fan favorite award while the actual winner of Samoa faded into obscurity.
• Scenery Porn: The series always films in very picturesque locations. Plenty of seasons were beautiful enough even in Standard Definition (Palau, Guatemala, Amazon, Marquesas), but after Gabon, all the seasons have been filmed in HD - and the scenery porn was cranked up to eleven.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: Due to the varying nature of the game locations (namely the weather), it may go from one of the harder seasons to one of the easiest seasons within the same year.
• Security Blanket: Luxury items were provided to the contestants in some of the early seasons.

• Show the Folks at Home: During the Tribal vote, each castaway stands at a Confession Cam to explain the reasoning behind his or her vote and show his or her ballot. Though time prohibits airing everybody's speech and showing all the votes would kill the tension for the ceremony itself, the remaining votes are quickly shown as a montage at the end of the show. This sometimes fuels additional drama by revealing a traitor, but it also proves that the producers didn't change the outcome.
• Sigil Spam: The current season's logo appears on quite a lot: the tribe flags, challenge props^note pennants, puzzle pieces, etc., the Buffs, Jeff Probst's hat, and much more. Then there's the Reward Challenge maze in Tocantins episode 13: the word "SURVIVOR" was at least 60 yards long.

• Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters: For the first eight or so seasons, Survivor focused more on the players day to day lives at camp, but in later seasons, it increasingly focuses on game strategy and twists to the point where most of the characters are flat out ignored. Early seasons had big chunks of episodes dedicated to catching fish, hunting a pig, a fight because someone ate a can of food without the tribe, someone accused of smuggling beef jerky, a mock morning radio show and lots of instances of just people living on an island. Compared to modern seasons where this is seldom shown and every scene is about who people are going to vote for.
• Small Name, Big Ego: At least one in every season. "Coach" had crazy stories in Tocantins about how he escaped angry natives in the Amazon and the like (though he toned this stuff down in later seasons). Russell Hantz claimed that he was the best player to ever play (only to lose both of his jury votes in a landslide, which is something which will rarely happen to a good player). Richard Hatch was also a notorious braggart, though he backed up his claims of running the game by actually winning it.
• Sole Survivor: This is the official title of the winner of the game, who is the last person left at the end.
• Sore Loser: Several players voted out take it poorly, shown in post-Tribal Council confessionals, finale retrospective confessionals, or bitter jury speeches during the final Tribal Council.
  • Russell Hantz has to take the cake here, as his reactions to his first three losses were 1) try to buy the title from the winner, 2) complain that the rules need to be changed, and 3) threaten to sue his tribemates for throwing a challenge to get him out.
  • Also worth noting is Judd from Guatemala. After being blindsided (hilariously enough after claiming it was just a game and no one should take it personally), he told the people who had just voted him out "Thanks guys! I hope you guys get bit by a freaking crocodile. Scumbags."
• Spanner in the Works: When a contestant becomes contrary to the majority alliances' plan, they risk upheaving it and throwing the game out of whack. The earliest example is Kelly Wiglesworth of Borneo, who defected from the majority alliance and had to go on an immunity run to stay safe.
• Spell My Name with an S: A variety of people means a variety of cultural backgrounds and names that someone will inevitably misspell. With first names, it happens a lot at Tribal Council.
  • Sue Hawk in Borneo and Ralph from Redemption Island purposely spelled names horribly wrong For the Lulz.
  • Robb Z from Thailand's parting words were "Two B's, guy" because the votes read Rob instead of Robb.
  • Clay in Thailand would write down where people were from instead of names until he wrote "Bye Bye Denver Diva" to vote for Ghandia and Jeff had no idea who the vote was for and put a stop to the nicknames.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: One or two characters get the bulk of the screentime each season for various reasons, such as having unique mannerisms or bringing something new to the show. For instance, In-Universe, some of Rob and Amber's fellow Survivors actually called All-Stars "The Rob & Amber Show." Other examples include:
  • Rudy from the very first season, due to being endlessly quotable and the quintessential badass.
  • Rupert in Pearl Islands, mainly because he was a unique fan-favourite.
  • Stephenie of Palau and Guatemala, because of the unique situation she found herself in both seasons.
  • Coach of Tocantins, for being... well, "The Dragon Slayer".
  • Russell of Samoa and Heroes vs. Villains, being a huge manipulator, backstabber, and having an ego the size of the island he's living on.
  • Phillip and Brandon in Caramoan. Re-watch the episodes, and compare how much screen time certain players get before the two are booted. For example, Brenda and Erik had next to no screentime at first, but the episode after Phillip was booted their amount of screen time skyrocketed.
• Strategy Versus Tactics: Some players focus on their overall strategy and how they'll win in the finals, others focus more on the tactics of surviving round to round. Obviously, it's best to balance both - Russell Hantz is a prime example of what happens when you follow one at the expense of the other (in his case, he poured all his energy into tactics with no thought to his endgame strategy, suffering total defeat in the finals twice).
• Sublime Rhyme: Most of the tree-mail and Immunity Idol messages are in verse. The messages that aren't usually describe something complicated which must be handled in advance.
• Take That!:
  • The jury, especially the bitter ones, are prone to do this to the finalists. The Ur-Example is Sue Hawk's "Rats and Snakes" speech, and just about everyone except Michelle and maybe Yau-Man pretty much said Take That! to Dreamz in Fiji. Edgardo and Lisi were particularly vicious.
  • Edna from South Pacific performs one to both Mikayla and more subtly to the recurring nature of "Mactors", actors or models who seemingly don't care about Survivor and are only on the show for exposure, in her voting confessional towards her:
    Edna: (whispered) "I hope your time here has helped your future modeling career."
  • When Lindsey quit Cagayan, someone stomped "Shame on you Lindsie" in the sand.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome:
  • This guy's stronger than everyone else? He's a threat. Get rid of him.
  • All the winners that returned in All-Stars got hit by this, and again in Heroes vs. Villains; Tom Westman, in particular, was targeted by the Heroes due to his impressive win in Palau, while according to post-game interviews, Randy attempted to target the winners on the Villains tribe in the days before he was voted out.
  • Eventually subversions started appearing, though; as people realized that weak players were also a threat for the fact that players wanted to protect them.
• Team Mom:
  • Tina Wesson of Australian Outback actually threatened to put Jerri and Keith in "time out" if they didn't stop bickering. In fact, being the Team Mom became a huge factor in her victory.
  • Seasons after Australian Outback tend to deconstruct this trope however especially seasons around the late 20s as the Team Mom still have to play a game of outwitting their tribemates, and many people felt hurt when the Team Mom goes on to vote them out. It's gotten to the point where many older female Survivor players now try their best to avert this trope. This video goes more into about this deconstuction.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Whenever a player is evacuated or quits on the day of an immunity challenge, Tribal Council is usually cancelled afterwards, sparing teams the potential setback of losing two members in a single day. The only exceptions are Shamar's evacuation in Caramoan and Jackson's evacuation in Survivor 42, though the latter reduced what would've been a double-elimination challenge to a single-elimination.
• Title Drop:
  • The show's (occasionally bizarre) official titles for episodes are derived from players' quotes in the respective episodes. Of course, many of the chosen quotes mark critical moments in the game.
  • Once Survivor stopped going to new locations they added gimmicks instead. These gimmicks get name-dropped constantly each season. In Worlds Apart everyone is constantly talking about the collar and in David vs Goliath they rarely stop talking about being "A David".
• Too Cool to Live: The strong, cool and outstanding players are In-Universe usually the first ones to be targeted for elimination (post-merge) by their fellow castaways because they see him/her as a great threat in the game. Usually leads to a Shocking Elimination.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Sometimes the previews give things away they don't mean to. If you're about to watch an immunity challenge, and the preview the week before showed a big argument that you haven't yet seen this episode? The tribe that argued is almost certainly about to lose. The trailer for the finale of Winners at War also spoiled that Natalie would return to the game from the Edge of Extinction.

• Tropical Island Adventure: Most of the series is set on tropical islands in Oceania and Southeast Asia, with Pearl Islands, All-Stars, and Panama also set in the Pearl Islands off the southern coast of Panama.
• Unreliable Narrator: Jeff Probst, occasionally. Most blatantly in the previouslies. His intense dislike for Gabon's Fang tribe during recaps became increasingly obvious during the season, mainly because of their Ulong-reminiscent losing streak.
  • Occasionally, the editors have a bit of fun with this. In One World, contestants said that Christina was lazy. Yet they overlapped this with footage of her working.
  • Debbie in Game Changers gets so bad at this at one point that they actually include flashbacks for the first and only time to make a joke out of it. For a challenge she asks to be the one to do the balance beam portion, then fails at it extremely badly and her tribe loses. Afterwards, she gets extremely mad at Brad Culpepper and says he forced her to do the balance part against her will (cue flashback to her asking to do it). Then she blames the loss on Sierra and says claims she got through the balance portion in seconds and Sierra failed (cue flashback to the Sierra having zero issues and Debbie failing).
• Versus Title: Common in later seasons. The list includes Fans vs. Favorites (twice), Heroes vs. Villains, Blood vs. Water (also twice), and Millennials vs. Gen X, Heroes v Healers v Hustlers, and David vs Goliath. Cagayan and Kaôh Rōng were also presented with the concept "Brawn vs. Brains vs. Beauty", though the phrase didn't make it into the titles, as does Worlds Apart with "White Collars vs. Blue Collars vs. No Collars".
• Villainy-Free Villain: "Villains" on this show rarely do anything outright evil, they're just jerks {and some "villains" aren't even THAT bad).
• Voted Off the Island: The Trope Namer. Players leave the island as they are voted off.
• We ARE Struggling Together:
  • Intended to be invoked in One World, where the two tribes are sharing a living space, but subverted as the tribes set up separate camps next to each other instead of living as one group.
  • Subverted with the Casaya tribe in Panama. Despite them being an extremely dysfunctional and combative tribe, they all managed to work together well enough in challenges to "pagong" the more peaceful and homogeneous La Mina tribe.
  • This was the Fatal Flaw of the Timbiras in Tocantins. Between Coach and Brendan jockeying for the alpha male position, and Erinn getting the All of the Other Reindeer treatment, the tribe was in a big enough division come the merge that the incoming Jalapaos (who were in the minority) exploited the tribe "factions" and easily picked off the Timbiras one-by-one.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: It's possible for a contestant to win the game by not doing much other than riding other players coattails; letting their allies take the backlash for making unpopular moves. However, while this "doing nothing" accusation is often leveled at "under-the-radar" winners by fans, it's usually not true — players who get to the end do have to work to make sure they are liked and that votes go in their favor, and juries aren't inclined to reward actual "do-nothing" players.
• What You Are in the Dark: A few contestants have claimed over the years that the game reveals everybody's true personality, which is many times far different than the one they adopt back home.
• Who Will Bell the Cat?: Comes up in several seasons, and is a major reason for the trend of conservative play: even if everyone wants a guy in a position of power voted out, nobody wants to be targeted for trying. Especially if said person has an immunity idol that can lead to a vote going against the people attempting the coup.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once an alliance has eliminated their competition, the perceived strongest member/s is/are the one/s who get voted out by their tribemates because they see him/her as a threat. Ouch.

Season-Specific Tropes A-M

• Accentuate the Negative: Quite common among the contestants, especially when people are forced to vote out one of their own and needed to accentuate someone's negatives to get them out.
  • Stephanie Lagrossa, for example. Did you know that she actually made the Final Two when she played the game a second time in Guatemala? And that she was actually in a majority alliance? The way everyone mentioned/carried on about how she was on Ulong in Palau during Heroes vs. Villains, you'd be surprised to find out that detail.
  • Poor Dreamz - even if he clearly was sorry for having broken a promise and regretted it (even months later at the reunion), everyone VICIOUSLY chewed him out for it.
• Accidental Misnaming: In the first Tribal Council of Redemption Island, Phillip consistently calls Francesca "Fransesqua", resulting in her indignantly correcting him. The third time, he said, "My mouth is dry, I've been getting treatment for it." During the vote, he writes her name down as "Francesqua", showing that he didn't really know Francesca's name. Either that, or he was trying to irritate her on purpose.
  • In Borneo, B.B mistakenly refers to Greg as "Craig", and doesn't even know Jenna's name, referring to her as the "lady in the pink swimsuit."
  • Brian in Thailand has one of the weirdest ones. He is a control freak and needs Shii Ann to switch to their team to get the majority so he does everything to bring her over except learn her name. He calls her "Soo-Yi" and "Sin-Jo" instead.
  • In Micronesia, Ozzy mistakenly refers to Joel as "Troy" during the tribe swap.
  • In One World, Tarzan referred to Jonas as "Jason" and Christina as "Katrina". He explained he has nominal aphasia, meaning he needs to work at getting names right.
• The Ace: Colby Donaldson during Australian Outback, "Boston" Rob Mariano from All-Stars, Heroes vs. Villains and Redemption Island, Tom Westman during Palau, Yul Kwon during Cook Islands, Bob Crowley during Gabon, J.T. Thomas during Tocantins Kim Spradlin from One World and Malcolm Freberg from Philippines and Caramoan all fit this trope to a T. Also Terry Deitz from Panama; he gets double points for being an Ace Pilot.
• Action Girl: Several, but the earliest and most accomplished AG is Kelly Wigglesworth from Borneo.
• Africa Is a Country: Or so the third season, 'Survivor: Africa', might lead you to believe.^note Survivor: Africa was filmed in Kenya, which is at least mentioned a few times during the season.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Shii-Ann Huang and Eliza Orlins are notable examples because they managed to be ostracized by their tribes in multiple seasons (Thailand and All-Stars for the former, Vanuatu and Micronesia for the latter). Both responded each time by finding a way to spite the rest of their tribe, to varying degrees of success (see Diabolus ex Machina for a Shii-Ann attempt that didn't go so well, and Taking You with Me for a more successful incarnation from Eliza).
• All There in the Manual: Looking at shooting schedules, Heroes Vs Villains filmed just before Samoa aired. This means that none of the other H vs V players had the chance to see Russell in action before the season, which became important.
  • The tie-breakers for the first 5-6 seasons definitely fall under here as well, since most of the contestants seemed so unsure of how they would proceed that they avoided forcing one like the plague. Also counts for the one season where contestants believed the tie-breaker would be pulling stones, and was instead the fire-building challenge.
  • Actually, much of the strategy in Australian Outback and Africa was based on the survivors knowing that a tiebreaker involved who had the most previous votes. Tina from the Australian Outback managed to give her tribe, Ogakor, a majority during the merge when she tricked Kimmi from Kucha into revealing who had the most votes from Kucha.
• Always Second Best: Despite being able to reach the finals in back-to-back seasons, both Amanda Kimmell and Russell Hantz failed to win both times due to (respectively) a poor final tribal council performance and wrong ways of rubbing people.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Can easily happen given how someone is ejected every episode. Not only for the audience but sometimes the contestants act this way, too. Jerri leaving Australia was a relief to the other players (one even whistled "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead"), and just about everybody (including many viewers) was glad to see Russell finally get voted out in Redemption Island.
• Animal Battle Aura: "Coach" Wade's Zen trip to Exile Island, either sincere for Warrior Poet or deadpan snark for Miles Gloriosus.
• Anti-Climax: There have been a couple of seasons that were considered "blowouts" at the end because of the Final Two or Three and the winner being pretty obvious. Probst has pointed out that there were fan complaints of "blowout" seasons before they started doing a Final Three.
  • Panama, wherein the players that viewers wanted to win were the last two evicted and left with Daniele and Aras.
  • Fiji, wherein the fan favourite was the last person evicted and the Final Three faced a very bitter jury. The winner was liked, at least.
  • Redemption Island, wherein the only characters that were considered interesting were on the losing side of a Pagonging and voted out early, and Rob had such a grip on his tribe to the point where everyone trusted him and believed whatever he said so that his win was almost written in the stars.
• Arrows on Fire: One Africa challenge involved shooting these at a bulls-eye. Hilarity Ensues when Brandon tried to shoot and botched it completely.
• Artistic License: The way they divided Millennials and Gen X (placing 1984 as the first Millennial birth year) conflicts with many definitions of Gen Y/Millennial, which is often cited as starting in 1976. Although until about ten years ago, Gen X was said to begin in 1961, it has now been moved ahead to 1965. Alternately, some use 20 year generations, which would make Baby Boomers 1945-1965, Gen X 1966-1986, and Millennials 1987-2007. This would have likely worked better with what they were going for. However, it's likely the real reason they picked such a weird, random year is that it was the only way to divide the 20 contestants they picked evenly.
• Artistic License – Statistics: Invoked - Probst regularly says that, when the numbers of players dwindle, the players have a one-in-x shot at winning a million. Except that it's actually not determined by luck of the draw - He actually says this to help motivate players to make it further.
• The Atoner: After starting Guatemala on a sour note, (see Smug Snake, below), Jamie suddenly got better. He traded the nice food Reward he earned in episode 9 for the lowest-quality food item available; he explained that he realized how much of an asshole he'd been. As the contestants sit to eat, Jeff reminds everyone of the sacrifice:
  Jeff: Bring out the next meal: burger and a beer. [...] This is where you would have been in the line, Jamie.
  Jamie: Nothing tastes better than my self-respect.
  Jeff: Well put.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Said by Tony and LJ in the swap episode of Cagayan.
• Audience Participation:
  • The America's Tribal Council after the All-Stars season.
  • The Sprint Player of the Season awards.
  • Second Chances featured a poll determining who would be the castaways that season (10 for each gender).
• Awesome, but Impractical: Trying to play a VERY strong physical game in the early parts of the game. Unfortunately, this winds up depleting your body (and possibly causes your body to consume muscle if you're male and don't have as much fat) and either causes you to slow down, get sick and either lead to you being Voted Off the Island or even worse, a Non-Gameplay Elimination. And unless you can carry yourself with immunity wins; you'll be seen as a threat around the merge.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • Yau-Man from Fiji and Bob Crowley from Gabon, who effectively used maths and physics in challenges; Stephen from Tocantins also used math in at least one challenge to win. Christian from David vs. Goliath successfully created an algorithm to search the island more efficiently for idols.
  • Praise should be given to all of the Survivor contestants who actually knew how to survive out there, despite little-to-no prior experience or survival skills. To name the more obvious examples: Richard, Rudy, Greg and Gretchen from Borneo, Michael from Australian Outback, Hunter from Marquesas, Rupert from Pearl Islands, Ozzy from Cook Islands... and the list goes on.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Pearl Islands allowed eliminated players to return to the game as "The Outcasts". This twist was borrowed by two international editions (the Israeli version's "Dead Man Island" and the second season of the Philippine edition's "Isla Purgatoryo"). Three of the four (Pearl Islands had two Outcasts) aforementioned returning players nearly won their respective seasons.
  • Redemption Island and the Edge of Extinction are Not Quite Dead variants: when someone's voted out, they're sent to Redemption Island/the Edge. In Redemption, the new arrival challenges the person already there; loser is out for good; while the Edge just collects everyone who wants to stay. At the merge and just before the finals, one player (either Redemption Island's reigning champion or the winner of an Edge of Extinction challenge) will be able to return to the game.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe, James laments Colby's disappointing struggling early in Heroes Vs Villains.
  "My Superman sucks!"

• Batman Gambit: Many, but the Ur-Example is almost certainly when Richard threw the last competition. He waited deliberately until Jeff came in with a temptation (in this case they were oranges), and stepped right off the platform, waiting for either Rudy or Kelly to win. If Kelly won(which Richard was banking on given that she's younger than Rudy), she takes Richard to the finals on the assumption that the jury would hate Richard for pagonging them all. If Rudy won, he takes Richard to the final two out of loyalty, in which case Richard believed he would lose. In either case, Richard doesn't have to get his hands dirty and potentially lose a jury vote (whether it was Rudy or Kelly who eventually left), and since he is a better public speaker than either, he could very well win against Rudy as well.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: While our trope is usually used for a three-girl Power Trio, Cagayan and Kaôh Rōng deserve mention for being themed after the dynamic and referencing it by name repeatedly.
• Being Evil Sucks: Russell Hantz relishes being the bad guy (see "Griefer" below), but his "evil deeds" cost him the jury's votes twice and got his third tribe to throw a challenge to get rid of him. Jury backlash for evil deeds was also the reason Dreamz lost in Fiji.

• Berserk Button:
  • Jeff Probst has a few:
    • He visibly turns nasty when someone quits without a good reason. He was sympathetic towards people like Jenna (who was having bad vibes about her mother with cancer^note The producers told her her mother's cancer took a turn for the worse) and Kathleen (who was having a mental breakdown); and with Janu, he seemed more surprised. But as for people like Osten, "Purple" Kelly, and NaOnka? Not pleased.
    • Don't ever claim you threw a challenge in front of Jeff.
    • Jeff also especially did not like Jonathan Penner or Jonny Fairplay for unspecified reasons; he never called Penner by name and only seemed sympathetic towards him when he was evacuated in Micronesia, and Fairplay supposedly got in a fight with one of Probst's family members at the Vanuatu reunion that put him on Probst's shitlist.
    • The last episode of One World showed that Jeff is also visibly disgusted when a contestant doesn't even bother scrambling when they know they're going next; his reaction to Christina saying as much is evidence for this.
  • Benjamin "Coach" Wade's Berserk Button is apparently being referred to by his real name. "If anyone calls me Benjamin to my face, I'm gonna go nuts."
  • Lex getting a vote cast against him. Ever.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Jenna and Heidi stripping for peanut butter and chocolate during Amazon. So much that they even posed for Playboy. In-Universe, Jenna lampshaded this during America's Tribal Council saying people will remember her stripping instead of actually winning that season.
• Beware the Honest Ones:
  • See the Redemption Island premiere, where Phillip's honesty led him to blab his alliance's plan at Tribal Council.
  • In South Pacific, Brandon Hantz went through a cycle of feeling "Catholic guilt" over some falsehood, coming clean about it, lather, rinse, repeat; throwing tribal dynamics into chaos every single time.
• Big Bad: Most seasons have at least one contestant that plays this role, either of the anti-villainous or card-carrying variety.
• Big Bad Duumvirate:
  • Despite Parvati referring to Russell as her pet dragon in Heroes vs. Villains, this is what they likely were.
  • Burton and Jonny Fairplay were this thirteen seasons earlier, although it could be argued that Burton was just The Dragon.
• Big Brother Mentor:
  • In Episode 6 of Thailand, after a quarrel over a misunderstanding Robb had, Ken takes Robb under his wing and becomes a sort of Big Brother Mentor to him, teaching him how to better relate to his tribe. This calmed down the normally very unpredictable Robb into having an epiphany about himself and suddenly becoming much nicer to his tribemates.
  • Coach basically acted as one to Brandon in South Pacific, helping him keep himself together.
• The Big Guy: Many, including Clarence Black, "Big Tom" Buchanan, "Big Ted" Rogers Jr, Rupert Boneham, James Clement, Jaison Robinson.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Hantzes, from what we see of them. Russell is an Entitled Bastard and revels in being a Jerkass. His nephew Brandon tried to be better than that in South Pacific, but frankly sucked at it and melted down at every screwup. In Caramoan he gave up trying and displayed an extreme Hair-Trigger Temper. And in the South Pacific family visit, we met Brandon's dad/Russell's brother, who told Brandon to suck it up and get the money (not bad advice given Brandon's issues, but comes off as "abandon your principles") and tried to bully Coach into helping Brandon. (Plus, another of Russell's brothers, Willie, was on Big Brother and his behavior actually got him disqualified.)
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Pagong from the first season, Borneo, all voted for host Jeff Probst during their first trip to Tribal Council out of sheer mockery of his seriousness. The mock vote for Jeff wasn't shown, but everyone including executive producer Mark Burnett claimed that it happened and that it infuriated Probst. Greg Buis in particular took this trope up to eleven.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Brandon Hantz suffered from this big-time in South Pacific.
• Blatant Lies: Gabon featured "video messages from home" as a teaser for the 11th Reward Challenge; Jeff claimed that the true Reward would simply be pizza and a longer message, and later told the losers that he had nothing for them. While eating (alone), Bob was pleasantly surprised to see his wife step from behind a nearby tree and led her back to meet the tribe. Then, he turned around, whistled sharply, and the other players' loved ones crested the hill down to the camp.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Girl Posse in Amazon consisted of Jenna (brunette), Heidi (blonde) and Shawna (redhead).
• Bookends: At the beginning of Samoa, Russel burned Jamison's socks by throwing them into the camp's fire. Towards the end of the following season, Heroes vs. Villains, Sandra burns Russel's hat the same way.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Pagonging. Essentially, if you control a majority and remove all the other alliances and the floaters, you can waltz to a game milestone almost completely unopposed. Editors wouldn't like this strategy as it can make a season quite boring. Thankfully, it's only happened in its entirety in Borneo, Thailand, Cook Islands, Redemption Island, and South Pacific. And YMMV on Cook Islands since the tribe doing the Pagonging was actually an underdog. Also downplayed in South Pacific, where Redemption Island allowed Ozzy to return and make it to the Final Four.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity or/and The Quiet One as a strategy. The editors don't like it unless you're doing something amusing like Fabio (look how little screentime Vecepia, Brett, and Natalie got!), but when the other players think you're stupid/easy to beat, then if you play your cards right you'll be dragged along and possibly the last man out of your alliance.
  • Natalie's strategy in Winners at War throughout the Edge of Extinction: Hoard fire tokens, then use them all on protein and advantages in the final challenge during the last day you can spend them. It's undoubtedly the optimal way to play with the Edge of Extinction and fire tokens in the game, but that doesn't make it particularly exciting to watch.
• Born Unlucky: Part of the reason the Ulong tribe in Palau did so poorly was because of factors outside their control. Ashlee and Jeff were voted out because of illness and a twisted ankle respectively.
• Born Winner:
  • Sandra definitely qualifies, as she has won both seasons she has competed in, with only one vote cast against her in both of them.
  • J.T. made it to the end with no votes cast against him, and won all jury votes.
  • Earl became the first person to have won all jury votes, and only has a single vote cast against him during his season.
  • Cochran, like J.T., had a No-Damage Run and a Flawless Victory; however, he didn't do this until the second time he played.
  • Jeremy made it to the end with no counted votes against him ^note he had three votes against him negated by an idol and earned all 10 jury votes.
• Brick Joke: In Winners at War, the four people on Edge of Extinction had to do a task in which they had to repeatedly hike up and down the mountain to take twenty logs of fire to their camp. When Tyson joined them, the first thing he said was "Wow, look at all this firewood!"
• Brutal Honesty: During the Final Tribal Council of Africa, juror Brandon asked Ethan which jury member would be least deserving of being in the Final 2. Ethan bluntly answered "You".
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Some contestants are good but at the same time...weird.
• The Bus Came Back: The seasons featuring returning players.
• Call-Back / Nostalgia Level: All-Star seasons tend to bring back challenges from the castaways' original seasons. Whenever such a challenge is played, Probst notes the original season it came from.
  • Also, the first duel in Redemption Island was appropriately a repeat of the challenge that took place during Pearl Islands' Outcast twist.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: An In-Universe example: In Millennials vs. Gen X, Figgy attempted to tell Ken and Jessica about her showmance with Taylor in which she has been trying to hide from them. However, neither of them were actually surprised over that.
• Card-Carrying Villain: A few players over the years have been smart enough to know that they were going to be edited as the villain and played it up accordingly. Examples include Jonny Fairplay, Russell Hantz, and Corinne Kaplan. An inversion of this is Jerri Manthey, at least in Australia. According to her, she did not expect to be edited as a villain, since she never did anything particularly villainous (at least to Survivor standards at the time), especially since she as a person received an extremely negative reception after the whole "Beef Jerky" incident.
  • Villany Marches On, though. People originally booed Jerri off the stage. After the likes of Ami, Russell Hantz, Rob, Corinne, Randy, Parvati, and Fairplay...putting her in the villains tribe may have been incredibly unfitting.
• The Cassandra:
  • The appropriately-named Sandra plays this role in the early stages of the Heroes vs. Villains merge - first, in her attempts to rat out Russell and Parvati's scam to the Heroes, then in her attempts to persuade Candice to stay with the Heroes. An encore from her days in the Pearl Islands warning people not to trust Jonny Fairplay.
  • An early example: Joel Klug from Borneo was voted out on Day 18 for several reasons such as supposed chauvinism, being the richest tribe member other than B.B (and thus not really needing the prize money), being a physical threat during the merge, etc. But one other excuse for eliminating him according to his tribe was that he was "telling people what to do" or something similar for bringing up the idea of alliances. He says on camera to his tribe that it's in Pagong's best interest to vote as a unified whole just in case Tagi was planning to do the same (and they were), and most of his tribe punished him for not being naive and assuming everyone would vote emotionally.
• Cat Fight:
  • Danielle and Amanda had one in Heroes Vs Villains over a hidden immunity idol clue. Coincidentally, lone male Colby already had a bowl of popcorn with him at the time as it was a movie night reward.
  • NaOnka and Kelly B had one in Nicaragua yet again over a hidden immunity idol clue, though that was slightly less entertaining because Kelly had an amputated leg. Both women later tried to write it off as not treating Kelly differently for being handicapped, but it rings hollow considering NaOnka's rants about wanting to tear the prosthetic leg off and throw it in the fire.
• The Charmer: Parvati and Boston Rob have both been described by tribemates as having an intense, magnetic charisma that causes others to seek their attention and hang on their every word. Given that they're also both highly skilled manipulators and clever strategists, they are both able to easily use this trait to their advantage.
• The Chessmaster:
  • After first season winner Richard Hatch showed that the game is really about politics, not actual wilderness survival, every contestant has subsequently tried to be this. Most wind up being Unwitting Pawns.
  • Cirie was one of the best, being the first player to successfully engineer a three-way split in the votes.
• Chick Magnet: Colby. Lampshaded by Sandra and Parvati.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Some players can't help but vote off their own alliance members - even through this, people keep on trusting these players.
  • An example of this is Candice Woodcock-Cody, in both Cook Islands and Heroes vs. Villains.
  • Another prime example is Dreamz in Fiji. En route to the final three he screws over Michelle, Edgardo, Mookie, Alex, and most notably Yau-Man, all of whom are on the jury. Needless to say, this comes back to haunt him.
  • Vecepia was the first notable backstabber who managed to win the game - she takes part in voting out her tribe's original leader Hunter, one of her only remaining tribemates Boston Rob, and Kathy with whom she had an iron-clad deal going into the finals with.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander:
  • Coach in Tocantins. The 'Dragon Slayer' is just the tip of the crazy iceberg. To his credit, he seems to have recognized how he came off and scaled things way back in his repeat appearances.
  • Additionally, Cao Boi from Cook Islands and Matthew from Amazon; the entire cast thought Matthew was insane (Or "cweepy" as Christy Smith would have it.)
  • Greg Buis (in Borneo) was the first Cloud Cuckoo Lander of Survivor, beginning with his coconut phone, and ending with his unexpected descent into tears.
    • Greg's final Jury question "Pick a Number between 1 and 10" ended up being the deciding vote. He just did it to mock the seriousness of everyone else and because he liked to screw with the production crew. The correct number was "whatever Richard picked" so there was no luck involved.
  • Shane, who decided to quit smoking only the day before Panama began. Later seen with his Blackberry rock.
  • Philip (from Redemption Island) challenges Coach's Tocantins performance for craziest Survivor ever.
  • Greg Smith, or "Tarzan" from One World is shown to definitely live in his own world. A few examples of this are when he tells Jeff Probst that he (meaning Jeff) is the one getting played at Tribal Council; and when he is convinced that another contestant is mad at him because he's a plastic surgeon, and she was unhappy with her plastic surgeon.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Being a Reality TV show, it can't be helped, but they're usually censored.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Combined with Informed Ability as there's usually at least one contestant whose job back home doesn't seem to translate to Survivor skills as well as it should. (Especially given the limited nutrition they receive while in the game.) Some examples include:
  • Kelly from Borneo, a professional river guide who lost a boating race to a man who couldn't swim.
  • Keith from The Australian Outback, a chef who could not even cook rice. His rice was so disgusting that it was inedible, and his inability to cook was made all the more blatant when Jerri made tortillas from scratch that the whole tribe ended up loving.
  • Lillian from Pearl Islands couldn't tie the fisherman's knot, and lost a fishing hook, despite being a Boy Scout leader.
  • James from Palau, an Alabama steelworker who got beaten in a fight by a gay hairdresser.
    • James claims he knows a knot from his time in the Navy that was impossible to see the end of and would only get tighter the more the other tribe tried to untie it. The other tribe untied it with extreme ease.
  • Crystal from Gabon, an Olympic gold medalist who couldn't run, climb, throw, or dunk a basketball...on a five-foot hoop. She had admitted to steroid use in the past, which could have affected her performance, but some would argue that she should have performed better regardless.
  • NaOnka from Nicaragua and Alicia from One World are teachers (PE and special ed, respectively), but demonstrated things kids probably shouldn't be learning. Namely, NaOnka had a bad attitude towards a disabled tribemate (and everyone else, but the disability stands out) and quit at the expense of her team, while Alicia was a selfish Alpha Bitch.
  • Phillip from Redemption Island, a "Former Federal Agent?" who couldn't pierce Tribal Council Double Speak, got upset and proceeded to reveal all of his alliance's secrets. Even the captions appeared to question his profession. A fan theory is that his actual government job was much less impressive than he tries to make it sound.
• Crossover: Big Brother winner Hayden Moss competed in the original Blood vs. Water, while two-time The Amazing Race contestants the Anderson twins competed in San Juan Del Sur, the second Blood vs. Water installment. Survivor also crossed over into The Amazing Race, as its Season 31 featured teams from previous Race seasons, Survivor, and Big Brother.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Brett from Samoa simply hid behind the numbers and kept his mouth shut (losing a lot of screen time in the process), making the Foa-Foa's think he was nothing more than an easy-boot at the final six. But then all of a sudden, this quiet person who looks 16 starts to chain-win immunities. Then comes the scary part for the Foa-Foa's, since Brett is the last remaining Galu left, with a jury now 100% filled with Galus... not to mention he's the only one besides Natalie out of those six who ''had not'' angered anyone like Russell and Mick...
  • Jud from Nicaragua got pegged as a himbo (not completely unfairly) and was given the nickname "Fabio", but he used it to his advantage to sneak past people perceived as bigger threats and won, even managing to trick Chase and Sash into telling Jane they were voting her out to her face.
  • Ashley appeared to have been one of the Living Props on Rob's team who was incapable of doing a thing by herself...until she started winning challenges and worried Rob a lot because she didn't anger anybody on the jury and was actually not incompetent. You can spot Rob's Oh, Crap! face.
  • Before these three, Lillian in Pearl Islands. The entire season she's (again, not unfairly) built up as a woman in over her head. In a rather brilliant move, Fairplay comes into the final three with her and Sandra, neither of which had won any challenges. Sandra goes out easily as predicted...but Fairplay starts to get in trouble. He tries to get Lil to drop...but every single deal is shot down with a big "No", and she continues to wear him down.
  • Sophie is sort of seen as this emotional girl who's being dragged by Coach... and then manages to beat Ozzy in the most crucial immunity challenge.
  • Christina gets a moment in One World - she's pretty much abused all game but eventually, the abuse stops a bit as they decide to go after Kat instead. Throughout the game, she doesn't perform well in challenges, yet in the final immunity challenge, she comes in second... a very close second at that, as both her and Kim were leagues ahead of Chelsea and Sabrina!
• Crying Wolf: After his famous "dead grandma" ploy in Pearl Islands, Jonny Fairplay had basically established himself as the player who would say anything to get farther in the game. So in Micronesia, when he told a sweet story about feeling emotionally detached from the game because he was thinking about his soon-to-be-born daughter, the other players thought he was up to his old tricks and voted him out first. He was telling the truth that time - at least about the baby. He may have been playing up the rest, of course.
• David vs. Goliath: The theme and title of Season 37, which pits a tribe of "Goliaths" who gained success with natural advantages against "Davids" who had to overcome adversity to get where they are in life.
• Defeat by Modesty:
  • Kathy lost Marquesas' final challenge because she was trying to cover up.
  • Averted in the Heroes Vs Villains premiere; Sandra tried to sabotage Sugar by undoing her bra top, but Sugar merely wiggled out of her top and ran topless to the finish.
  • Courtney in China lost a challenge because her bra kept slipping and she kept turning around to cover it up.
• Defector from Decadence: In the middle of one Palau challenge, Gregg once promised Katie that he wouldn't hasten her loss; since protecting Jenn was always his top priority, he was later forced to go back on his word. Katie happily forgave him when Gregg invited her and Jenn to join him for the overnight cruise. This didn't stop her from agreeing to blindside Gregg at the next vote, however.
• Determinator: Russell Swan worked through a 5-day storm in Samoa before collapsing twice during a challenge, and was sent home because his heart rate dropped far too low. It was basically because of his failing that the Galu tribe basically fell apart after the merge.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Some of the game twists have royally screwed players over:
  • Lex from Africa got sick in day 38, hours before the final immunity challenge.
  • PASCHAL. Because of a tie in the final four between Kathy and Neleh, Jeff Probst took out a bag full of rocks, and whoever drew the purple rock would be eliminated from the game. Paschal drew the purple rock, and was eliminated from the game; with no votes cast for him throughout the entire game, let alone that Tribal Council. This caused a lot of controversy outside the game because of how many people felt Paschal was unfairly screwed over. Although this did work out for him, his leg gave out the very next day so he couldn't participate in the next tribal council.
  • Shii-Ann in Thailand was on the outs with her tribe, and when the two came together she immediately tried to integrate with the opposition - only for Jeff to spring the twist that they hadn't merged yet, they were only sharing a camp. Bye-bye, Shii-Ann.
  • Savage from Pearl Islands, who got voted out mostly because Lilian was still mad at him for getting her out.
  • Michelle Yi from Fiji gets voted out after a twist where the reward and the immunity challenges are combined into a single event, and the losing team has to go immediately to Tribal Council with no opportunity for discussion or strategizing. Michelle ends up on a team consisting of hostile and indifferent players, loses, and is subsequently voted out.
  • In Cook Islands, Jenny Guzon-Bae was hit with a bad twist — her tribe ended up losing the challenge, and after voting out Rebecca, they were told that they immediately had to vote off another tribemate. Jenny ended up getting the surprise boot. Naturally, as she walked away from the Tribal Council set, she raised a big middle finger... whether to her tribe or the host is uncertain.
  • While this wasn't a new twist, Jacqui from Gabon was screwed out because she got switched to another tribe and was pretty much the low man on the totem pole. Marcus was also screwed, but it was part Diabolus ex Machina and part mistake. (Marcus realized he and Crystal had a connection outside of the game, so they tried to make a small alliance...but then he suggested voting out Ken, Crystal's # 1 ally in the game, so Crystal immediately dropped the plans and got him voted out when Ken flipped Susie).
    • Also has happened to Marty/Jill in Nicaragua, Silas/Lindsey in Africa... the list of contestants who got shafted by a tribal swap goes on and on.
  • Aaron from China has to be one of the best examples of this — at the final twelve, both tribes were told that they were allowed to kidnap whichever two members of the opposing tribe they perceived as the strongest, automatically putting those players into a minority. Aaron, the leader of the Fei Long tribe who was in a solid alliance, got sent over to Zhan Hu and was voted off the same episode for no other reason than the fact that he was a strong guy.
  • Amber from All-Stars by all rights should have been the ultimate example of this trope, when during a randomized tribal switch she was most improbably the only person not to switch tribes. And yet, Boston Rob managed to turn her case into a subversion by duping Lex into saving her with a single sentence. Its small wonder she immediately accepted when Rob later proposed marriage.
    • Amber had already done the legwork by offering Lex and Kathy a final-5 alliance with her, Rob, and Big Tom, in which Lex expected to have the upper hand because he had a secret pre-show alliance in place with Big Tom. Rob's muttered line at the challenge just convinced Lex to go ahead with the deal. It would have been a pretty smart move for Lex, except the part where he forgot Rob was there to win, not to help his friends win.
  • Brenda won the family visit challenge in Caramoan, which is already fairly unenviable due to having to pick a tribemate or two to go along with and risk alienating everyone else. After she chose Dawn to share the prize, Probst hit her with the Sadistic Choice of keep the reward for her and Dawn or have both of them give it up to let everyone else see their loved ones, thereby forcing her to either actively deny the others their families or turn her kind gesture to Dawn into a case of Yank the Dog's Chain. And to add insult to injury, the reward took place just offshore from the camp, within view of anyone not participating thereby stoking their jealousy. For a "reward", there was really no way for Brenda to come out unscathed.
• Digging Yourself Deeper:
  • Dreamz from Fiji and Neleh from Marquesas are notable examples. And Lex, every time he tried to justify why he can get away with playing ruthlessly but others need to be punished for it.
  • Happened twice in a row at the beginning of Nicaragua. As a result of panicking over her vulnerability before and during Tribal Council, Wendy fell victim to this in episode 1, and was first to be evicted. Ironically, she had admitted (before the vote) that her chattiness was often irritating; she didn't say much early on, but it was enough to give an impression of being odd. In episode 2, alpha male Shannon went on a rant that included homophobic comments, likely turning what would have been a tie into his own ouster.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Naonka in Nicaragua made a batch of tortillas but got stuck with the smallest one, so she swiped and hid all the tortilla-making supplies and some fruit. The only reason she brought any of it back was that she was caught.
  • Boston Rob chose to vote out Matt early in Redemption Island because he shook hands with the other tribe after they won a challenge.
• The Ditz: Jud "Fabio" Birza from Nicaragua is a rare male example, who didn't know that crabs pinched. Although his strategy confessionals aren't quite so ditzy...
• Ditzy Genius: Dr. Sean Kenniff. Fans regularly make fun of his "Alphabet Strategy", but it actually made sense: most of the names that started toward the beginning of the alphabet were from the Pagong tribe. Why he failed was because of his neurotic demeanor, and that he always put his foot in his mouth when he started to talk. It didn't help matters that he thought of himself as a kind of Jerry Seinfeld, noting in his audition tape that Seinfeld, Joey Buttafuoco and all of the Baldwin brothers are from his hometown. And his Superpole 2000 was hilariously ineffective. Gervase called him the "dumbest smart guy" that he's ever met. And ironically, Sean's dad ended up being largely the same when he showed up for the first-ever "loved one" visit, with Sue calling the elder Kenniff a goof.
• Double-Meaning Title:
  • Many of the episode titles in the earlier seasons are Shout-Outs to various pieces of literature, film, music, or events that happened earlier in the season. They are also allusions to what is going to happen in that night's episode. For example, Thailand's premiere episode is called "The Importance Of Being Eldest", a reference to Oscar Wilde as well as to the opening twist (and is also a clue to how the season itself plays out).
  • "Redemption Island", while being an obvious reference to the twist introduced in that season, is also a subtle reference to the fact that two of the most notorious Survivors who had never won a season, Boston Rob and Russell, were trying to redeem themselves by finally winning it all.
• Dysfunction Junction:
  • Episode 2 of Nicaragua is an hour full of crazy; with Holly's weird revenge scheme, Naonka's unprovoked bile and Shannon's out-of-nowhere ranting.
  • The Casaya Tribe from Panama, in between Shane randomly going off at people, Courtney randomly going off at people, and Shane and Courtney going off at each other, the tribe really was one of the most dysfunctional tribes to ever be slumped together.
  • Between Alicia and Christina's shouting matches, Tarzan's Cloudcuckoolander antics, and pretty much anything Colton said or did, the first half of One World made for one of the most dysfunctional seasons in the show's run.
  • Caramoan put Brandon and Phillip on the same tribe, which proved to be, shall we say, volatile.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Some people consider Borneo to be so different in tone and mood compared to the rest of the rest of the series that it's this. However, there's nothing really tangibly different about it compared to later seasons other than a lack of "shocking twists" (unless you consider things like merging, the jury, and the Final 2 to be "twists").
  • The Hidden Immunity Idol had to take a few seasons to have its rules refined. The first time it appeared in Guatemala, it worked just like regular Immunity, preventing the user from even being on the "ballot" in the first place. In Panama and Cook Islands, it was allowed to be played after the votes were read, when the user knows that they'd be voted out otherwise. The rules would then change once more to require it be played before the reading, forcing the user to take a risk on whether it would be needed or not.
• Embarrassing Password: In Season 41, a set of "Beware Advantages" force their holders to say a code phrase in public in order to get an advantage. The phrases were made to be completely ridiculous: "I truly believe that butterflies are just dead relatives saying hi", "I'm as confused as a goat on AstroTurf", and "I didn't realize this until now... broccoli is just a bunch of small trees."
• Entitled Bastard: Russell Hantz. In Samoa, he tried to buy the title off the winner. In Heroes vs Villains, he claimed that the rules were flawed. In Redemption Island, he even said that he should have sued every player on his team for losing just to get rid of him. Even after his nephew Brandon played in South Pacific, he referred to his own game as "greatness" and said Brandon was screwing it up.
• Epic Fail:
  • Palau's Ulong tribe. Infamous in that they lost every single immunity challenge, and all but three reward challenges. The only reason anyone from the other tribe was voted out was that one episode featured a contestant getting voted out from both tribes as part of a twist. At one point, there is only one member of the Ulong tribe. As a result, no official merge happened, Ulong was considered "conquered", and Stephanie was assimilated into the other tribe. She didn't last too long after that, and Ulong officially became the shortest-lived tribe in Survivor history.
  • Seasons later, the Matsing tribe from Philippines became Ulong's successor, never winning a single challenge in the four episodes it lasted. Malcolm and Denise were consequently absorbed into opposing tribes, ironically going far to become major threats in their own rights.
  • And Cagayan's Luzon/Brains tribe almost becomes the next Matsing/Ulong. One of their tribe members threw rice into the fire, costing 95% of their food and voted off someone else(after holding an open discussion on who is the weakest and should be voted off), had to rely on one person to carry the entire team, and lost almost every challenge, winning just one immunity/reward challenge. In the third episode of Cagayan, Luzon lost against the Aparri/Brawn tribe who was TRYING TO LOSE ON PURPOSE. It says much when a tribe tries to throw the challenge, and the other tribe still loses.
• Erotic Eating: Jerri toyed the idea with chocolate to Amber during Australian Outback. Hilarity Ensues when Colby, aware of the Double Entendre, reacted uncomfortably.
  Jerri: I just wanna pour hot chocolate on some hot dude's bod.
  Colby: I may be a lot of things, but I ain't no Hershey bar! (chuckles)
• Even Evil Has Standards: Natalie sums up the Micronesia women's intentions in ep. 11:
  "...as evil as women can be, and diabolical and cutthroat and go-for-the-jugular as women are, and just suck blood, we do want Erik to have a good birthday on day 30. Today's his birthday; he's 22... so he's not going home today."
• Event Title: The series title itself invokes people surviving. For specific seasons, the ones named after twists or/and gimmicks such as One World (tribes sharing a camp) and the ones under Versus Title below.
• Everyone Has Standards: During Game Changers, Jeff Varner outs Zeke as transgender during Tribal Council in a misguided attempt to prove that he's capable of deception and thus should be voted out. Every single other person there immediately calls him out for going way too far, and he is eliminated from the game shortly after.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: All of the locations are designed to wear the hell out of the contestants, but Australia and especially Africa qualify for this trope. The two tribes had to be barricaded inside a little rickety boma to keep from various predators who might eat or gore them and other animals who may stampede over them by accident.
• Evil Is Cool: In-Universe, Some contestants believe this (as it is a game of deception), and swear to lie, cheat, and steal their way to the million. Most of them realize that they are on a television show, and deliberately do this to play up to the cameras.
  • The Villain tribe from Heroes vs Villains. Their dramatic entrance alone was all kinds of cool, the descent of their chopper literally blowing sand right at the Hero tribe's faces.
• Exact Words: In the Tocantins premiere, the players are about to begin an hours-long hike to the campsites, when the host suckers them good:
  Jeff: "We're going to have our first vote, and one person from each tribe is not gonna make this journey..."
  [vote is held, unhappy words of farewell to the selected players, angry laments from them]
  Jeff: "Let's be clear: I said you will not take part in this adventure. 'This adventure' is a four-hour trek to camp. [Sandy screams happily and others laugh upon realizing what Jeff meant.] [...] while these guys are trekking for four hours, carrying all of the camp supplies, you're gonna fly to camp in a helicopter." Hilarious.
  • Before that, there was the time in Thailand where Jeff told the tribes they were together now, but later took great joy in informing them "'Merge'? I never said you merged."
• Failed a Spot Check: When Michaela does not get picked to be on a team-based reward challenge in Game Changers, she spends most of the challenge on a platform where a hidden advantage item can be found nearby. Not once does she even bother to check the area for it, allowing Sarah to find it and take it after the challenge ended.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Mick uses this general idea in Samoa ep. 13 to explain his concern that Russell will soon turn on him, despite an earlier alliance.

• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In 41, when Danny mentions the possibility of Erika pulling out an idol, Naseer snickers a little. Come the challenge and it turns out he found the idol.
• Flawless Victory:
  • Earl Cole from Fiji, J.T. Thomas from Tocantins, John Cochran from Caramoan, and Jeremy Collins from Cambodia. Each got 100% of the votes-to-win in their Final Tribal Council.
  • Winners with No-Damage Run may also count, specifically; Tina Wesson (Australia), Ethan Zohn (Africa), Brian Heidik (Thailand), Sandra Diaz-Twine (Pearl Islands), Tom Westman (Palau), the aforementioned J.T. Thomas, John Cochran and Jeremy Collins, and Natalie Anderson (San Juan Del Sur).
• Foiler Footage: The first season shot multiple combinations of contestants at Tribal Council, creating a phony boot order.
• Former Teen Rebel: He's barely even out of his teens, but Brandon Hantz describes himself as one in South Pacific. He, shall we say, hasn't quite gotten the hang of it yet, though.
• Four Is Death:
  • Marquesas (season 4) fourth placer Paschal English was eliminated in a very controversial manner due to the purple rock.
  • Amanda Kimmell became the fourth member of the jury in Heroes vs Villains. The catch? This was the first time she was Voted Off the Island in her Survivor career, having been in the Final Tribal Councils of her 2 previous seasons. Even worse: if you total the jury votes she got in her first two tries, the pattern is obvious. (She only got a single vote from China and three from Micronesia). After her boot, she had spent a total of 108 days in her three tries. The numbers are definitely against her that season.
  • Cirie Fields was always connected with this number. She placed fourth in Panama (her original season), was part of a dominant Four-Girl Ensemble in Micronesia and was the fourth person eliminated in Heroes vs Villains. Also look at the numbers in between her three seasons (12, 16, 20). Her playing in Season 34 saw her eliminated at 6th place, but she was eliminated by default after the addition of 4 advantages during her final tribal council.
  • Defied by "Boston Rob" Mariano. He was originally from the fourth season (Marquesas), but he finally won the game in his fourth attempt.
  • Rupert Bonham became the first boot of the original Blood vs. Water, his fourth attempt at the game.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Obvious in many final-four or four-person alliance such as:
  • The final four Tagi alliance in Borneo; Richard is choleric, Kelly is sanguine, Rudy is melancholic and Sue is phlegm.
  • The final four in Thailand; Helen is choleric, Jan is supine, Clay is phlegmatic, and Brian is sanguine.
  • The final four in Pearl Islands; Sandra is phlegm, Lil is melancholic, Jon is choleric and Darrah is sanguine.
  • The final four Chapera alliance in All-Stars; Amber is supine, Boston Rob is choleric, Jenna is melancholic and Rupert is sanguine.
  • Koror's final four in Palau; Tom is choleric, Katie is phlegm, Ian is sanguine, and Jenn was melancholic.
  • The Aitu 4 from Cook Islands; Yul is choleric, Ozzy is phlegm, Becky is supine, and Sundra is sanguine.
  • The Black Widow brigade in Micronesia: Parvati is sanguine, Amanda is phlegmatic I, Cirie is choleric and Natalie is melancholic.
  • Gabon final four; Bob is melancholic, Susie is choleric, Sugar is sanguine and Matty is phlegm.
  • Samoa's final four has Natalie being supine, Russell being choleric, Mick being phlegmatic and Brett being melancholic. Jaison is phlegm when he was part of the Foa Foa alliance with the first three mentioned.
  • Heroes vs Villains final four; Sandra is phlegm, Parvati is sanguine, Russell is choleric and Jerri is melancholic.
  • The four winners who returned in All-Stars (Ethan is sanguine, Richard is choleric, Jenna is melancholic and Tina is supine) and Heroes vs Villains (Sandra is phlegm, Parvati is sanguine, J.T is supine and Tom is choleric).
  • Redemption Island final four; Natalie is supine, Ashley is melancholic, Rob is sanguine, and Phillip is choleric.
  • South Pacific final four; Ozzy is phlegmatic, Albert is choleric, Coach is sanguine, and Sophie is melancholic.
  • The four Fans that reached the merge in Caramoan; Sherri is melancholic, Eddie is phlegmatic, Reynold is sanguine, and Michael is choleric.
• Freudian Slip:
  • Sash in Nicaragua said "if there's a time when I lose trust in [my tribe] — or, I'm sorry, if there's a time when they lose trust in me". And he said this during Tribal Council, too, so Probst made sure it didn't escape anyone's notice.
  • During the reunion show of Redemption Island, Jeff asked Russell a question, accidentally calling him Phillip. He lampshaded it by calling it this.
  • Brian in Thailand was gloating in the penultimate episode about why he wouldn't lose and starts to count down on his fingers the ways he's manipulated everyone in Chuay Ghan into doing his bidding. By the time he's gotten to Clay, Brian inadvertently was Flipping the Bird to the camera, but it seemed like he meant he was doing it to Clay.
  • Chris in Vanuatu was assuring Eliza that he would stay solid in his deal with her but accidentally said that they were fine up until the Final Three (which was the absolute farthest he planned on taking her) as opposed to Final Two (which she believed was the deal). Eliza's reaction was a rare example of not realizing the slip-up and just correcting him.
  • The botched challenge taunt from Angie in Palau, while in the middle of the Ulonging: "We're not going back to immuni- to Tribal Council!"
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Sometimes during seasons featuring returning players, a returning player who did relatively poorly the first time around ends up taking such a level in badass that their reputation skyrockets overnight.
  • Boston Rob during Marquesas was at best a Smug Snake Ensemble Dark Horse with a smart alec mouth, but during All Stars, he ends up leading Chapera to becoming the overwhelmingly more dominant tribe compared to Mogo Mogo and Saboga, to the point where Mogo Mogo becomes pagonged, and the Saboga members who were absorbed into Chapera became his loyal followers. He made it to the Final Two, and was one vote away from winning despite how many bridges he had burned. By the time Heroes vs Villains rolled around, Rob was considered a Survivor legend, which he also used to exploit his tribe members during Redemption Island (the season in which he finally won).
  • Parvati during Cook Islands was seen as merely a flirty girl who was on a losing tribe which itself was overshadowed by Yul and Ozzy on Aitu, but during Micronesia, she managed to use her unassuming reputation to great effect, and built an all-female alliance which took her to the Final Two and eventually a victory. Her reputation grew even more during Heroes vs Villains when she herself managed to overshadow the self-described "best player ever" Russell Hantz in strategy, making several ingenious moves and also overcoming the bias other players had against her. She didn't win this season, but she did come in second, and many believe that she was more deserving overall than either Sandra or Russell.
  • Cochran went from being the little Survivor nerd that everyone picked on in South Pacific to the man running the show in Caramoan.
  • Kelley Wentworth went from being a forgettable pre-merge boot in San Juan Del Sur to being a huge threat in Cambodia. She was the first person to find an idol in a challenge, used that idol to negate the most votes ever with nine, and found another idol in the camp at the risk of being caught. She was impressive in challenges and had she won the final immunity, she would have won the whole thing.
• Fun with Subtitles: On rare occasions, onscreen labels are used for subtle snarking.
  • In Redemption Island, the occupation of Phillip was presented as "Former Federal Agent?" (Though that may be justified if production couldn't get confirmation of classified info on him.) Also in that season, the "participate or eat" challenge not only has the usual "Elapsed Time" caption for endurance challenges, but also "Elapsed Burgers" for those sitting out.
  • In Pearl Islands the Morgan tribe was trailing in a challenge and they somehow figured that stripping down would help them. So now everyone's bare rears are exposed (and blurred out) - and what had been a "Morgan trailing" caption became "Morgan behind".
• The Fundamentalist: Elisabeth on Outback, who would go on to become a conservative commentator on The View. Examples abound in other seasons as well.
• Gambit Roulette: Parlor game of choice of Cirie, whose pet hobbies include organizing 3-2-1 vote splits and orchestrating scenarios to convince people to give away immunity at Tribal Council and then immediately voting them out — as well as other plans that would fail by just one person moving out of line, which they never do because Cirie has everyone convinced she's loyal primarily to them. This finally backfires on her in Heroes vs. Villains when J.T. displays what happens when someone does stray away from her master plan (Tom whipped out the idol).
• Game-Breaker: In-Universe. The Hidden Immunity Idol in Exile Island and Cook Islands. Although Yul used it strategically to sway Jonathan, it otherwise pretty much made him invincible the entire game. You can see why they added a rule stating you can only use it until the final six, and why it had to be used BEFORE votes are counted.
• Game-Breaking Injury: James Clement became a victim of this twice now. The first led to his Non Game Play Elimination in Micronesia, the second had him Mercy Killed by his tribemates in Heroes vs Villains. For the others, see Non Game Play Elimination. They don't always lead to a Non-Gameplay Elimination; and moreso a Suicide by Cop.
  • Palau wherein Jeff twisted (And possibly broke) his ankle because he stepped on a coconut in the middle of the night and was unable to perform well in challenges, so he asked to be voted out.
  • Guatemala. Jim Lynch tore his bicep and asked to be voted out. Months later he was still in a cast.
  • Among the other things, Chet had a piece of coral stuck in his foot.
  • Dehydration in Africa leads to Diane and Jessie being the first two voted out; despite being well-liked.
  • Ben said that after Samoa he was likely to have been voted out sooner or later anyway because he had torn a ligament in his leg.
• Garage Band:
  • After playing Rock Band together in the Ponderosa, Heroes vs. Villains jury members Coach, Courtney, and JT started a band called The Dragonz (named for Coach's nickname). They wrote a few songs, wore custom T-shirts to Tribal Council, and even made a music video.
  • Lex from Africa and All-Stars was part of a band called "Lucky Dog" at one point, which he mentioned during Africa's reunion show. Currently, he's in another one called "The Maids of Honor."
• Gayngster: Richard Hatch thanks to his Magnificent Bastardness.
• The Generation Gap: It's occasionally present when older and younger tribemates don't see eye-to-eye. Some seasons deliberately invoke it by segregating the tribes this way, such as Panama, Nicaragua, and especially Millennials vs. Gen X.
• Genius Ditz: Fabio played this card in Nicaragua.
• Get Out!: Jeff Probst tends to say something like this when someone quits the game.
  • When Naonka and Purple Kelly quit Nicaragua, he said "You wanna go? Go."
  • He was equally unsympathetic to the show's first quitter, Osten Taylor, fourteen seasons earlier in Pearl Islands. Instead of being told "the tribe has spoken," Probst just says "go home."
  • He elevated it to a full scale "The Reason You Suck" Speech when Colton quit in Blood Vs Water.
  • A slightly more subtle version in Game Changers after Jeff Varner outs Zeke during the tribal council. He asks the other tribe members if there's any question about who's going home tonight, and when they all say no, he tells Varner that they don't need to vote. "Just grab your torch" indeed.
• Girl Posse: Several:
  • Jenna, Heidi and Shawna from Amazon.
  • The Yasur tribe from Vanuatu.
  • The Black Widow Brigade from the latter half of Micronesia.
  • Andrea, Natalie and Ashley from Redemption Island.
  • The Salani Five from One World, arguably the most successful female alliance in Survivor history.
  • The Witches Coven from Cambodia, consisting of Kelley Wentworth, Ciera, and Abi-Maria.
  • The Dara Women alliance from Kaoh Rong.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Alicia's claim to fame in Australia:
  Kimmi: Don't wave your finger in my face!
  Alicia: I will always wave my finger in your face!
• Glass Cannon: Boston Rob. He is an extremely formidable player when things are going his way but he is easily dispatched if put on the defensive. See All-Stars and Redemption Island for the former, Marquesas, Heroes vs Villains and 'Winners at War' for the latter.
• The Glomp: Dawson gives an epic one to Jeff Probst at the Philippines reunion show.
• Good Is Dumb: Most of the cast of Samoa, with the major exceptions of Natalie, Brett, and Russell (all of which are not Dumb, and Russell is also not Good). Also the Heroes tribe in Heroes Vs Villains, considering they went along with JT's plan to give Russell an idol.
• Good Is Not Dumb: Natalie and Brett in Samoa; the former used Russell's scheming against him for her own benefit, and the latter managed to outstay the Pagonging of his tribe. Also "Fabio" in Nicaragua, who had a "lovable goof" personality but was reasonably game-savvy and combined the two to get the win.
• Graceful Loser: There are such contestants; even Colby didn't seem to mind about Tina winning. Some people have actually been alright with being voted out by someone they consider a Worthy Opponent.
  • Lil from Pearl Island pretty much picked Sandra to go to the final jury over Johnny Fairplay, knowing she would have likely lost to either and instead wanted to make sure Fairplay didn't win.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: Often, the jury picks the lesser evil of the Final Two/Three. Especially obvious in:
  • Borneo, with Sue Hawk's famous jury speech calling Richard and Kelly a snake and a rat, respectively.
  • Marquesas, where Vecepia won mostly because no one really wanted to admit they were beaten by Neleh.
  • Thailand, where both Brian and Clay weren't very well-liked and were called out for betraying their former alliance members amongst accusations of racism and sexism. Five of the seven votes were explicitly cast as votes against the other finalist, rather than a genuine desire to see one of the two win.
  • All-Stars, where it was Rob and Amber. Rob had backstabbed everyone on the jury up to that point, while Amber had the luck of being in an unbreakable alliance with him and he took her with him. Lex, Alicia and Tom's votes for Amber were not as much votes for her as they were votes against Rob (Shii-Ann meanwhile was the sole exception from that group).
  • Samoa, where the jury was mad at Russell for being a manipulative sociopath who bullied them and treated them like dirt (in a way that put Boston Rob's All-Stars game to shame), and Mick for being, as Shambo put it, "feckless". They voted Natalie, the woman with one of the best social games at that point in the series, even though they considered her a coattail rider.
• Greater Need Than Mine: Parvati cleverly giving up her Idols in Heroes vs. Villains to not just one but two other contestants, Sandra and Jerri, simultaneously, which ensured JT was immediately sent home, and that the Villains would take control. As Parvati had reason to worry that night, it was a bold move.
• Griefer: It's not too common a strategy, given that the point of the game is to get jury votes, but sometimes people do try it:
  • Randy from Gabon was the first notable user of this strategy, both pre-merge and post-merge: first name was "Operation Let Everyone Else Crash And Burn", where he'd make his tribe as miserable as possible to capitalize on any mistakes they made, and the second name was "Operation Strongarm" - he'd make everyone loathe him, pile their votes onto him, then idol whoever he and his alliance wanted, which would have actually worked had Bob not made him a fake immunity idol.
  • Russell in Samoa, who in the premiere secretly emptied everyone's canteens and burned a guy's socks, claiming that it was manipulating his teammates to his advantage. He also tried to stir things up later by making it possible for the tribe's chickens to escape their coop, but they did not flee on that occasion.
    "I plan on weeding out the weak right off the bat; I plan on making it as miserable as possible for everybody. [...] I think if I can control how they feel, I can control how they think."
  • Sandra also burned Russell's hat at the end of Heroes Vs Villains, something he admitted that he was fazed by, but by then Russell's own behavior had made it a Kick The Son Of A Bitch.
  • Sandra also tried to sabotage her tribe towards the end of Pearl Islands when she thought she was going to be voted out. She changed her mind when a plan to save her came into play.
• Group Hug: After Stacey was voted off in South Pacific, Coach suggested the tribe give her one of these. They agreed, but it was swiftly rejected by Stacey, who understandably wasn't in the mood for a group hug from the people who just voted her out of a game to win one million dollars.
• Happily Married:
  • Rob and Amber (who was in the audience with their cute baby in the Heroes Vs Villains Reunion Show); many other Survivors are happily wedded to non-contestants, of course. Some of these spouses show up for the "visit from home" reward challenges.
  • Rob and Amber aren't the only former contestants who are married. Erik and Jaime from China and Alex Bell from The Amazon and Kim Powers from Africa are married to each other as well.
  • Blood vs. Water included married couples among their loved-one pairs: Rupert and Laura Boneham, Brad and Monica Culpepper, and John and Candice Cody.
• Happy Dance: Richard does one when he wins individual immunity in Borneo.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Colby from Australia, Ozzy from Cook Islands and Parvati from Heroes vs Villains dominated the challenges in their respective seasons (especially the first two), but it still not enough for them to win jury votes.
• History Repeats: Kaoh Rong has a few similarities to Cagayan:
  • One of the three tribes is quite dysfunctional and gets reduced to three members swap, broken up by them winning one immunity. (In fact, the one immunity they won was actually in the same cycle for the one immunity that the brains won in Cagayan)
  • There is a Non-Gameplay Elimination pre-merge. (Albeit under far different circumstances)
  • Merge at eleven, the swapped tribes are 6-5. From the original tribes, it is also a 4-4-3 split.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: Sandra from Pearl Islands and Randy from Gabon used this strategy to advantage - when you're mean but completely honest with your tribemates, they all know exactly where you stand and know you'll never lie to them. Unfortunately, this didn't work out so well for Phillip in Redemption Island, who actually unveiled his alliance at the first Tribal Council and forced him to jump alliances.
• Honor Before Reason: Subverted. A lot of contestants talk a big game about how they want to play with honor, but then they vote either according to reason or against whoever annoys them. Coach is one of the biggest examples of this, talking about integrity and warrior's honor incessantly but then not putting it too far ahead of reason.
  • However, a more conventional example of this trope is the finales for The Australian Outback and Pearl Islands, where Colby and Lillian took someone to the finals that they knew had a large chance of winning the jury rather than the person they chose to eliminate. Subsequently, Tina and Sandra won their seasons.
  • Many of the players in the earliest seasons simply refused to make alliances because they either thought (a) The game element is boring to them (Greg from Borneo), (b) Alliances go against their morals (Most of the Pagong tribe from Borneo, several contestants from Australian Outback, etc), or (c) They are trying to play the game in a way that avoids alliance making (Dr. Sean and Gervase from Borneo, Gabriel from Marquesas, etc). Most of these attitudes have died out by today, but they still exist in certain seasons.
  • Brandon Hantz was one of the biggest followers of this in South Pacific, often seeming to abandon reason entirely in his attempts to live righteously. It probably wasn't any help to him that sharing a tribe with Coach encouraged this mindset. He arguably kept the mindset in Caramoan, he just had a radically different definition of "honor" then.
• Hope Spot: Happens frequently in most seasons. Justified in that most people don't want to know who's going home, lest they play an idol, or form a counter-alliance.
• Hotter and Sexier: Amazon. The previous season, Thailand, had a cast that skewed older and more conservative and it failed to connect with audiences. Amazon not only had a much younger and prettier cast, including the series' first swimsuit model, it also divided the tribes by gender. This not only led to scenes like the youngest women bathing each other, it also generated a lot of sexual tension as both tribes fixated on sex as much as they did food. It also helps that in Thailand the younger players were voted out early, while in Amazon the younger players made it the deepest into the game.
• Hypocrite: in-game, people often criticize others for lying, making deals, or backstabbing them...when they themselves would do the same to get in their shoes.
  • San Juan del Sur is easily a big example - they yell at Julie for taking trail mix in despite praising her for thinking to take some Trail Mix back from the merge feast.
• Iconic Outfit: Notable examples are Rupert's tie-dye shirts, Boston Rob's Red Sox cap, Russell's hat, among others. It could be said that Richard's memetic outfit is his birthday suit.
• I Broke a Nail: Parvati split a nail with a machete in Cook Islands.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!:
  • Any contestant that was removed for injuries, especially ones that pretty much had everything in place to make it to the end: Jonathan Penner in Fans vs. Favourites, Michael Skupin in Australian Outback, and Russell Swan in Samoa. These three were later brought back in Philippines for exactly this reason.
  • Even some people who were voted out early: Dolly from Vanuatu, Yau-Man and Tracy from Fans vs. Favourites, Marisa and Betsy from Samoa. Jolanda from Palau won the first individual immunity challenge in which she got to pick her tribe, voted out first for being bossy; Other members of Ulong said she really could have helped them because, "She was in the Olympics, man!" Also Wanda and Jonathan from that season, who were voted out before even being put on a tribe.
• Idiot Ball: Sometimes, players will make boneheaded moves or plans with little or no reasoning behind them for extended periods of time:
  • Sash grabbed it twice in Nicaragua: first when he chose to vote out Kelly B even though Marty was clearly the bigger threat, and then again at the end, when he was duped by Fabio into blindsiding Jane, and then proceeded to tell her right to her face that she was the next to go. (Of course, Chase had it too in that case.)
  • Lex giving up a 6-4 lead for his tribe and almost getting voted out during the merge in a close vote due to his rampant paranoia. And the only reason he was saved was that Brandon was carrying an even bigger idiot ball than him.
  • Tom in All-Stars just barely touched the idiot ball when he called himself the swing vote between the Rob-Amber alliance and the Rupert-Jenna alliance. Normally not a bad thing to say to the Confession Cam, but instead, he did it right to Rob's face. At the Final Five. That was all an already wary Rob needed to turn the vote against Tom and send him packing.
  • The Coconut Chop in Marquesas where the Rotu Four all worked together and ended up showing up their intended boot order, causing the other five to rally together and vote them all out.
  • Carter asks Penner who they should vote for at Tribal Council... "Katie or Penner?" It's a shock that the blindside of Penner didn't work out.
  • In Palau, Tom tells Ian that if one of them wins the reward they need to NOT pick the other to go with them so they can divide the girls and prevent them from forming a majority alliance. No problem, Ian promised to take Katie anyway. Ian wins and takes... Tom? Poor Tom had to fake excitement.
  • Dan reads a clue to the Hidden Immunity Idol at Exile Island in Gabon that says "Across the Lake there is a Sandy Crater" and that the Idol is in it. His genius analysis is "maybe it's in the lake". He then checks a bush. Dan the attorney cannot figure out this clue, but Sugar the pin-up model finds it easily.
  • James getting voted out of China with two Immunity Idols. It gets brought up a lot but what isn't mention is that he could only use them for the next three Tribal Councils anyway.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: At one point in Panama, Shane tells Courtney that if she backstabs him he will drive to her "shitty apartment" in LA and kill her, coming off deadly serious the entire time. What does Courtney object to first and foremost in that scenario? The assertion that her apartment is shitty.
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: In the first episode of South Pacific, Cochran mentions that he's afraid that he might be voted out before the girls. With him being a fan who's studied the game, this may not have been intended to be sexist; he may just be referring to the fact that women tend to get targetted first.
  • John Rocker in San Juan Del Sur can't stand that he lost a challenge to his girlfriend Julie for this reason
• Indy Ploy: The gameplay style of Vecepia and Sandra, winners of both their respective seasons, who simply plays the game "one day at a time," making it easier for them to adapt to the other strategies of players around them.
• Informed Ability: Stephenie Lagrossa is regularly touted as one of the physically strongest and most useful women ever to play Survivor, but she has only ever won one challenge on her own. On all three of her Survivor stints, she was part of the (initially) lesser tribe, first with Ulong on Palau, following through one season later with Yaxha on Guatemala before the tribal mix up (which some people argue was used to save Stephenie), and finally with the Heroes tribe in Heroes vs. Villains.
  • Thanks to being Out of Focus in Samoa, Kelly. Apparently, Kelly was such a huge threat to Foa Foa that they needed to take her out first after Erik, but thanks to a blatantly severe lack of screentime, it's impossible to tell why. (Although the reason why she was edited poorly was because of the way she was taken out of the game; they didn't want the audience to be too disappointed with her elimination so they made her as much of a non-entity as they could.)
  • Crystal Cox in Gabon. A former Olympic relay runner that fails at every single challenge, even the first one which is a race where she gets beat by a 60-year-old woman.
  • Russell Hantz. The producers and Jeff Probst tout him as a dangerous player. Meanwhile, he makes flashy moves that alienate his opponents, bosses people around and generally rubs them the wrong way, while all the while ignoring his alliance members who do a ten-times better job at making relationships with people. The only reason he gets as far as he does is that a savvier player brings him along as a goat.
• Informed Flaw: Manipulative Editing can often make this happen, or just the tribes being an Unreliable Narrator.
  • In South Pacific, the Upolus regularly consider Edna for elimination because she's "sneaky", "devious", and a physical liability, yet the audience is shown nothing of her deviousness and sneakiness, and every challenge the Upolus won she took part in.
  • Christina in One World is supposedly lazy, yet she's regularly shown working around the camp. She's also apparently annoying but is nothing compared to Tarzan, Alicia, or Colton.
  • Nick Brown was portrayed as a "Lazy Bum" in Australia, however, if you ask the rest of the people he played with, they will tell you that he was not in fact a lazy bum.
  • Anthony in Fiji was apparently dislikable and shifty, yet almost all the time during the fights between him and Rocky, it's not that hard to see Rocky as the aggressor.
• Interface Spoiler: The voting for Cambodia's cast was determined by online vote, and showed Carolyn and Mike from the then-airing Worlds Apart on the ballot, but not several other people who were still in the game at the time. This resulted in many viewers speculating that the winner was not them, as the theme of Cambodia was a second chance. Probst revealed that if Mike or Carolyn won they would ergo be ineligible. At the same time, this also resulted in many viewers thinking that those two did win just by looking at the candidates, expecting that if one of them won they would be ineligible. However, this arguably also wound up making Carolyn screwed, as some viewers pointed out on blogs that voting for Mike or Carolyn would be a "Waste", as the edit did not paint an obvious picture to either of them being the winner. Subverted when Probst revealed at the Cambodia cast announcement that Mike apparently did receive enough votes to get on the cast if he hadn't won while Carolyn missed the cut.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Most of the Cool Old Guys / Ladies and Youngsters can chill out and have fun with one another.
  • Rudy Boesch to anyone he plays the game with.
  • Tom Westman is known for his friendship with a lot of younger players in Palau.
  • Gabon has Bob Crowley and Sugar, as well as Susie Smith and Matty Whitmore.
  • Butch and Matthew were both social outcasts with their tribe during the merge in Amazon, and bonded because of this (as well as both being avid fishermen as well as being charter members of the all-male Tambaqui tribe).
  • Elisabeth (before she became Hasselbeck) Filarski and Rodger Bingham in Australian Outback, with a very touching but purely platonic relationship that lasted their entire game.
  • Neleh Dennis and Paschal English from Marquesas is another prominent example, and maybe one of the most unbreakable alliances in Survivor history.
  • Chase and Jane, as well as Marty and Fabio from Nicaragua.
• Invincible Hero/Invincible Villain: When one alliance Pagongs another, all the suspense drains out of Tribal Council unless the larger alliance falls to infighting. If someone controls the game - such as Rob in Redemption Island or Kim in One World - then they become boring to watch, and if someone keeps losing control of the game, then it becomes more interesting...even though they're probably grinding their teeth.
• Ironic Echo Cut:
  • South Pacific gives us this exchange:
    Cochran: [Referring to the upcoming duel] I have a chance, right?
    Ozzy: Of course you have a chance. Everyone has a chance. [Cut to the Confession Cam] He doesn't have a chance...
  • Russell Swan in Philippines is shown interviewing to the camera about trying to find the Hidden Immunity Idol to save himself, even going as far to say that more than likely the camera will show him searching right around where the Idol was hidden and missing it. We cut back to island time, as Malcolm searches right around where the idol is hidden, and even a glint is added to rub in the irony.
• Irony: In Philippines, the winner of the season comes from Matsing, one of the worst tribes in the history of the series.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Some of those who find Hidden Immunity Idols want to encourage others to try to vote against them. (They may talk of being ready to leave, irritate tribemates, or otherwise draw drama and disfavor. Having allies reinforce these perceptions can help.) If the finders can attract enough soon-to-be-worthless votes in this way, the Idol holder's partner(s) can complete the minority that ends up controlling the vote. Amanda did this brilliantly in Micronesia and didn't even have to lie to keep her plan with Parvati a secret (Amanda didn't find the idol in exile - because it was hidden at camp).
• Island Help Message: Some of the challenges have involved building these.
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time:
  • Heroes Vs. Villains: Parvati and Danielle decided it would be just peachy to keep an immunity idol hidden from Russell. You really don't want to infuriate your alliance partner, particularly if your alliance is firmly in the driver's seat.
  • Lex in All-Stars decided that it would be a great idea to vote off loyal tribemate Jerri and keep Amber around to fulfill a deal Boston Rob offered him. Then the merge hits, and Lex realizes that Rob has a rather nasty case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: A lot of contestants become this on returnee seasons, but possibly the worst case was Ethan on All-Stars, who went from the lovable Africa winner to taking on this after he had to constantly play defense thanks to the "winners must go" attitude.
• Jaded Washout: Randy Bailey from Gabon and arguably Frank Garrison from Africa.
• Just Eat Gilligan: There are numerous seasons where the audience is saying "Come on! VOTE OUT THIS GUY!" at the TV.
  • Vanuatu: Vote out Chris, worry about your alliance later!
  • Samoa and Heroes Vs Villains: You know Russell is trouble! Dump him! (Thankfully, the Redemption Island cast took notes and did "eat" him, but...)
  • Redemption Island: Vote out Rob, he's playing all of you!
  • South Pacific: Vote out Coach, he's doing the same thing Rob did! Oh wait a second...
  • One World: Vote out Kim, she's the most dominant player in the season!
• Kansas City Shuffle: Believe it or not, all three parts of this are played perfectly during the Cagayan merge vote:
  • 1) Knowing that it's going to come down to five people on the new Solana vs. six people on the new Aparri, Tony and LJ (the two most typical merge vote-offs) both play their hidden immunity idol for each other, attempting to cancelling out the votes from Aparri so that whoever they choose will go home. However...
  • 2) This doesn't work because the Aparri alliance correctly predicts that these two might have idols to shuffle between them, and Take a Third Option by voting for Jefra, who nobody would think to pass an idol along to save, meaning that Tony and LJ both got no votes and have wasted their idols. Except...
  • 3) The Solana alliance has already flipped Kass before the vote by letting her decide who goes home, meaning that while Jefra still receives the Aparri votes, the Solana tribe plus Kass successfully manages to vote off Sarah, who NOBODY thought was in danger of going home.
• Kawaiiko: Arguably, Courtney Yates from China and Jessica "Sugar" Kiper from Gabon. Good thing, we got to see them against each other in Heroes vs. Villains.
• Kick the Dog: There are a lot of Jerk Asses on this show, but if you really want viewers to hate you, either tell fake sob stories for sympathy and brag about it in confessional (like Johnny Fairplay and Russell) or make racist comments, sexist (misogynist or misandrist), or otherwise politically incorrect (such as NaOnka's rants against Kelly B for being an amputee). Other nearly unforgivable sins include betraying someone directly after they went out of their way to save you or your ally (Boston Rob to Lex), hiding food from people not in your alliance (Ami to all the men in Vanuatu), and not giving up your reward for supplies even after you announced your intention to quit (NaOnka).
  • "Dreamz" forever doomed himself into being The Worst Guy Ever in his season. Yau-Man, an Badass Adorable grandpa and fan favorite, had won an SUV in a reward challenge. Seeing no possible use for it (Yau-Man had a car and didn't want an SUV), he gave it to Dreamz in exchange for a promise that, if Dreamz won that night's immunity challenge, Dreamz would give the immunity to Yau-Man. Dreamz won immunity... and kept it. Yau-Man was voted out.
  • In the penultimate episode of Caramoan, Brenda was put into an impossible situation (see Diabolus ex Machina above) and tried her hardest to make things up to Dawn, even easing up during the challenge so Dawn could take immunity. And Dawn still helped vote her out that night.
  • In the first challenge of Heroes vs Villains, the villains go on a dog-kicking spree, with Courtney yelling "Break her shoulder!" to her team, Parvati dislocating Stephenie's shoulder, Russel brutally twisting Tom's leg, and Sandra deliberately unhooking Sugar's top.
• Kid Hero: Spencer Duhm from Tocantins, Natalie Tenerelli from Redemption Island and Brandon Hantz from South Pacific were all 19 years old at the time of filming. Will Wahl from Millenials vs Gen X took this even further, being 18 at the time of filming, and the first-ever castaway to play the game while still in high school.
• The Klutz: Boo in Fiji was infamous for stumbling a lot during his season. Less funny when he tore his ACL, otherwise being a threat to comp out and win the season.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Colby during Heroes vs Villains. Frank Garrison during Africa could be seen as this.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The bane of every outright deceitful and manipulative player once they reach the Final Tribal and the people they forced out have the power.
  • In Pearl Islands, Jonny Fairplay is beaten in the final immunity challenge by the one contestant he'd been using as a verbal punching bag all season, Lillian, and promptly voted out.
  • In Heroes Vs Villains, JT's boneheaded plan to give Russell an immunity idol backfired and got him voted out only one episode later. And earlier, Tyson screwing up his alliance's plan got him voted out immediately.
  • Alliances have also suffered this - notably:
    • The Rotu Four in Marquesas made their alliance and intended boot order so blatantly obvious during a challenge that the other players rallied and voted them all out, one after the other.
    • The Horsemen in Fiji thought they had the game in the bag and wanted to punish Cassandra for sending Mookie to exile island, but the flighty Dreamz and a blindside by the other players caused the downfall of that alliance and Edgardo, Mookie and Alex got voted out one after the other.
    • Ami's posse in Vanuatu decided to vote Eliza out instead of obvious target Chris which caused Eliza to ally with Chris and the two other women Ami treated the most contemptuously to vote them out one by one.
• Lazy Bum: There's always one or two people a season who refuse to help out around camp:
  • Aras almost lost Panama because some of the jury thought he was one.
  • Gervase from Borneo is the Ur-Example.
  • Subverted when after Nick Brown was edited as being lazy during one episode of Australian Outback, almost the whole cast came to his defense that he was not, in fact, lazy.
• Living Lie Detector: The claim to fame of Sandra, who's scoffed through lies by designated villains Jon, Burton, and Russell that weren't sussed out by the other contestants until after the season aired. Her capacity to play along with these lies before using them against her opponents often leads to a game of Xanatos Speed Chess.
• The Load: Chet in Micronesia. During an obstacle course challenge where he was tied to Joel, Joel got so frustrated he just dragged Chet around, not caring that he was seriously injuring him. And if Chet had been a bit less Load-ish later on and not asked to be voted off, Tracy might have been able to alter the whole course of the game.
  • Dan in Nicaragua, Natalie, Ashley, and Andrea in Redemption Island. Ashley is a bit of a subversion, though, as she proceeds to get dangerous in challenges late in the season.
• Long Speech Tea Time: A couple of people's rambling has been met with eye-rolling. First Phillip in Redemption Island (the editors even made a fake Time Passes Montage during one of his speeches) and then Semhar with her poetry in South Pacific.
• Loophole Abuse: There are some things that players have gotten away with:
  • Looking at other peoples' boards during certain puzzle challenges.
  • Bribing other contestants.
  • During Cook Islands, a couple of people accidentally wandered into the other tribe's camp.
  • Luxury items. Colby used his Texas flag as a tarp in Australia. Peter from Marquesas had brought cologne, intending to use it as an accelerant for fire-making. Evidently, someone had once smuggled in a granola bar to the game, and another time, someone broke binoculars and used them to start a fire. There have been Obvious Rule Patches put in afterward.
  • Using a pair of eyeglasses to start a fire.
  • Giving the other tribe your immunity idol so you can vote one of your own out! (In One World)
  • Stealing the other tribe's supplies during a "Get the supplies as fast as you can"-part. (Also One World)
  • Taking the other tribe's fire using a stick. (One World again)
  • You can't agree to split the million-dollar prize, but you can marry the winner. (All-Stars) Not that CBS minded.
• Love at First Sight:
  • In Cook Islands, Billy misinterpreted Candice's "we love you" (which she said to cheer him up since he knew his tribe intended to vote him out) like this.
  • Boston Rob to Amber. As the guy said: "Because she's beautiful, and any idiot can see that!"
• Love Triangle:
  • Colby, Jerri and Danielle according to Russell.

• Lucky Seven:
  • After winning the seventh season (Pearl Islands), Sandra became the first two-time winner by winning Heroes vs Villains seven years later.
  • J.T. won Tocantins with a 7-0 jury vote.
• Manly Tears: Even the manliest Survivors can break down during the "Letters/Visits from Home" challenges. Notably, there's Shane in Panama: Terry won that season's "visit from home" reward challenge, and was forced to decide which relatives would get some quality time with their respective Survivors. He immediately chose himself and his wife Trish for the overnight resort stay, of course, and Cirie's husband "HB" would go back to camp with her. Shane was already misting up when his son Boston walked in for the cameras, but upon Terry inviting them to come along, Shane promptly broke down tears-and-parental-hugs style. He may have been a bit abrasive and uncaring to the other players, but his fathering is what gets him to care.
• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Invoked in seasons where tribes are gender-segregated: Amazon, Vanuatu, and One World.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The Manono tribe in One World. Considering how dysfunctional it became and that it started as the men's tribe, "Man, o no" seems appropriate.
  • The Matsing ("monkey") tribe in Philippines. Also, Dangrayne. Penner joked on Twitter that he tried to get the tribe named "Fucking rain" but the producers wouldn't allow it.
  • One of the tribes in San Juan Del Sur (Hunahpu) is named after one of the Hero Twins of the Mayan Mythology. The season's Sole Survivor came from this tribe, and her twin sister was the season's first boot.
• Memory Match Mini-Game: Occasionally, one of the challenges will have contestants unveil covered items, with the goal of finding matching pairs. In Samoa, tribes could opt to keep whichever items they matched should they win reward, at the cost of having it count towards their score.
• Monty Hall Problem: Referenced during the Caramoan auction, when Jeff offered Reynold the chance to swap his mystery item for one of two other mystery items. Cochran called the situation by this name and advised him to switch, though technically it wasn't since there was no guarantee there was only one "good" item, and Jeff hadn't eliminated a bad one. (For the record, Reynold stuck with his original item, dodging a rotten coconut but getting only a slice of pizza instead of a whole one.)
  • In Season 41, the Do or Die challenge results in the elimination of any player who does not find the correct option. Interestingly enough, the player in question plays it completely wrong but still wins.
• Mood Whiplash: Island of the Idols was going along, when out of nowhere, the merge episode suddenly dealt with a sexual harassment charge that ended with the victim voted out and the perpetrators off scot-free. And then it whiplashed back to business as usual the following weeks, with no mention of the harassment at all. And then it whiplashed again just before the finale; Tribal Council was done and the episode was over when Jeff suddenly visited the tribe the next morning and told them that the harasser had gotten thrown out of the game — a text screen was displayed saying that he tried something with a crew member, but if you missed the merge a few weeks prior you wouldn't have a clue what that "something" was.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: The first clue to any hidden immunity idol is typically very cryptic to the point of potentially meaning anything. The Redemption Island clues have been commented on as particularly useless, amounting to "it's around your camp somewhere."
• Mundane Made Awesome: The earlier seasons, especially with the "This Is The Adventure Of A Lifetime" and "Tribal Council Is Scary/ Tribal Council Is Sacred" mantras repeatedly being emphasized every other episode.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Any time a player returns for a second season unless they won the first time. Especially emphasized in Philippines, as the returnees didn't get to play out their previous seasons due to medical evacuations, and the eponymous Second Chances.
  • Played straight with Australian Outback and Cook Islands sixth placers Amber Brkich and Parvati Shallow, three-time loser Rob Mariano, South Pacific eighth placer John Cochran, two-time loser Tyson Apostol, and San Juan Del Sur tenth placer Jeremy Collins by respectively winning All-Stars, Micronesia, Redemption Island, Caramoan, Blood vs. Water, and Cambodia.

Season-Specific Tropes N-Z

• Naked People Are Funny: Rich Hatch's other major shtick, besides being the show's first Manipulative Bastard.
• The Napoleon: Sandra, Jonny Fairplay and Russell may be small in stature, but they're people you don't wanna mess with. Clay from Thailand was a 5'5 Manipulative Bastard who almost beat the Showy Invincible Player of that season.
• Near-Villain Victory: Happens whenever the season's villain makes the finale with a good shot at swaying the jury. The most extreme example of this is Johnny Fairplay, who gets to the Final Three of Pearl Islands where his only real opponent is the first to fall out of the last Immunity Challenge, ensuring that he or his Final Two partner will win the last challenge and the choice of who to send home. Suddenly his partner decides not to take him to the Final Two and reveals that she is good enough at squats to win an Immunity Challenge for the first time all game, leading to his third-place finish.
• New Meat: The two Fans vs. Favorites seasons as well as Blood vs. Water featured a tribe of new contestants competing against a tribe of returning/seasoned ones.
• The Nicknamer: Coach. He calls J.T "The Warrior" (even writing it before his name when he voted for him to win during the Tocantins finale) and Stephen "The Wizard". He even calls himself "The Dragon Slayer"! Also, Phillip; after creating Stealth 'R' Us, he gives each member a codename, ranging from cool to just plain ridiculous.
• Nipple and Dimed:
  • Some fairly strenuous physical competition takes place among women dressed in bikini tops or skimpy shirts. On occasion breasts and nipples have been exposed. As this is American TV, such wardrobe malfunctions are visually bleeped out by blurring or pixelating the screen. This is even done on versions sold to Europe, much to the perplexity of local viewers used to different standards. Especially when the women's butts are also visually bleeped out, despite the fact they are clearly wearing bikini bottoms. This appears to be prudery taken to a ridiculous extreme.
  • It is also noticeable that during a game involving women contestants bobbing for items in a tub full of gloopy brown mud, several bikini tops were dislodged exposing breasts and nipples. But since the women involved were by then slathered from head to waist in a coating of mud, the bared breasts were not visually bleeped out and left in the full uncensored camera view.
• No-Damage Run: So far, thirteen people have done this. Ten of them have made it in the end, and eight ^note technically ten, as both Mike Holloway and Jeremy Collins received votes that were negated by hidden idols before their win of them have won the game.
• No Fourth Wall: Generally defied; despite Survivor being a program with real-life contestants stranded in harsh real-life conditions, many of the earlier seasons try to make it a point of editing out any references to past seasons of Survivor, or even the fact that they are being filmed for TV.
  • The most obvious exception to this rule happens to be from the very first season, Borneo. Not only are there frequent references to the fact that the show they are participating in will soon be seen by millions of TV audience members, but the players also don't even know most of the terminology for the show's set pieces. The Tribal Council is sometimes interchangeably called both the "Island Council" and the "Immunity Council", and BB calls the Immunity Challenge that his tribe is about to attend the "Indemnity" Challenge, although in context calling the challenge an "Indemnity Challenge" would actually make just as much sense. In a later episode, Kelly says that "We're not evil, we just play bad people on TV!"; and in the episode before that, Colleen makes fun of the upcoming trivia-based reward challenge by saying that they already are on a game show.
  • The trope is sometimes played straight in later seasons, as superfans are generally allowed to make references to prior seasons, to establish their character as such.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Supposedly, Jonny Fairplay did something during the Vanuatu reunion that lowered Jeff Probst's opinion of him even further. This isn't continuously referenced on the show, but Jeff has mentioned that he was disgusted by Fairplay inside and outside the game and cited that as a reason.
  • Jake's adventure stories (which he claimed were true, much like Coach many seasons later) during Episode 9 of Thailand apparently involve him fighting off men with alligators and doing something nefarious in the middle of an airport (according to Clay and Ted), but we never got to hear exactly what he said.
  • The incident that got Dan ejected from Island of the Idols occured with a crew member and was not filmed, and the details were not shared with the audience.
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: Russell in every season he's been in has gloated to the point of absurdity before ultimately losing.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Natalie in Samoa noticed that strong, aggressive women got booted, so she made herself a hanger-on to Russell (and if you're not convinced about the "Obfuscating" part, watch her confessional in episode 4 after the arrangement was made). She won.
  • Vecepia Towery did the same thing seven years earlier in Marquesas and also won.
  • Fabio from Nicaragua also did this, to the point where the audience figured out what he was doing long before the other contestants. It's almost like he realized that it normally works on this show. Then again, that seems to be his real personality for the most part anyway.
  • Phillip Sheppard claimed near the end of Redemption Island that he purposely became the villain, knowing that it would both take the heat off Boston Rob and convince the man that he was someone to be going up at the end. Not everyone is convinced that his weirdness was all an act, however.
• Odd Friendship: A staple when a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits share a tribe for an extended amount of time.
  • The earliest example was in Borneo: Machiavellian gay nudist Rich Hatch and gruff homophobic Navy SEAL Rudy Boesch.
  • Another prominent one from China: James, the blunt and aggressive gravedigger and Todd, the scrawny, flamboyantly gay manipulator.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Tom's famous shark-hunt in Palau.
  • Pagong all voting for Jeff Probst at their first Tribal Council in Borneo, and Greg's rebelliousness against the producers in general.
• Outliving One's Offspring: During San Juan Del Sur, the second Blood vs. Water season, all the children in the children-parent pair were eliminated before their parents. This is played within the original Blood vs. Water with the Tina and Katie (mother/daughter) pair. Tina was technically eliminated before Katie, but she kept on winning at Redemption Island, defeating Katie in the process and thus came Back from the Dead before being eliminated again to be the last jury member. Played tragically straight, however, with her son (and Katie's brother) dying in an accident at the time the season was still airing.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Becky during the Cook Islands finale. She was overlooked because the jury only considered the strategic and social mastery of Yul and the physical prowess of Ozzy. It also didn't help that Becky and Sundra's tie-breaking challenge during Tribal Council (basically building fire that's huge enough to snap a piece of string) took an embarrassingly long time to finish, making her look even more expendable. Because the tie-breaker took too long to complete properly (over an hour), the game's producers gave the ladies matches instead of the usual flint and knife, so they could hurry up and finish, and even then, they took quite a while to end the match (with Sundra actually running out of matches).
• Pirate: The theme of Pearl Islands
  • Ghost Pirate: The idea behind that season's Outcast tribe, being the departed coming back to haunt those who remain.
• The Place: Many of the earlier seasons were given this form of subtitle. It has since dropped off due to the series starting to use the same location every year.
• Planet of Steves: Samoa and Heroes vs. Villains were together a Planet of Russells. Samoa had Russell Swan, who was medevacked from the game, and the infamous Russell Hantz, who returned in H vs. V. Ponderosa's chef in H vs. V was also named Russell (the jury dubbed him "Good Russell"). Finally, the series' composer, who performs at reunion shows, is Russell "Russ" Landau.

• Poor, Predictable Rock: Three out of three times now, Russell's strategy was always "Ally with some pretty little bimbo that I can manipulate." Even though it didn't work the first two times - both of those girls were at least as savvy as he was, and it actively backfired when they manipulated him and one of them even won! The third time around, he managed to pick a properly empty-headed pretty girl and an ignorant girl who was almost as bad at the social game as he was. Unfortunately for him, the other members of his tribe knew what he was up to from the start and kicked him out early - the tribe even lampshaded in the first or second episode that he was probably collecting a harem as they spoke. And since the girls actually were just lackeys this time, they were no help in convincing the others to keep him around.
• Prisoner's Dilemma: Season 41 features these as a regular mechanic, as each episode takes a handful of players from different tribes and tells them to each make a decision which will be affected by the other players' choices. For instance, the first two episodes had "Protect Your Vote" (nothing happens, good or bad) versus "Risk Your Vote" (get an extra Tribal Council vote for later use if someone else chose to Protect, but if all players Risk then they lose their votes in their next Council(s) instead).
• Prophecy Twist:
  • A self-made one at that! At the beginning of Samoa, Russell tells the audience: "I'm going to show America how easy it is to win Survivor." And indeed he did. By treating the rest of his tribe like crap, destroying their belongings, bullying and threatening everyone, and blithely ignoring the social skills of his would-be goat, Russell did indeed demonstrate how easy it was for Natalie to win Survivor. He had to beat sixteen people - she only had to beat one.
  • And then Russell goes and does the same thing in the very next season, Heroes vs. Villains! At the time of filming, Samoa's results had not been announced and Russell was under the impression that he had won. He played the same game he had the previous season with the same results: he took Sandra to the finals expecting that he would easily win the vote against her, only for her to win.
• Public Secret Message: Season 41 contains an immunity idol with a twist, in that it's shared among all three tribes and can't be used until all three are found, and each holder must alert the others by saying a code phrase in front of the tribes during a challenge. The secret phrases are: "I truly believe that butterflies are just dead relatives saying hi", "I'm as confused as a goat on AstroTurf", and "I didn't realize this until now... broccoli is just a bunch of small trees."
• Pyromaniac:
  • Butch Lockley on the Amazon inadvertently became one during the latter days of his season, with hilarious if tragic results.
  • Happens again in Nicaragua, when the tribe tries to shelter their fire from the elements... with materials that happen to be flammable.
• Ratings Stunt: Redemption Island, setting up a season to give Rob or Russell the wins that many claimed they deserved, casting a vast vast majority of people who had never seen the show before or had only seen Boston Rob and Russell's seasons, cutting half of these people from the show, and tailoring the challenges to Boston Rob's strengths. South Pacific was also the same with Coach and Ozzy but has been received better, mostly because they didn't forget they actually cast eighteen people and not just four this time.
• Red Baron: Some contestants are given these, namely, Richard Hatch (The King, The Emperor), Jerri Manthey (The Black Widow, The Wicked Witch), Sandra Diaz-Twine (The Queen, The Empress), Rupert Boneham (The Pirate), Cirie Fields (The Puppet Master), Benjamin "Coach" Wade (The Dragon Slayer), Earl Cole (The Godfather). Coach has since passed the "Dragon Slayer" title onto Sophie after she beat Ozzy at the final Immunity Challenge; she went on to then win the million.

• Religious Bruiser: Tyson Apostol from Tocantins is a Mormon. Brett Clouser from Samoa is a prayer warrior. Matt spent almost all of Redemption Island on Redemption Island, staying there by going on a challenge streak and talking about God in most of his confessionals.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Arguably in Africa after the tribal swap when Frank and Teresa voted out Silas.
  • Also from Africa: Lex alienating himself and risking elimination to vote out someone he feels wronged him.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: in Nicaragua, Fabio is upset with Sash after he goes back on his word to take him along on the family reward challenge. When Sash returns, Fabio asks him how it was. When Sash tells him it was great, Fabio responds by telling him that he knew it was great; he was just calling him out with a rhetorical question.
• Rule of Funny: There was absolutely no strategy behind Sugar convincing Bob to give Randy a fake immunity idol. Either way, he was going home, but she knew it would be hilarious to have him humiliate himself on the way out. And it was.
• Running Gag:
  • Eric's confessionals always being in a tree.
  • Phillip's job listed as "Former Federal Agent?" (As of Season 41, it still appears this way in his profile on the CBS official website, and he appeared in Season 22)
  • Boo's increasingly Amusing Injuries (until the end when it wasn't played for laughs).
    • And everyone falling in Fiji.
  • Skupin in Philippines finding new and original ways to hurt himself. The editors didn't even feed this, it happened!
• Sanity Slippage: The game has a pretty significant, though thankfully temporary, effect on the players. It's common for players to compulsively hoard food, experience night terrors and suffer from intense and persistent feelings of paranoia, claustrophobia and alienation for weeks after they get home.
• Scenery Porn: Especially in the seasons from Gabon onward, which were shot in HD.

• Sdrawkcab Name: The merged tribe of Gabon was named "Nobag," and its counterpart in Caramoan was "Enil Edam" after Malcolm's mother.
• Second Place Is for Losers:
  • See Samoa, where Russell was in tears when he didn't get first. And then he offered to buy the title from the winner. And when he lost first place again in Heroes Vs Villains, he claimed the rules were flawed because he wasn't winning.
  • Since seasons are usually filmed two back to back before either airs, both Russell Hantz and Amanda Kimmell ended up in a situation where they played two seasons in a row and got to the finals both times without knowing if they won their first season. The result was both of them losing both seasons. This could be why Russell cried at the Samoa finale, he just found out he likely lost both seasons when he was expecting to get Two Million-Dollar checks.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Most of the castaways' day-to-day conversations are left on the cutting room floor due to time constraints, but a few of these make it through.
  • Panama had a lot of these. Early on Shane randomly yelled at his tribe to not take a specific rock to sit down on as it was his "thinking seat". In another episode, Bobby and the rest of his Casaya tribe banter on whether the outhouse that they just won should be used as an actual outhouse, or a place to store wood. In a later episode, Shane and Courtney have another one of their big fights, this time over whether or not Courtney lives in a "shitty" apartment. One episode later, Terry and Aras have an argument over whether or not one's wife is more important to a loved one than one's mother or father.
  • Africa had a moment where Frank's tribemates tried to explain to him what a "brunch" is.
• Self-Deprecation: In Fiji, they used the "What do you think of your fellow castaways?" challenge again. When Jeff asked who the smelliest person in the tribe was, most people wrote "Dreamz", and Dreamz even wrote his own name down.
• Self-Proclaimed Liar: Boston Rob was a master at this.
• Sequel Escalation: The locations for the first three seasons became progressively harder for the contestants to live in. During Borneo, the contestants were merely very uncomfortable. During Australian Outback, Elisabeth almost died of starvation, Barramundi's camp was completely flooded out, and early on there were wildfires near Ogakor's campsite. During Africa, which had the most oppressive heat of any season by far, several contestants contracted various illnesses which took them months or even years to recover from, not to mention the extreme scarcity of water and the very likely chance that one of the players could have been eaten by one of the wild animals roaming around. Season 4, which was supposed to take place in Jordan (apparently it was supposed to be called ''Survivor: Arabia") would have continued this escalation, but the events of September 11th stopped this dead in its tracks.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Brandon in the first few episodes of South Pacific, regarding his tribemate Mikayla. And since he said she's at fault for tempting him, he didn't exactly redeem the Hantz family name.
• Shipper on Deck: Some players love pairing fellow contestants for some reason, such as Cirie for Amanda and Ozzy (and jokingly Erik and Ozzy).

• Smug Snake:
  • "Boston" Rob Mariano and Russell Hantz (in multiple seasons each) are the quintessential examples.
  • Ami Cusack from Vanuatu became a perfect storm of Smug Snake when Eliza's name was read at tribal council and Ami nodded, faux-sadly, at her. Which made it all the more ridiculously awesome when it turned out Eliza and the rest actually voted out Leann, Ami's closest ally.
  • Kenny probably would've had a very good chance of winning Gabon had he not turned into this late in the season.
  • Jamie in Guatemala rapidly earned this label. He did a lot to help his tribe lose two consecutive challenges, but he celebrated a little too much when they won the next one. When the contestants were forced to choose either enjoying the merge feast or playing for Immunity, Jamie sat and ate, while calmly mocking a very hungry Bobby Jon, competing just a few yards away. He didn't stay like that forever, though; see The Atoner, above.
• Spicy Latina:
  • Sandra may not have the sex appeal associated with this trope (YMMV), but she certainly has the lippy attitude.
  • Brenda of Nicaragua seems to apply to this trope.
• Spin-Offspring:
  • Brandon Hantz from South Pacific and Caramoan is the nephew of Samoa, Heroes vs. Villains and Redemption Island castaway Russell Hantz.
  • Blood vs. Water gives us three; Ciera Eastin (daughter of Samoa castaway Laura Morett), Katie Collins (daughter of Australia winner and All-Stars castaway Tina Wesson) and Marissa Peterson (niece of Borneo castaway Gervase Peterson). Bonus points for actually competing in the game against their respective loved ones.
• Stealth Parody: Easily one of the cleverest of these (if not the only one) was when Greg Buis asked both of the finalists on the first season to pick a number between one and ten during the standard Q&A jury session featured on each finale. Presumably whoever answered closest to the correct answer would get Greg's vote, and they did (Richard picked 7 and Kelly chose 3 when the secret number was 9). As some time went by and people began to call Richard an overrated winner since he basically won through luck and all the machinations and intrigue of his season were thus pointless, an old interview with Greg then surfaced claiming that he had planned to vote for Richard the entire time and only did the "pick a number" gimmick to mock the overly serious nature of Tribal Council.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Ace was evicted from Gabon because Sugar betrayed him at Tribal Council. Pixellation makes the vote card appear a bit blurry; the parchment in question reads "Ace-Hole".
  • A Nicaragua challenge had the players make their way through barriers: first a haystack, then wooden rods and then a brick wall.
• The Strategist: Richard Hatch from Borneo, Tina Wesson from Australian Outback, Brian Heidik from Thailand, Yul Kwon from Cook Islands and Todd Herzog from China won the game for being this.
• Straw Feminist: While some seasons encourage mild sexism by dividing tribes by gender, Vanuatu's Ami Cusack took the idea and ran with it. Obsessed with creating an all-female alliance, she went so far as to hoard a food reward from the remaining men, and then mock them with the bones...after they had just returned from working! Appropriately, she got the Survivor equivalent of a Karmic Death when she was voted out by the four people she despised most and the lone remaining guy survived the sisterhood and won.
• Suicide by Cop: Some people actually asked to be voted out, be it they're sick, injured, or just can't take it anymore. It's normally a bit better rather than risk a Non-Gameplay Elimination; since a Non-Gameplay Elimination means your tribe can wind up losing two people if the Tribal Council isn't cancelled.
  • The earliest known example is B.B. from Borneo.
  • Lisi in Fiji said she was done with the game and asked to be voted out.
  • Tina in Exile Island asked to be voted out since she was still mourning her son who died in a car crash.
  • Jim from Guatemala asked to be voted out because he tore his bicep (and was shown as still having it in a splint months later!).
  • Jonny Fairplay also asked everyone to vote him out first in Micronesia, saying he wanted to be with his pregnant fiancee and daughter, which everyone thought was a ploy.
  • Jeff from Palau asked to be voted out after spraining his foot on a coconut, as well as to save his love interest, Kim (who ended up going home next).
  • There are also unconfirmed rumours of people asking to be voted out. Supposedly, Chet Welch asked to be voted out because he probably would have been evacuated had they not (he had stepped on a piece of coral). Stephenie Lagrossa supposedly was still hurting when she dislocated her shoulder and asked to be voted out if anything.
  • GC in Gabon.
• Surrounded by Idiots:
  • Sandra, in Heroes vs. Villains, after the merge. Before the merge, Tyson's boneheaded move destroyed her original alliance, and post-merge the Heroes completely botched every attempt to carry out her plans. In spite of it all, she managed to win.
  • James almost invoked this trope word for word on Fans vs. Favorites, saying something to the effect of "I feel like I am back in China with a bunch of idiots!". Of course, his own actions weren't exactly brilliant.
  • Boston Rob remarked that he appeared to have once again been placed on the 'buffoon' tribe as soon as Chapera hit the beaches and began building a shelter.
  • Russell in Samoa and Rob in Redemption Island probably have been lucky enough to play with the most hollow-headed players ever cast in the game.
  • Joel in Borneo was the only player on "Pagong" that realized that forming an alliance would be an excellent strategy, as there were rumors of an alliance on the other tribe and they would surely be picked off one-by-one after the impending merge. His idea was shot down in the name of sportsmanship and he was subsequently voted off over a completely trivial non-issue. His tribe went on to fall apart exactly as he predicted (with the MPV of his tribe being voted off immediately) and "Pagong" has entered the Survivor lexicon as the name for systematic post-merge annihilation.
• Taking You with Me:
  • In Micronesia, Eliza correctly and immediately realizes that Jason's "hidden Immunity Idol" is just a poorly carved stick. (It had been planted on Exile Island by Ozzy.) She plays it at Tribal Council anyway, hoping that something "miraculous" would happen. Once Jeff confirms that Jason's been suckered, Eliza promptly blabs that Ozzy must have the real Idol.
  • In an online interview, Ted Rogers Jr from Thailand said that Helen approached him in Ponderosa, telling him that finalist Clay Jordan was a racist. This caused Ted to negate any intentions whatsoever of voting for Clay. However, no one else could verify that Clay ever did anything racist or made any racial slurs during the show. Since Helen was vocal about her dislike of Clay during and after the show, earlier on even accusing him of being sexist (again, with no evidence), this might have been her way of taking Clay down with her.

• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Lex van den Berghe, Shane Powers, James Clement, Coach and Boston Rob.
• Team Title: Overlaps with most of Versus Title below except Blood vs. Water, though the original B vs. W was originally planned to be this.
• Thanatos Gambit:
  • Janu's reason for quitting during Palau, to screw up the original Koror's plans and allow Stephanie another chance to survive.
  • Shii-Ann's elimination in All-Stars, highlighting who she thought was the biggest threat on her way out.
  • Randy in Heroes vs. Villains used his vote to say "Get rid of this guy".
  • Ozzy voluntarily got voted out in South Pacific so he could go to Redemption Island, beat Christine and eliminate her for good, and come back.
  • Penner in Philippines casts his vote to let the tribe know who is going to win, he even yells her name back at them when he writes it down to make sure they know. She still wins.
• The Tease:
  • Parvati deliberately plays the role.
  • Kimmi on Australian Outback told her teammates that if she was still on the show by her birthday, she would spend the day naked (her birthday suit) to celebrate. She ended up being voted out before her birthday.
• This Is a Competition: "This is a game" got used so many times during All-Stars it practically became the season's Arc Words.
• Too Dumb to Live: Various contestants have pulled unbelievably boneheaded strategies.
  • Drew Christy from San Juan del Sur: After spending the entire first week of the game sleeping and generally drawing ire from his tribemates, he then tried to sell the tribe flint to Jeff Probst (needless to say, this failed), exiled himself from his tribemates for a whole day, spontaneously decided to throw a challenge, did so in an incredibly obvious way, openly announced his plans to target the (non-existent) all-female alliance, and acted like a complete jackass the whole time. The result? He angers everyone so much that all of the girls (and Jeremy) band together to vote him out while the rest of the guys scatter their votes towards Keith and Julie. That's right, Drew's horrible gameplay against a non-existent girls alliance created one to get rid of him.
• Took a Level in Badass: Some players who started weak become stronger as the game progress, such as Fabio in Nicaragua, who started as a himbo and went on an immunity run to win it all. In the case of Reunion Seasons, a weak or terrible player from his/her original or previous season becomes much more impressive, such as Parvati.
  • Lil from Pearl Islands is considered one of the most memorable examples of this trope. Overall quite mopey and sensitive, she had been Jonny Fairplay's punching bag for most of the season and then proceeds to dominate the final immunity challenge, taunting Fairplay as she pretty much handed him his ass on a silver platter while refusing his repeated and desperate attempts at trying to convince her to cut a deal, and then proceeded to vote him out right before the final tribal council.
  • Cochran. In South Pacific he was basically a nerdy whipping boy for both tribes. In Caramoan he won four individual challenges, including the final immunity challenge, and basically ran the game for the last few episodes.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Many survivors who return to the competition do so on a sour note for various reasons, such as Jenna Lewis, Boston Rob and Lex van den Berghe in All Stars, Stephenie LaGrossa in Guatemala, and James Clement in Heroes vs Villains. Hell, even Jeff Probst has become more aggressive in his questioning and role in the show in later seasons.
• Took a Level in Kindness: But just as many survivors will return even kinder than before, such as Jerri who was hated in Australian Outback and All-Stars for her Jerkass attitude, but became the beloved "sweetheart" in Heroes Vs. Villains. Or Boston Rob who, as mentioned above, was awful in All-Stars, but in Heroes Vs. Villains and Redemption Island became the Team Dad Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Truth in Television: The infamous "Peeing scene" in Marquesas actually is a common remedy. Urine doesn't actually heal the sea urchin wound, it cleans it so it allows it to heal.

• Underdogs Never Lose: The main story of Gabon is how four of the unlikeliest people could make the final four despite being in the minority and opposing possibly the tightest core alliance in the season: Bob, an elderly physics teacher who survived Kota's Pagonging by continually winning immunities; Susie, a middle-aged mother and hairstylist who was always the lowest woman on the totem pole and eventually survived long enough to put her alliance, joined out of desperation, on the chopping block; Sugar, a waitress/pin-up model who many tried to break the spirit of by sending her to Exile Island a record number of times, and eventually ended up controlling the game, and Matty, the personal trainer and supposed physical threat who stayed on one of the worst tribes in the show's history despite the various number of tribal swaps, and came out of the whole mess anyway.
• The Unintelligible: Big Tom of Africa and All-Stars. To quote Jeff Probst:
  "When you try real hard, you can almost understand what he's saying."
  • Rupert Boneham could go this way too, as well as Chicken in China, although Chicken only lasted one episode and Rupert was only that way sometimes.
• Unkempt Beauty: Some Survivors can look good in the wild, where they live without shaving or having any cosmetics to cover up, in dirty clothes and rough living conditions. Sometimes they look even better than when they’re dressed up for the reunion. The term "island hot" is frequently used by fans to describe players they consider to be becoming more attractive the longer they stay on the island. Depends on the viewer's opinion, though.
• Unknown Rival: Russell to Boston Rob, at least in the early stages of Heroes Vs Villains (but certainly no longer unknown as of Redemption Island). Early in Nicaragua ep. 1, two of the La Flor "alpha males" agree to avoid this, after noting that Russell and Boston Rob could have done even better if they had been partners in Heroes vs. Villains.
• Unusual Euphemism: Frank of Africa claimed that Linda was "So solid, she's buried at the bottom the Hoover Dam." Huh?
• Variable Player Goals: Specific to Palau: an individual immunity challenge where each contestant had a different sequence of pictures to figure out.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • Thailand winner Brian Heidik is perhaps the Trope Codifier of the show.
  • Russell was arguably positioned as one of these in Samoa, although he came off as more as an Anti-Hero. He was firmly in this position in Heroes vs. Villains, however.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Ethan and Big Tom on Africa.
  Ethan: "Me and Tom, we have kind of like a brotherly relationship right now. He makes fun of me because I'm Jewish, and I make fun of him because he's fat and he's got a boil on his neck..."
  • Rob Cesternino and Matthew Von Ertfelda in Amazon sort of had this. Rob and most of the others made fun of Matthew for sharpening the machete all the time and for being socially awkward. Even though most of the cast would have decided to boot Matthew for being an outcast, Rob decides to make fun of Matt even more by turning him and Butch into unwitting pawns of his during the merge (see Funny.Survivor). However, Rob and Matthew later develop a working relationship with one another when Rob decides to blindside Deena and Alex, two fair-weather allies of his, and overtime as they bond, both of them begin to realize that Rob accidentally gave Matthew too much voting power by the time there were six people left.
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: Six seasons before Rob famously proposed to Amber at the live All-Stars reunion, Australian Outback's Keith proposed to his girlfriend via instant message during an internet reward challenge. She said yes. Matty also proposed to his girlfriend during the loved ones visit in Gabon.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Samburu tribe from Africa, being split right down the middle, spent more time in-fighting than working against Boran. In fact, in several instances where the Samburus could have tried to vote out a Boran member, they just voted each other out instead.
• Wham Episode:
  • A sort of consensus among the older fans of the show is that episode 7 of Borneo is the single most important episode of the show's history. In a game that had up until then been an outdoor adventure and voting had been based on merit, the Tagis banded together and forced out Gretchen, the most qualified survivalist. This act of putting politics before ability almost completely changed the course of how the game (not to mention all the future seasons) would play out.
  • Another contender for the title of Wham Episode would be "Trial By Fire" of Australia, where Michael became the first castaway to be medically evacuated after he suffered serious burns to his hands. The episode left everyone (including producer Mark Burnett) in shock and it hammered home the point that Survivor wasn't a glorified vacation; castaways could be removed from the game because their life was in danger, and if it could happen to Michael (who was arguably the most qualified in terms of survival skills), then it could happen to anyone.
  • Episode 9 of Marquesas, "Jury's Out." The dominant Rotu Four alliance has just taken out Boston Rob, Sean is all set to go next, followed by Vecepia and Kathy, and the Rotu Four are set to dominate the game, just as every majority alliance has done for the past three seasons. Until this season. After the "coconut chop" challenge revealed the pecking order of the tribe, Neleh and Paschal turned on the Rotu Four and aligned with the outsiders, taking down Rotu Four leader John Carroll.
  • Episode of Island of the Idols, "We made it to the Merge!" Kellee shares concerns about Dan's inappropriate behavior and is tricked into thinking others are having the same issues, resulting in the majority of the tribe keeping the sexually harassing creep to blindside her.
• Wham Line: Has Its own page.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Ma-Ti and his Power of Heart is referenced repeatedly by Jaison in Samoa. He ultimately concludes that Heart Is an Awesome Power, and wished he had it to help cope in the wilderness.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Given that Survivor is a minimally violent version of war, frequently highlighting The Art of War in the China season was a stroke of genius. Each tribe receives a list of its main points and is encouraged by Jeff to review all that wisdom. Hidden Immunity Idol notes and some of the tree-mail occasionally cite the book. Certain major events are apparently inspired by passages from the text, such as the tribal swap in episode 5:
  "The enemies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. They will become converted and available for our service."
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Chris Underwood in Edge of Extinction - the "Edge of Extinction" twist clustered more or less the entire cast into the jury. Chris, voted out third, entered the game at the final moment after spending about 30 days sitting on Exile Island not actually playing the game.... except for schmoozing with the jurors. (Though to be fair, he did do everything possible to make an impression once he finally did come back, eventually giving himself a more impressive resume than the other players.)
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • Until Russell came along, Rupert was easily the Survivor poster boy for this trope. He was so overexposed during his original two seasons, in fact, that at one point he was handing out the checks to the winners.
  • Russell vs Rob in Redemption Island. Subverted in Russell's case when most of his tribe decided to go Off the Rails and eject him ASAP.
  • Within the larger "CBS Reality Show" family, Rob and Amber got to go on The Amazing Race while they were at the height of their popularity.
  • South Pacific continued to sponge off of Russell's infamy. He didn't come back again, but the cast included his nephew, Brandon Hantz. And Russell got namedropped some more when Brandon came back again in Caramoan. Big Brother also had Russell's brother, Willie Hantz.
• Woman Scorned: As the women of Micronesia are plotting to blindside Jason (who they concede might find a real Immunity Idol in exile, for once), Alexis can be heard saying "Hell hath no fury".
• Worthy Opponent: Now and again, one of the Jury members will say that one or more of the finalists is this. An example would be David from Redemption Island, who was impressed by Rob's game and regretted being placed on the opposite tribe as him.
• Would Hit a Girl: Well, they wouldn't hit one, but many male contestants have no problem with tackling them to the ground or forcefully hauling them fifty feet to the goal line. Some would argue that the only reason they wouldn't hit her is that it would get them kicked out.
  • Colby tossed Jerri into the water in one of the early challenges in Heroes Vs Villains. Then again, Colby and Jerri.
  • Bobdawg in Panama against the much smaller Ruth-Marie. Instead of taking the bag from her, he just picked her up and carried her to his tribes mat to win the point.
  • Played straight when Erik Reichenbach hits Eliza over the head with a heavy sack in the Beach Bash Challenge. He then got Amanda in the same challenge with a judo-esque throw.

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The tribe has spoken. It's time for you to go.

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