Series / The Mole

A spy-themed Reality Show that first aired in Belgium (on VRT) in 1999, hosted by Michiel Devlieger, and premiered on ABC in 2001. Nicknamed "the smartest reality show ever," it's considered to its fans as unique for its emphasis on brain rather than brawn, beauty, or sociability, as well as its audience interaction through hidden clues to The Mole's identity. The premise was simple: the contestants worked together to complete various tasks to earn a cash prize—usually up to $1,000,000—that only one of them would win. One of the contestants, however, was The Mole, a double agent hired by the producers themselves to sabotage the group's missions and keep money from the pot. (That's where the spy drama part got fridgy. It's like the CIA hired a spy to take out its own agents. Let that sink in for a moment...okay.) The winner was the player who survived all elimination rounds and figured out who The Mole was.

Originally a Belgian show, the USA version had five seasons and three hosts, the first and probably most popular one being eventual CNN reporter Anderson Cooper. It has quite a dedicated fan base that made two attempts to revive it: one by sending "lemon heads" (a season five reference) to ABC, much like what was done with the CBS show Jericho (2006), and also by posting "Save The Mole" videos on YouTube to help advertise the show. Some former contestants and season five host Jon Kelley also got involved; a compilation of their videos can be found here.

By far the most successful version of The Mole, however, has been the Dutch series Wie is de Mol?; started in 1999, it is still going strong with over 20 seasons having aired. The series is also notable for casting only Dutch celebrities after 4 civilian seasons, many of them fans of the show.

The first two seasons of the US show were released to streaming by Netflix in 2021, leading to them fully reviving it with a brand new season in 2022.

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The Mole provides examples of the following:

• Adventure Towns: The players are always on the move, traveling from town to town (and occasionally country to country) to complete their various tasks. Averted with at least one Australian season, which stuck to the Gold Coast for its entire run.
• Arc Number:
  • The number 7 showed up a lot in season 4 of the US series. It was a clue to the Mole's identity: it pointed towards Angie who had a tattoo of 7.
  • The first US season had a few clues tied to the number 4, on the grounds that "Mole" has four letters.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: One game in Yucatan had Ahmad Rashad asking the players a series of questions taken from elementary school textbooks. During one question, Rashad had this exchange with Dennis Rodman:
  Rashad: On what continent would you find the South Pole?
  Rodman: We have to name it?
  Rashad: (Sarcastically) No, you just have to think it and I'll read your mind!
  • Later, Rashad asked, "What is 1/4 of 60?" and Rodman asked, "Do we write the name or the number?" making Rashad shake his head in disbelief.
• Asian and Nerdy: Dorothy in the second US season. Very much so, as she demolished the mental challenges, but gasped and wheezed at anything involving physical prowess.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Invoked in the Netflix season, as the finalists were provided with fancy suits to wear for their final mission.
• Bad Liar: In the Fake Painting/Fake Story mission in the Netflix season, Jacob tried to pretend that he did something, but when he was caught in a contradiction, he was so bad compared to Joi and even Avori that Greg and William correctly guessed that he was telling a fake story and overruled Kesi when she suggested that Avori could have been lying. As a result, the storytellers lost an exemption and the group earned money for the pot much to Kesi’s secret dismay, as she was the Mole.
  • To be completely fair to Jacob, he was likely doomed from the start. Unlike in Season 2, when the guesser could get an exemption and the liars/truth teller were trying to add money to the pot, Avori and Joi could not win anything for fooling the guessers and had no motivation to even pretend they were lying. Following the season, Avori confirmed that she and Joi did everything possible to tip off Greg, Kesi and William that their stories were accurate because neither wanted Jacob to win an exemption. Jacob's only hope would have been if Kesi had been a storyteller, as only the Mole would have any motivation to keep money out of the pot while gifting another player an exemption.
• Beneath Suspicion: Invoking this is a favorite tactic of the best moles.
• Bookends: The Belgian series' 5th season had its first and last challenges both feature a Big Red Button that the contestants could choose to push for an individual reward or not push to give everyone a benefit, albeit in somewhat different contexts.
• Born Lucky: Four of the five winners in ABC's US seasons can ascribe a very, very large part of their reason for victory to plain old dumb luck:
  • Season 2: Dorothy had the lowest score on the quiz in episode seven and stood to be eliminated had the episode not featured an atypical ending; fellow contestant Elavia accepted a $50,000 "bribe" to leave the game instead, nullifying the elimination ceremony altogether. Later, Dorothy began to suspect Heather as the Mole, and the two later made the finals together. Heather herself caused Dorothy to suspect Bill as the Mole — meaning that if she hadn't, Dorothy probably would have taken the final quiz believing she (Heather) was the Mole, and would thus have lost.
  • First celebrity season: Kathy Griffin was convinced that Michael Boatman was the Mole. She likewise convinced her alliance partner Erik von Detten of the same. The two targeted Boatman in the penultimate elimination quiz, and Von Detten would have been eliminated had he not held a free pass that round — instead, Boatman was eliminated. If Von Detten had indeed been eliminated and Boatman remained, Griffin surely would have continued to believe Boatman was the Mole, and would thus have stood almost no chance of winning.
  • Second celebrity season: Dennis Rodman was in a similar situation. He was sure that Tracey Gold was the Mole, up until Gold was eliminated in the last episode prior to the final round. Rodman would have been eliminated that round if not for a free pass — that he received from Gold herself as part of the last challenge.
  • Season 5: Mark tied for the lowest score on the quiz on three separate occasions. This includes one where Victoria, who was eliminated, got a question wrong only because she inadvertently clicked incorrectly on the computer quiz. Had she chosen the answer she intended to, she'd have stayed and Mark would have gone home.
  • Slightly downplayed in the Netflix season, though the eventual winner repeatedly voiced suspicion of genuine players, even once answering the quiz a straight-ticket for a player who was eliminated that same game round.
• Buried Alive: The very first challenge of the Belgian series' 6th season had all the contestants be buried in coffins and have to solve puzzles together to get out.
  • In the Finnish version's first season episode, a fake task was used in order to separate two contestants from the rest of the group, then kidnap them and bury them in coffins. The real end goal of the task was to use walkie talkies to communicate with the buried members and puzzle out where they are and dig them out.
• The Cameo: The Mole from the first season makes a brief appearance towards the end of the second season.
• Carried by the Host:
  • For the American series, the Anderson Cooper seasons are by far more beloved by the fanbase than the Ahmad Rashad/Jon Kelley seasons and a large part of that has to do with Cooper.
  • For the Australian series, the Grant Bowler seasons are considered to be much better (with the exception of Season 4) than the ones with Tom Williams (5) or Shura Taft (6).
  • The Dutch series' longest-lasting host was Art Rooijakkers, and many fans consider him to be the best host too.
  • The Belgian series' revival seasons just wouldn't be the same without Gilles de Coster's deadpan narration and unflappable demeanor even while addressing contestants Covered in Gunge or being forced to perform ridiculous stunts.
• Catchphrase: In the first season of the US version, Anderson's opening monologue always included "[Name] was the Mole's [Xth] victim. And then there were [number of players left]."
• Celebrity Edition: The US has had two, both hosted by Ahmad Rashad.
• The Chessmaster: Stephen and Jim from the first US season could both be seen as this.
• Cliffhanger: Where the original show always ended with the elimination, the Netflix version would always cut off just as a dramatic reveal of either elimination or mission results was about to happen.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The Tiny Bubbles room from season 2 of the US series. To put this in context, it was part of a challenge where Dorothy, Heather, and Al all had to endure a frightening situation for a certain amount of time; Dorothy had to stay in a small box with cockroaches periodically dropping on her, Heather had to stay in the same room as a gigantic python where the lights eventually went out, and Al... had to stay all night on a metal bed in a brightly-lit room where the song "Tiny Bubbles" kept on playing over and over. Al said after the challenge was over that he never wanted to hear "Tiny Bubbles" ever again.
• Confession Cam
  • The Australian version had the Mole recording their own Confession Cams on occasion which were shown at the end of the series.
  • Australia's Season 5 actually used the Confession Cam as one of their clues for who the Mole was at home.
• Covered in Gunge: The Belgian series loves having the contestants be the victim of a detonated paint bomb if they fail a challenge at least once a season.
• Death by Genre Savviness: In US season 5, one of Bobby's perceived "gives" to the Mole's identity was the fact that host Jon Kelley had earlier greeted the players while eating an apple: Bobby interpreted this as signifying "The Big Apple", thus pointing toward Yonkers resident Paul. In fact, Paul was not the Mole, and Bobby paid for his error by getting executed in fairly short order. The punchline, though, is that the host's eating an apple was used as a clue back in season 2: it indicated true Mole Bill, a resident of Washington, whose state fruit is the apple. Bobby, a professed fanatic of the show, might very well have remembered that old clue and thought it was being recycled here, to his downfall. (However, the apple-eating incident wasn't mentioned in the season finale, leaving it unclear whether that was a mere coincidence or a deliberate Red Herring.)
  • Per her post-show comments, Avori could be seen as a lesser version of this in the Netflix season. Before the fourth quiz, she and Sandy had a conversation about Kesi's identity as the Mole, with both expressing their suspicions of Kesi. Sandy told Avori that she planned to go for Kesi as the Mole on that quiz on every question, while Avori chose to split her vote between Kesi and her other suspects. Unbeknownst to Avori, however, Sandy actually took the quiz convinced that Avori herself was the Mole and was promptly executed. For the rest of the game, Avori, thinking that Sandy had gone 100% for Kesi and paid for it, played thinking that Kesi was not the Mole, even as Kesi's sabotages became more blatant. Had she not had that conversation, she almost certainly would have reached the final with Will, where she might have had an edge given that Will had suspected her of being the Mole. Moreover, the reason why Sandy took the quiz convinced that Avori was the Mole was because Avori was trying to look like the Mole, and might have been a little too successful. Had she not tried so hard to mislead others Sandy might not have misled Avori when it came to suspecting who the Mole was.
• Double Unlock: Very often when a player wins an exemption in a challenge, they have to play a second challenge to keep it.
• Dramatic Thunder: In the Netflix season, a thunderstorm is seen and heard outside the house ans the last four contestants dine before the last elimination. Alex the host even says "It's a dark and stormy night."
• Eliminated from the Race: At the end of each episode, the contestants take a quiz on The Mole's identity. The player with the lowest score is "executed."
• Epic Fail:
  • Petrina, the Mole from S4 of the Australian version, wound up being one of the worst Moles the series had. On at least two occasions, she had vital parts that would've given the game away (a blank memory chip that she used to sabotage a challenge involving contestants taking footage of things and later on, a bunch of instructions from the show's producers) had someone discovered them, while the producers proceeded to make things worse by eliminating her and then "bringing her back" (which cost them MORE of the kitty) and she proceeded to attempt a blatant sabotage to the point where the winner actually caught her.
  • Season 15 of the Dutch series saw the contestants make less money than any other cast in the series (until Season 19), including casts in seasons where the pot was completely or almost completely emptied by a midseason challenge. The contestants couldn't even blame the Mole for many of the screw-ups that cost them money, the most egregious being two contestants walking right past an envelope in full sight which cost them the money at the very end of an otherwise flawlessly-played challenge.
  • In episode 6 of S8 of the Dutch series, the contestants are tasked to name all the tasks they have already completed in order, losing 250 euros and starting over from the beginning whenever one of them fails. They all fail. Then, having just been told the solution, they are asked to do exactly the same task again - and all fail AGAIN. The kicker is that at the start of both tasks they had to pick one of two envelopes, which either said 'you will lose 250 euros for everyone who fails' or 'you will win 500 euros for everyone who succeeds'. They picked the loss envelope BOTH TIMES, therefore losing 3000 euros.
  • The first Celebrity Mole season had Kathy Griffin actually fall off her surfboard while waiting for a wave that she and Frédérique had to catch so they could try to stand up on their surfboards for 5 seconds! And then while Kathy was having such a hard time standing up on the surfboard long enough, she scraped her leg and decided she had enough of trying and failing.
• Exact Words:
  • One episode in Season 5 of the Belgian series had the host Gilles take the contestants to a pub during the evening and tell them that their next challenge wouldn't be until tomorrow. After many of the contestants had gotten drunk, Gilles returned and informed them that the time was one minute past midnight which meant it was now tomorrow and time for the next challenge.
  • In Season 7, episode 4 of the Belgian series, Gilles told the contestants after Eva had seen a red screen and left that they could save the eliminated player by entering a code. The catch was that he never actually said Eva's name in that speech because Eva was not the actual eliminated player due to him having lied during the execution.
  • In the “Take No Prisoners” challenge of the sixth American season, Greg uses this to try to prevent the team of Dom, Jacob, Joi, Kesi, Samara and William from realizing that his team (including Avori, Casey, Pranav and Sandy) were trying to go for an exemption by pushing a big red button. It works — until Dom catches on to what Greg was saying. Nonetheless, Greg delays the other team long enough that his team pushes the big red button first, thus earning exemptions.
• Executive Meddling: Invoked; the game's "plot" is that production is deliberately trying to sabotage the players in order to minimize how much money they'd have to pay the winner. To be clear, the Mole is someone hired by the show - they are not part of the production crew. Sometimes they'll be put through the same screening process as the legitimate contestants to make it seem like the Mole is an actual contestant.
• Fair Play Whodunit:
  • The series always gives clues as to the identity of The Mole. Some were ridiculously obscure (such as the "dummy text" during S5 of the Australian version), but some were legitimate hints. For example, Jon Kelley never called the name of Season 5's Mole during the execution ceremonies.
  • The Netflix version continued this, although the clues weren't aired as part of the reunion special. Some were given directly to the players, which are seen here, while others were digitally inserted and only visible to the audience.
• Final Exam Finale: The last quiz covers The Mole's activity from the entire season.
• Four Is Death: Four was often used as a secret number in clues because of there being four letters in the word "Mole." For example, US season one Mole was the fourth player to arrive at the starting location in episode one.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: A common Sadistic Choice for contestants is whether to cooperate with their fellow players to add money to the pot or sabotage them to gain an exemption or some other individual advantage.
• Futureshadowing: In Season 5 of the Belgian series, one of the tests the contestants took had unexpected extra questions asking about the outcome of a challenge they'd never done. The twist was that they would be doing that challenge right after they completed the test and needed to make their test answers retroactively right by making sure that the Mole did the same actions they predicted they'd do.
• Go Fast or Go Boom: The eleventh season of the Flemish version had a mission based on the movie Speed, where three contestants had to drive a bus on a close circuit at a speed above 30 mph, while two other contestants were looking for clues to disarm the bomb outside the bus. While they didn't have to fight traffic, the entire mission was made more complicated by the fact that contestants had to perform sub-missions on a moving bus, had to drive a remote control car with a camera under the bus to identify the color of the wire they had to cut and had to finish the mission before the bus ran out of gas. The group ended up choosing the wrong color, which set off the bomb.
• Great Escape: A challenge from the Netflix season involved the contestants being locked in prison cells and having to figure out how to escape. A similar, more grandiose challenge also features in the final game round in the first US season.
• Grumpy Old Man: Charlie from US Season 1.
• Hidden Purpose Test: In episode 7 of the Belgian series's 6th season, one contestant was told that the three other contestants would each unknowingly be placed in an awkward situation (getting joined in the sauna by two burly and loud men, having your chair and towel rudely taken by other people while swimming, or having a pretty woman ask for your phone number) with hidden cameras filming them and that she would need to correctly guess what they would do during these situations to earn money. What she didn't know was that the three other contestants had been told in advance about their "hidden camera" situations and would need to do the opposite of what she predicted they would do to actually earn money.

• How We Got Here: Many foreign versions of the show open this way, with the host/announcer saying that the finalists just took their final quiz now, but the results won't be known until you, the viewer, have watched the entire season.
• Incessant Music Madness: A task near the end of the U.S. second season involved players being trapped in torturous situations. One's torture was having to listen to "Tiny Bubbles" for hours on end.
• Informed Ability: When a contestant does poorly on a challenge in spite of their occupation or hobbies seeming to be perfect for that challenge, like Bill from U.S. season 2 being unable to tread water for long despite being a former admiral or Sam from Belgian season 5 getting exhausted after only a few minutes of running despite listing jogging as one of his hobbies. Sometimes it's because that contestant is the Mole deliberately performing poorly like with Bill, but other times it's just because the challenge was tougher/trickier than that contestant expected like with Sam.
• Insane Troll Logic: Kesi's explanation for sabotaging the mission where all the players were chained outside made absolutely no sense, as she claimed that only a player would want the exemption badly enough to leave everyone chained outside all night. It's been widely accepted in the game over the years that if you're a player, there are exemptions you can take without hesitation (where you cost the group money, but there's no additional penalty) and evil exemptions (where you screw over the group beyond the pot, such as not allowing them to see their loved ones, depriving them of food or leaving them with poor accommodations, as in this mission). This exemption clearly fell into the second category, and logic says only the Mole would want an evil exemption badly enough to take it. Logic proved correct, as Kesi was indeed the Mole.
• It's Probably Nothing: Played completely straight in season 5 of the the American series. One of the other contestants realized that Craig's charmingly dopey demeanor would be the perfect cover for the mole. Even better, it was both uwittingly lampshaded and combined with Tempting Fate when said contestant joked that Craig could make a Sarcastic Confession and everyone would think it was hilarious. Craig was the mole.
• Knights and Knaves: The final challenge of the Belgian series' 4th season gave its winner the opportunity to know with 100% certainty who the Mole was, if they could come up with the right 'yes/no' question to ask one of two men without knowing if they chose the man who would tell them the truth or the man who would lie to them instead. Gilles, the winner of that challenge, managed to figure out the right question to ask — but given that he was the Mole, it was done just for show.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Invoked by the players when, at the outset, their bags of personal effects were thrown into an incinerator. The players were right, of course— the bags had been switched for fakes prior to destruction.
  • Averted in season five, when the players (sans Craig, who was ill from the last challenge) were instructed to find a volunteer to have his journal destroyed. When Alex reluctantly came forward, it was revealed that the whole exercise was a Secret Test of Character and that his journal would be spared while everyone else's journals would be burned. Mark was not amused.
  • In the first Celebrity Mole, the mole was supermodel Frederique Van Der Wal. When Stephen Baldwin and Corbin Bernsen returned for the second season, they had a conversation when they wondered if the producers would have a second supermodel (Angie Everhart, who had been acting pretty suspicious) be the mole again, or if that would be too obvious. She was, but Steven and Corbin apparently talked themselves out of it, and both were eliminated. AGAIN.
  • In season 14 of the Dutch series, the first episode opened with the contestants being told right after they arrived that they were going to have the test and execution on the spot. Any genre-savvy viewer will know that there's no way in hell that they'd actually send someone home before doing even a single challenge. Especially obvious, since the Dutch Mole pulled the same stunt all the way back in Season 5.
  • In Season 3 of the Australian version, one contestant was shown hooked up to a machine that would shock them if their colleagues answered a question incorrectly. Whenever they got a question wrong, the host would call to the person with the machine to increase the voltage. The contestants didn't find out until afterwards that the contestant hooked up to the machine wasn't actually being shocked at all - he was given a lesson by the person with the machine [actually an acting coach] on how to convincingly fake pain.
• Manchild: During the US Season 2's Three Questions Game, Dorothy describes herself as one of these in relation to the question of who would be a worse babysitter (between her and Heather) to Bill's kids.
• Manipulative Editing: Nothing egregious, but a bit of it in the Netflix season, according to cast members' interviews after the full season hit the app. The edited show makes it appear that eventual winner William repeatedly made wrong guesses early in the season, even to the point of answering the quiz straight-ticket for Casey on the game round she was eliminated. Confession Cam clips of him looking shocked and grateful to still be in the game - something any genuine contestant probably feels after surviving an elimination - were included in the episode. According to the man himself, he actually answered this quiz half for Casey and half for Kesi (the actual Mole), and took his survival to mean he was on the right track, answered all subsequent quizzes for Kesi, and in so doing won the game. Likewise, eventual runner-up Joi appeared in the show's final editing to have only William as a suspect for the entire game. She commented after the series that while she did suspect him throughout, she also answered many quiz questions with Kesi in mind as the Mole, making her long tenure on the show with the wrong primary suspect a lot less miraculous than it seems. More minorly, the entire existence of personal journals to record observations (again, confirmed by cast members) was edited out of the completed show, as were some entire challenges.
• Metagame: Due to the elimination quizzes, there are three key elements to being a good Mole contestant.
  • Gathering as much information as possible about the players and their activities, whether by copious note-taking or by establishing an alliance with another player to share info (although this information is not always reliable);
  • Making the other contestants falsely suspect you by performing sabotage of your own;
  • Tracking who's suspicious of whom, so that when a player gets executed, you know the player they were suspecting is less likely to be the Mole.
  • The Dutch series has gone on for long enough that it's become an established practice for contestants to spread out their answers for multiple Mole candidates on early tests and then gradually narrow down their answers to just one person on later tests.
• Mistaken for Evidence:
  • The first episode of the second US season had a brief view of the players' bags, one of which had the name "Michael" printed on it. Since there were apparently no players with that name, many viewers believed that this had to be a clue, and speculated on what it could mean. As it turned out, however, "Michael" actually was the name of one of the players, Michael "Bribs" Bribiesca, who preferred to go by his nickname only. Later, his bag had his preferred name Bribs written in marker on a strip of masking tape that covered up the 'Michael.' People also thought that was a clue.
  • Social media discussions around Season 6 of The Mole Australia also had many ridiculous ideas for "evidence", such as the camera zooming in on a contestant's bag during a challenge and the barcode on said bag had the last four numbers translating to "Mole." Aside from the contestant in question getting eliminated a couple of episodes later, it was later shown that the barcode was on ALL of the contestants bags and the numbers were identical.
  • During U.S. Season 1, some viewers insisted that Steven had to be the Mole, reasoning that a real undercover police officer would never appear on national television. They were wrong. Why exactly Steven did appear on the show, thereby making it impossible for him to ever do undercover work again, was never explained on television. But he was not, in fact, the Mole. After the show aired, the Denver Post did a profile on him, where it was explained that he had already been planning to move off the undercover beat before the show, and by the time the Mole aired, he held a different job in his law enforcement department that did not include undercover work.
  • A similar event occurred during U.S. Season 2. Some viewers argued that it was impossible to be a skiing instructor in Texas, and therefore, Bribs had to be the Mole. This argument was largely shut down once the viewers learned that skiing - on artificial turf, not on snow-covered mountains - actually is a popular sport in Texas.
• The Mole: Well, obviously. The entire premise is that production has planted one of these among the players to undermine them, and it's the players' job to root them out.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Happened in the sixth Aussie season, too (though in that case it wasn't a free pass, but rather the opportunity to reduce your time on the quiz by 30 seconds).
• My Greatest Second Chance:
  • Stephen Baldwin and Corbin Bernsen in Celebrity Mole: Yucatan after having competed in Celebrity Mole: Hawaii. Baldwin survived one more execution than his first season, while Bernsen did worse going out one round earlier, with neither one surviving past the third execution either season.
  • The fourth Aussie season played with this a bit, with two contestants leaving and then returning later on. One of those happened to be the mole.
  • The Dutch series also had some seasons where a contestant executed earlier in the season returned, usually because another contestant had to drop out due to health problems. Most of them didn't last for much longer, but the contestant brought back in season 7 became the winner.
  • Played with in the Netflix series. Dom was executed third and given a challenge where he could return to the game and make $10,000 for the pot if he could convince the players still in the game to truthfully answer nine questions with 10 possible answers, leaving the remaining answer as the password he needed to return to the game. However, after getting one answer from Pranav, the remaining players voted not to help Dom, leaving him to guess at the answer. He narrowed it down to two answers, one of which was correct, but he guessed wrong and did not return to the game.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: The Belgian series is fond of this kind of challenge. Examples of this include:
  • The contestants needing to order a pizza for a certain person so that they could follow the pizza delivery to his address, only for the motorcyclist delivering their pizza to be joined by two identical-looking motorcyclists and even stopping to swap the pizza boxes back and forth with the other motorcyclists. The US's Netflix season also pulled this stunt.
  • The contestants having to keep track of three dancers wearing sombreros in a square that gradually filled up with more and more people wearing sombreros too.
  • A pair of contestants being told by Gilles that they just had to follow the GPS provided for them in a car to find the location where the other contestants were, and then finding out that the car had seven different GPS inside.
• Never Gets Drunk:
  • Hilariously subverted when a challenge in the second US season involved mashing grapes for wine. Anderson Cooper got plastered with the players.
  • Also hilariously subverted in one challenge in the Belgian series' 5th season where most of the contestants had to try to pull off a museum heist after getting drunk at a bar just before.
• Never Trust a Trailer: One chunk of the Netflix season's episodes ended at a dramatic climax during a challenge where a bomb might be exploded at a dinner table. The trailer for the entire series, released before this episode was first available, shows the bomb going off. So the team lost this challenge, right? Wrong. They actually won the challenge when Joi snipped the wire in time. Alex, the host, then decided to detonate the bomb just for giggles.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Contestants screwing up on purpose, to make other contestants think they're the Mole and thus do worse on the elimination quizzes. Yes, it decreased the winner's take, but it increased their chance of being the winner.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Occasionally, a Mole will actually help the other contestants by accident, typically by being too successful at pretending to be a good contestant:
  • In Season 4 of the Belgian series, the Mole wound up inadvertently helping the contestants on multiple occasions. He rubbed a strong deodorant all over his body before going on a hiking challenge, knowing that two contestants would later have to try to match the shirts they wore during the hiking challenge with their owners by smell, but the deodorant's distinct scent actually made his shirt the easiest for these two contestants to identify. He also mistakenly thought during another challenge that a contestant had caught a "Bankrupt" tube that would cause no money to be earned for that challenge, so he did his best during that challenge to look non-suspicious and wound up earning the most money out of all the contestants for that challenge. Furthermore, he bought a map during the challenge where the contestants he was with had to drive to three landmarks identified only by songs played by two other contestants to strengthen his facade of being too fanatical a contestant to be the Mole, but that map wound up tipping off the contestants he was with about a planetarium being one of the landmarks that they would otherwise have missed.
  • In the final missions of Season 2 and Season 5, Bill and Craig did this intentionally. In season 2, the Mole felt that the two remaining players had done such a good job during the season that they deserved an extra $100,000 and handed back the dossier unopened to increase the pot accordingly. In season 5, the final two players Mark and Nicole both knew Craig was the Mole and asked the Mole to give them the solution, knowing that they did not have enough time to solve the game as intended. The Mole agreed, and $50,000 was added to the pot.
• Non-Gameplay Elimination: Just barely averted by Gloria in the second episode of UK season 1; she was too ill to actually participate in or observe the events of the episode, but decided to take the quiz anyway. Quite predictably, she scored lowest. A minor example of this occurred during Season 3 of The Mole Australia, where one contestant was exempt from a challenge due to health reasons.
• Novelization: The Mole from the second US season wrote a book about their experiences on the show, appropriately titled Reflections Of The Mole. It can be found here (link contains obvious spoilers).
• Nun Too Holy: Pieter, one of the contestants in season 6 of the Belgian series, was a priest and religious teacher who nonetheless drank and swore a lot throughout the season. He was also the Mole of that season and had no qualms about lying to and sabotaging his fellow contestants, pointing out that it was just part of a game.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: A tactic sometimes used by contestants, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.
  • Dennis Rodman stands out as an example— seemed like nobody could figure out if he was stupid, The Mole, or actually really brilliant. Turned out to be brilliant— he won the game! He was observed taking no notes, which led some to believe he was The Mole. He actually just had an amazing memory for details.
  • Though the entire existence of journals and note-taking was not present as a narrative element in the Netflix season, interviews with the cast indicate that they did also have journals. The season's eventual winner William was noticed taking few to no notes throughout the season, part of what garnered him some (incorrect) suspicion that got other contestants eliminated.
  • Eline, the Mole from Season 5 of the Belgian series had this as a tactic too. She made herself out to be not that smart or athletic, leading many contestants to think that her poor performance in challenges was just her being "the slow one".
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo:
  • Ignoring the celebrity seasons, US season two is the biggest oddball — The Mole 2: The Next Betrayal. The other civilian seasons were simply called The Mole, although the fifth season is referred to on TV.com as The Mole 3.0 because of it being the third civilian season.
  • The bonus season of the Dutch version is called 'Renaissance' (lit. 'Rebirth') to both signify how it takes place in Tuscany as well as the return of former candidates. Made a little bit more meaningful in-universe since the candidates are 'executed', not simply 'eliminated', as if they died and then were reborn.
• Off the Rails: In the Season 5 mission "Travelers", Craig was chosen to pick out modes of transportation for the rest of the group to reach a monument within a set amount of time, and was told he would be given an exemption if none of them made it. Going for the exemption, he chose modes of transportation that were... unhelpful, including stilts, scuba gear and a two-person llama costume (Bonus: He assigned the head and rear of the llama costume to arch-rivals Nicole and Paul, respectively.) Rather than participate in the game, the remaining contestants unanimously decided not to play this game right at the start and simply drove to the monument in the vans, forfeiting the money and netting Craig the exemption. This was Craig's most blatant sabotage of the game. Doubles as a CMOA for Craig, as despite single-handedly ruining that mission, only Paul, who had suspected Craig from the first day and never wavered, took it as evidence of him being The Mole. Everyone else suspected Mark, the first person to announce their refusal to compete.
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • "Bribs," a.k.a. Michael Bribiesca in the second US season. He even wrote it on a piece of tape and stuck it over his real name on his bag.
  • Australia season 6 had "Mozzie" a.k.a. Jayden Irving. Just like Bribs, everyone including the host addressed him by his nickname.

• Prisoner's Dilemma: This was an element of gameplay. For the most part, it was better for contestants to work together and give maximum effort in challenges, because that increased the pot that they were playing for. However, since The Mole was sabotaging the game, and players who incorrectly guessed the identity of The Mole faced risk of elimination in the quiz at the end of the episode, contestants would sometimes sabotage challenges in order to draw false suspicion on themselves.
  • One episode from the Netflix season has the group, broken into two teams, able to win $10,000 if they do nothing—but able to win immunity for themselves in the next elimination if they push a button (after unlocking it by solving a puzzle). Both teams push (though one team intended to refrain, and only started the puzzle when they realized the other was already working on it).
• Public Secret Message: One clue in season 6 of the Belgian series was the Mole blinking out the letters "verraad", the Flemish word for "betrayal", in Morse code at the executions.
• Punny Name: In a late episode of the US season 2, host Anderson Cooper and the players are all eating McDonald's food as a reward. Anderson states "that all of this is compliments of Mickey D's". Aside from the fact that McDonald's was a sponsor of the show, that season's Mole was Bill McDaniel.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Besides the mystery of The Mole's identity, the other big part of this show's watchability is the sheer fun of watching the contestants try to complete the various tasks. Deliberately invoked in Season 6 of The Mole Australia - the show was marketed as casting people from various backgrounds and beliefs.
• Reality Show: Groups of contestants play for a cash prize, with one person not really playing but undermining the rest.
• Reality Show Genre Blindness:
  • Lampshaded by host Anderson Cooper in the US season two. When the team was instructed to split up into people who wanted to cook and people who didn't want to cook, Anderson later informed them that the people who didn't want to cook would end up having to cook for their challenge, and the team that wanted to cook would be doing something else. He chided them by saying, "This is, like, Basic Mole!"
  • In season 5 of the Belgian series, Bertrand learned in the 3rd episode that he had a red screen but was able to avoid getting executed through a special bluffing challenge. The producers fully expected him to change Mole suspects following this because getting a red screen so early in the series almost always means that you have the wrong Mole suspect... but he didn't, and was executed for real in the next episode.
• Red Herring: Present in some challenges.
  • In the US series’ second season, one challenge tasked the contestants with getting a car inside a greenhouse despite the car being too large to fit through the front door. The inclusion of tools made the contestants initially think they had to dismantle the car with the tools to get it through the door, but the tools were just red herrings and the real solution was to notice that there was a side door to the greenhouse that could be unlocked with a code that could be seen on the car’s dashboard.
  • In the Belgian series’ 5th season, one challenge included a key at the bottom of a long tube that the contestants had to retrieve. The tube was located close to a pen with goats inside and there was a sign found with instructions on how to milk goats, so the contestants were led to believe that they needed to milk the goats and fill the tube with their milk to get the key. However, nearly an hour’s worth of goat milking wasn’t enough to fill the tube even halfway, and it wasn’t until time was almost up that the contestants figured out they could simply use a hook and some string to fish the key out.
• Red Herring Mole: Produced by Manipulative Editing, lies, or simply following the wrong clues. It's amazing the elaborate theories some fans cooked up, only to have them smashed at the big reveal.
  • Granted, part of the Metagame involves being a Red Herring Mole so that everyone erroneously suspects you.
  • This was also particularly prevalent in fan conversations for the 6th season of the Australian series. Everybody else (apart from the final 3 contestants) thought that Hillal was The Mole, based on a bunch of clues that seemed to point to him (such as him doing badly on challenges or in one such case, a 4-digit number was given as a "clue" because it was his postcode. They were partially on the right track: it was a postcode, but not his). It was eventually revealed to be someone else and half of the clues that pointed to Hillal actually pointed towards the REAL Mole.
• Retirony: If a contestant in the Belgian series gets an emotional scene of them talking about their family, it's a virtual guarantee that they will be executed at the end of that episode.
• Reunion Show: All six U.S. seasons had one, bringing the players back together to reveal the winner and the Mole and explain the Mole's sabotage. Season one was the only season where The Mole and The Winner were revealed through episode footage shown to the players at the reunion show.
• The Reveal: The Mole's identity is revealed at the end of the season, along with their explanation of just where and when they sabotaged the game.
• Room Escape Game:
  • Done frequently in the Belgian series, usually with some unique twist such as being Buried Alive in coffins in the first episode of Season 6 or having to get into a boat with no ladder in the fourth episode of Season 7.
  • The first US season had one as well, placed as its final challenge. The final three contestants were each locked in a hotel room with clues to get each other out. The sixth season also had one, set in a prison.
• Sadistic Choice: Players are often presented with these; often having to choose if they want to screw over team success for personal gain, or if they want to buy an advantage during a mission (or even just go for partial completion) and reduce the payout in order to increase the odds of even getting the payout. One of the best examples is the "Three Questions" missions from the ABC seasons, where each of the final three players were asked probing questions about the other two. During this mission in Season One, Jim was asked whether Stephen or Kathryn was more likely to cheat on their partner, and Kathryn was really hurt when he said her — Jim apologized and pointed out that there was no good answer to that question, and gave her as his answer only because Stephen was married and she was merely engaged, so she hadn't yet committed as strongly as he had.
• Sarcastic Confession: This occurred in season 5 of the Belgian series during an assignment where each contestant had to do an individual challenge to earn money and then had to decide whether to tell the truth or lie to the other contestants about what they did. If they fooled the other contestants about whether they were telling the truth or lying, they got 2 guaranteed correct questions on the test. Two contestants succeeded in doing this by simply telling the truth as the things they had to do were so ridiculous (the first contestant had to crowd-surf and grab money from the ceiling; the second one had to swat flies with pancakes in a glass box) that they knew the others wouldn't believe them.
• Saying Too Much: Although possibly just using a relevant phrase a coincidence, there was one instance in the first US season where the Mole let something slip; and the finale highlighted it as a clue giving them away: when the group was trying to decide which of two watches was real and which was fake, Kathryn pushed them to make a decision and "pull the trigger". While the group knew that they watch they designated as fake was going to be destroyed, she shouldn't have known that it was going to be shot with a gun. Kathryn herself later commented that this was a coincidence.
  • The second season almost had a similar moment, but it never made it on camera until the Mole revealed at the reunion what had almost been said: After one quiz, Lisa made a comment about how difficult it was to remember where each person had been sitting for that question on the quiz. Bill, the Mole, offhandedly responded, "That's why I always sit in the same place..." and then stopped himself as he realized he was about to say "because I'm the Mole". Bill quickly recovered to finish with "because that way, I'll at least know where I am." Lisa accepted it without further questioning, much to her downfall, as she was executed one quiz after.
• Scenery Porn: Almost all the time, as the players are always moving.
• Secret Test of Character: Every US civilian season has had this in one fashion or another. But most famously was the second season, when the team traveling by bus were stopped first by a pair of pretty ladies, then later by an older woman, to fix a flat tire. They fixed both cars, and were rewarded. Had they just fixed the pretty ladies' car, they would've lost money.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Season 5's Paul and Nicole were this to each other.
• Social Deduction Game: A double agent is hired by the producers to sabotage the group's missions and keep money from the pot. The winner is the player who survives all elimination rounds and figures out who The Mole is.
• Spotting the Thread: Often, a contestant will be tipped off to the Mole's identity by something the Mole says or does that doesn't make sense under greater scrutiny.
  • In season 5 of the Belgian series, the mole Eline did her best to convince Davey during the first episode to push a button that would make him safe from elimination if he was one of the five people who pushed the button the fastest, but would cause no money to be added to the pot. However, while Davey was successfully talked into pushing the button, he immediately became suspicious of Eline when she was slower to push the button than him and four other people — because why would she confidently tell him that she was pushing the button and work so vigorously to convince him to do the same to avoid elimination only to then not immediately push the button herself...unless she was the Mole more concerned with talking him into helping her keep money out of the pot than getting eliminated?.
  • In season 7 of the Belgian series, one of the tasks involved the majority of the contestants swimming in the ocean for more than an hour, while two of them were held captive on a ship, and it was up to the mole to assign the roles in this task. The mole, furthermore, had expressed a strong dislike of swimming the day before and, hence, ended up on the ship. The season's winner, however, found this suspicious, as any mole worth their salt would place a candidate with a dislike of water in the ocean group, where she would be least effective, unless she was in charge of assigning the groups. Hence, the winner (correctly) reasoned that the mole must have placed herself on the ship, as any other mole would have placed her in the water to sabotage the group instead.
  • In season 6 of the American series, William apparently first became suspicious of Kesi after they were on the Gold team for the Bank Heist mission and failed to find any lockboxes with gold nuggets inside within one hour. The lockboxes with the gold nuggets had the gold-related names of “K. Midas”, “G. Locks” and “L. Dorado” — and Kesi was the one who had to find the names in a logbook. When Alex revealed the secret to finding the lockboxes, Kesi claimed that she never noticed the names — but William correctly thought that if he’d seen names such as “K. Midas”, he would have figured out what lockboxes had the gold nuggets.
• The Stoic: Dorothy from Season 2 acted like this throughout the game, with not even losing the opportunity to reunite with her mother (apparently) fazing her that much. Naturally, that made her a prime suspect amongst the other players. Also, Michael from Season 2 of the Australian version. His lack of reaction to, among other things, tasks won and getting "shot" by a fellow contestant were stated as a clue to him being the Mole in the finale.
• Straight Gay:
  • Jim from US Season 1.
  • Bobby from Season 5 as well. The only way you could tell he was gay was when he explicitly mentioned it in an early behind-the-scenes interview, stating that his "Gaydar" senses will help him get a feel of people's intentions. Otherwise, it isn't telling.
  • The Dutch series usually has at least one gay contestant per season and more often than not, these contestants' sexualities aren't obvious at all and hardly mentioned on the show. Examples are Frits from Season 12, Rik and Viktor from Season 15, and Jeroen and Thomas from Season 17.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Jokers in the Dutch series, which can be used to negate incorrect answers on a test and can be hoarded for use on future tests. Many contestants have been eliminated with a joker or two (or even three!) in their pockets because they either thought that they were safe and didn't need them, or wanted to save them for later rounds.
  • Mostly averted in Australia's sixth season, which had a similar concept (they were called "freebies"). Players seldom saved more than one. Sam had four on him when they were decided by the group's treasurer Hillal to be exchanged for money, but this is because he hadn't had to sit the last three quizzes.
• Un-Canceled:
  • Season 5 of the US series premiered 4 years after the previous season.
  • And then Season 6 of the US series premiered 14 years after Season 5.
  • Season 6 of the Australian series aired 8 years after the previous season.
  • Season 4 of the Belgian series aired 13 years after the previous season.
• Unreadably Fast Text: A few clues were quickly flashed during the opening sequences.
  • Season 5 of the Australian version had the contestants confession cam moments brought up as part of a "profile". During that time, numbers, text and braille would flash across the screen way too fast for someone to actively be looking for it. (Turns out that the numbers were a code, which translated to "The Mole is not _____" while the Braille gradually spelt out "The Mole is going to reveal himself tonight."
• Wacky Marriage Proposal: During the "loved ones" visit in the second US season, Heather's boyfriend Nathan proposed to her and she accepted. Though as it was over a fancy Italian dinner rather than during a task or something, really the only thing "wacky" about it is that it was filmed for national television...and that Heather and Nathan broke up after the show was over.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Corbin Bernsen and Stephen Baldwin in Yucatan were constantly looking for clues that weren't there.
  • Indeed, Corbin actually caught on to one of the clues (seven candles on the dining room table indicating that Journal #7 was held by the Mole), but he was such a scatterbrain that he didn't act on it.
  • Darwin from the second season fits this trope big time. While a smart player, he ultimately got all of his coalition partners as well as himself executed for targeting every single person on the quiz EXCEPT The Mole.
  • Mal actually weaponised this in season 2 of The Mole Australia. The challenge had him going to Sovereign Hill ^note A re-creation of a 1800's goldmining town in Ballarat, Australia and being told to dress up in a disguise to avoid being spotted, being given the entire prop and costume wardrobe from the town. Everyone else had to try and spot him from a crowd. The remaining contestants picked someone who they THOUGHT was their man, except it turned out to be a lookalike. Mal had in fact dressed up as the cameraman filming him!
• Wire Dilemma: Done in the season five challenge "Tick, Tock, Boom!"
  • Also done in a challenge during The Mole Australia-the Mole managed to successfully sabotage the contestants by stopping the person with him from looking at the case which held the wires (which had the clue).
  • It showed up too as part of a challenge in season 8 of the Dutch series - a contestant managed to solve it through sheer luck by randomly picking a wire to cut.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: The best Moles are capable of quickly improvising a new plan whenever their initial plan of sabotage hits a snag or something unexpected comes up.
  • One example from season 2 of the US series is Bill learning that each contestant would have to swap notebooks with another contestant, realizing that his complete lack of notes would look suspicious and that he didn't have enough time to write them, and improvising by writing a sentimental letter to his wife about how he hoped he could do well in the game in his notebook. His letter moved the contestant who read his notebook so much that she ruled him out as the Mole and was executed soon after.
  • Another one is on the Hostage Rescue task of UK series 1, when David Buxton's sabotage of switching a digit on the phone their squad was using to contact the hostage didn't work and they got there anyway, the Mole improvised at the last second, and waved the car team the wrong way down a one way street up to the hostage house, making them lose automatically due to breaking the law. This also had the bonus of casting suspicion onto the person holding the phone, and the 2 people stood right next to the wrong way sign.
  • In the third Australian season, Mole Alaina showed some very quick thinking in a challenge that involved players driving around a city. After one of the passengers in the car tossed a cell phone to her, she spoke on it while driving. That's against the law, and challenges can never be successful if a law is broken, so the challenge that appeared to go off without a hitch was instead failed.

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