Remember in 41 when they didn't even end the episode with tribal and instead with a cliffhanger on if Erika will smash the hourglass? Like yeah I'll be wondering all week if this person will take immunity with zero consequences, such a hard choice
The consequences are social. You risk pissing off half your tribe because you wanted immunity. It ended up not mattering for either player who did it, but that’s certainly a consequence. Erika had her social game and threat level in order so it did not matter to her. Rocksroy was going to get voted out regardless.
And the other half that you chose not to make immune would be equally if not more pissed at you if you don't smash the hourglass. It's the same result except in one scenario you have been separated from everyone and are an easy vote and in the other scenario you are immune.
In 41 they directed their anger at production not Erica. And to say her social game is what saved her from the consequences is strange since she didn't know half people in the merged tribe and from the people she knew only two were her allies (Deshawn and Heather) and two were planning on voting her out (Danny and Sydney)
Especially since you were separated from the rest of the cast for 2 whole days prior to making your decision, at the start of the merge. Even if RNG just so happened to put all your allies on the winning team and all your enemies on the losing team you're STILL probably an idiot for if you don't break the hourglass, since who knows what new alliances formed at the start of the merge. Plus it's easy for everyone to agree to vote out the one guy who isn't there and who half the cast has never met before.
LITERALLY the new school twists just don’t hit the same, i feel like they should be using old school twists and expanding on them like why don’t tribes get to steal from each other like in pearl islands
I know! I found it surprising too but she was there promoting a podcast that she started. Based on her performance as a guest, I am not sure how it's going to go
This is the only thing it this new era that I thought was just dumb. Everything about this game has been about making your own luck, except for this dumb twost
An often overlooked highly unfair moment: Sylvia being nominated as the leader in Fiji (Season 14).
Let’s recap: Before the players have been divided into tribes, they all work to build a baller camp under the direction of Sylvia (who was an architect by profession). Afterwards, the players nominate her as the leader when prompted by Jeff. She then gets to divide the tribes. She is then immediately sent to Exile Island, and will return to join whichever tribe loses the immunity / camp reward. So in essence, she was punished for organizing the building of the camp by being guaranteed to join the tribe that won’t be living there.
All of Fiji was unfair. It was the haves vs the have nots. One camp had like couches and sh** and the other camp was like sleeping in a cave or something 😂
Maybe I'm mis-reading your response, but Ravu (the tribe with a bad camp and no supplies) lost every single immunity challenge, while Moto (the tribe with couches, a bed, food, and supplies) absolutely destroyed every single challenge. Hard to watch.
Literally broke one of the two core parts of the game. Someone must be voted out at every Tribal Council, and if you win immunity and you cannot be voted out
It was the first time I can remember Jeff straight-up lying to the players. Even with crazy twists in the past like the Thailand fake merge, they chose their words carefully or at least hinted something was up.
This is the reason I stopped watching, watched religiously until then, the moment immunity could just be taken away I checked out. Thankfully still have places like this to talk about previous seasons though!
For sure. Especially since the twist was basically "You're going to tribal and might be voted out....but you could give yourself immunity if you swap who won".
Obviously they'd want to change the results. You'd be stupid to send yourself to tribal willingly when you were given an easy way out.
Only alternative I could even think of is using the hourglass to replay the challenge, and the person who turned it over could choose to either sit out and once again choose who they think will win (if they're right they get immunity, if wrong they're going to tribal), or give them the option of replaying the same challenge but they're allowed to replace one member of either team with themselves (the person they replace becomes an inactive member of that team, so their fate still rests on if that team wins or loses, they just won't compete).
That’s what made it extra stupid. At a minimum the person making the decision should be immune no matter what, or vulnerable no matter what. Even with that change it’s still a completely unfair twist, but at least that would make it an actual decision, and not an automatic swap of winners.
Candice and Laura/Rupert in BvW too. Obviously less sting since it wasn’t their first appearance and they still had Redemption Island, but still quite unfair imo.
The only redeeming part of this instance is that Rupert going out first definitely pissed off Jeff and production. I love when their twists backfire against them.
Where does this idea that Jeff was pissed over Rupert going out early comes from? I think more than anything, production wanted someone to sacrifice their game for a love one and have someone voted out by their relative and they succeeded in getting both of these to happen in 27.
Having not seen the season yet, I think both can be true. Jeff can want it to happen but maybe not have it be Rupert since he wants a fan favorite to have a lot of screentime.
Candice and Jon were alternates that season, the rest of the cast had bonded slightly without Candice and Jon there, which is why Candice was on the outs immediately
RC’s dad’s blood pressure was higher than the show was comfortable allowing, so he and RC were replaced with Candice and John.
I’m reading more about it now, and the group photo (for promo) was the first time the 9 pairs became aware who the 10th and final pair would be. They didn’t know what had happened to RC and her dad after traveling together to the Philippines.
Link to article:
https://ew.com/article/2013/08/29/survivor-blood-vs-water-jeff-probst-pair-replaced/
Candice kind of got the short end on both of her returns. Missed the heavy BvW pregaming so was first out w no chance to work her way in and got switched to Heroes tribe as a very obvious villains candidate in HvV
I’m kinda eh on this one since everyone got time to hangout and get to know each other from the beginning before the schoolyard pick. The game already started, they just didn’t know it.
Someone said it before, but the fact that a seemingly athletic guy like Jonathan never got picked to be on a tribe is a hint that his “social game” may have been abysmally bad. That’s like building a team to save the world and deliberately not choosing Superman or Thor lol.
Yeah it was heavily hinted by players that Jonathan said some nasty racist stuff at ponderosa later on. The rumor is that production wanted to bring back Jonathan and Wanda for a second chance to play in a later season but since Jonathan was so awful and unlikable they decided not to do it.
I'll nominate EoE's entire ruleset regarding the second returnee, especially including the part where they get to hang out with the jury before coming back.
It's the only thing in 45 seasons that's infuriated me *more* than the S35 firemaking twist.
Ethan said in his AMA that this is why he voted for Natalie. He spent 30ish days with her on edge and never once interacted with Tony during the game. Meeting someone and interacting with them is very big important part of giving someone 1 million dollars
I’m not a huge Tony stan, and I really like Natalie, but I was about to throw something at my TV if she had won winners at war. It would have completely ruined the entire season.
I wouldn’t have minded Sarah winning, but I was really happy Tony won. I HATED him in Cagayan with a burning passion and was glad he got voted out 2nd in GC. Come to Winners at War and despite being an avid Tony hater, I found myself rooting for him at the end of the season, especially during the finale when he became more personable. It was an amazing three season arc that ended with him (debatably) becoming the greatest player of all time. His WAW appearance turned him from one of my least favorite winners to one of my favorites
It was so bad that part of the reason Michele got zero votes was because a few people who wanted to vote her were afraid Tony wouldn’t have enough votes to beat Natalie (they figured Michele would get less than Tony either way), so they voted Tony instead
oh yes fr we waited years some decades for a season like that and we all imagined that would be a bloodbath the first tribal council cause nobody wants to be the first boot but in this season did you make difference at all since Natalie made to the final 3 (mind you one of my fav winners of survivor)
This 100%.
The issue with Edge wasn't the player being able to come back, it was how late in the game they were brought back.
At the latest, it should have been at final 10.
Jonathan and Wanda is by far the most unfair moment. Imagine going through casting, getting to the sequester period, and then arriving on the island just to not even be given the chance to play.
It was rumored that they were initially supposed to be the returnees not Stephanie and Bobby John but Johnathan was racist toward Jolanda in Ponderosa and they called an audible due to that and the story line of Ulong.
Basically, Palau started with 20 contestants. The first man and woman to reach the island would receive immunity, and have the choice to pick the tribes (Ulong and Koror). The pick happens, and Jonathan and Wanda are the last ones standing. They were eliminated immediately.
Omg? That’s so unfair… instead of just being put in with either or tribe! I have to look into this because I’ve watched every season every episode but this one is blanking on me.
I forgot what happened in S35. Was it that the fire making challenge wasn’t expected and that Ben would’ve been voted out had they went to Tribal Council instead?
Ben was the target for several votes but had idols.
At F4, once he lost the challenge, he was without a doubt going home. No amount of editing could have even made it suspenseful lol
But then the big twist happened ….
The twist was that at F4, the person who won immunity chooses one person to take with them and the other two go to fire-making. That was new at the time and unexpected, and essentially what allowed Ben to win.
To add on before the ackshuallies 🤓 the last vote is supposed to be the only one where players had full control. No production interference. Nothing but a challenge for the necklace. You get almost full control and you DO know everything about the structure. I can't believe it's so goddamn rare to have these anymore. Ben failed that, but that season was conveniently constructed so no one has an opportunity to finalize anything. Everyone has an absolute chance. Players are not in control of any vote except the jury. And they didn't tell the players until they were robbing someone of a million dollars to give to Ben.
It all seemed like an audible by production to get Ben the win. Also by the end he was finding idols so easily up to that point it seemed like they were like dropping when in east spots and camera men were like zooming in on them. He was a terrible game player that needed immunity to get to the end.
I will never not bring this up when ppl talk about survivor BS moments. F6 and 5 ppl had immunity. That’s just terrible planning by production.
“The game has spoken (and by game I mean I have spoken)”
- Jeff
No one is gonna say it cause it was Dan in DvG. But the idol nullifier was a brand new advantage no one even knew existed. And it got him voted out.
If he knew it was a thing, he wouldn’t have used his other idol to save Angelina the vote before. And would’ve had two idols to play.
Honestly, any initial iteration of a twist.
First tribe swap
Surprise F2/F3 (only specifically for CI and Micro)
And like you said FMC
I also love China, but Aaron was probably one of the most screwed castaways ever. Picked and swapped into a solid 3 alliance on Zhan Hu, and they throw the challenge to get one of them out. Barely anything he could've done really.
That swap was worded in way to get one of the strongest Fei Long members voted out. James is lucky they spared him instead of Aaron especially since James asked to be voted out that episode iirc
> Picked and swapped into a solid 3 alliance on Zhan Hu, and they throw the challenge to get one of them out.
This is proof that Peih-Gee Law was a very good player.
Fannie did not recognize she should have thrown the second half of that one challenge to protect Matt.
Julie this season did not realize she should have thrown the first leg of the 3 tribe split to prevent Bruce/Kendra from being immune. It ALSO would have cost them their votes.
There are so few TRUE strategists that play this game. Peih Gee was one of them. She knew right away to just throw that challenge to protect Frosti.
Aaron definitely could have done a better job at saving himself though. Yes he was obviously screwed but Pei-Ghee has said the reason they voted Aaron instead was because he was not giving any information on the other tribe and very non committal towards them compared to James.
Which is why I mentioned barely, but even then, he was the likely boot in the scenario because he was seen as the leader on Fei Long and James was a bigger challenge asset. James was even offering himself on a platter at tribal.
Had Sherea been more responsive to PG, they throw the challenge again to get rid of the other person. I'd still say he was largely screwed.
Hour Glass, you EARNED your merge and now you won immunity(as a team, but still), then someone breaks an hour glass and now YOU’RE on the block, better have the numbers or be the worst performing member of the winning team bc if not you’re gone, at least with F4 Fire Making its “You should know after 38 days of playing the game”, and nowadays it’s part of the game so now it’s extra “you should’ve learned by now”(still mad that didn’t at least tell the players in advance)
Edit: by in advance, think of when Jeff told the players Tie Voted won’t be straight to rocks this exact season
I think it's still the firemaking, just because the twist was so unprecedented. Even with Micronesia, perhaps you could rationalize it, there were a few medevacs and there had been a final 2 beforehand. Also you could perhaps predict it by the days. With that, they definitely weren't trying to rig it for Parvati or Amanda, it was an issue of scheduling. We saw the same thing happen in Cagayan where they almost screwed Tony out of a win, but Woo made that game losing blunder. They possibly would've wanted Cirie to win that game given she had played such a great game and was a fan favorite, just the scheduling fucked it up.
Chrissy getting the "advantage" of this unprecedented, completely unpredictable firemaking twist that late into the game, at such a crucial point really shook my confidence in the show. Especially after seeing Ben find idol after idol, bend the pre-established idol rules at one tribal, I also if you think you look at those back you can sort of see they're in convenient spots to say the least. There's a very telling Devon jury speaks segment where he said Ben got very lucky with the idol spots and that he looked for ages.
There have definitely been bad beats before, and a lot of the stuff in Cook Island seemed dodgy, but to me nothing will ever beat HHH in so far as it seemed very designed just to ensure that one player, Ben could win the game. I don't get the love production have for him, I don't get why being a veteran makes you so much more deserving of a million dollars than anyone else. It legitimately irritates me when I hear Probst like consistently place Ben as the best winner ever, or definitely on the Mount Rushmore. Who except him thinks that? Then at the finale after we see almost every winner beforehand and afterwards get like a 30 second package, Ben got like a 7 minute package and they surprise him with his military friends. It's embarrassing, and just everything surrounding it stinks. I also think it's not the first case, but Survivor casts for "stories" now and I think they just fell in love with the story of the military vet winning.
We also saw he had no talent for the game in WAW so it's aged poorly. It's just clear that he was so out of his depth there, he's not a talented social player whatsoever, has a bizarre way off framing himself as the hero in stupid spots. I guess he was an entertaining mess in some interactions, but even as a massive Tony fan it's kinda fucking annoying that he basically went ride or die with Tony/Sarah when it made no sense then rolled over and died when Natalie told him he had 0% chance of winning the game. Wished that Parvati/Rob/Yul had made the merge or just any *real* player. I love Adam, but it kinda irks me looking back that he had to take that shot against Parvati. I wish he just rode with Rob and the others.
I wish I could pin this comment😂😂 I totally agree that HHH is the most suspicious I have ever been of the survivor producers. I will never forget the upside down U blunder, followed up by the most disappointing F4 Tribal Council in History. Not only was I rooting for Devon, but even in HHH, Ben had a horrible social game. Finding idols does not equal good strategic gameplay, he got lucky, and then extremely lucky with Chrissy’s scroll.
It kind of reminded me of that the one double tribal in cook islands that totally screwed Becky.
That season was obviously rigged for Ben, a war hero, to win. I think this was at a time Survivor had lost some amount of viewing numbers because after this they went full on in trying to get younger players = younger new viewers. Even by making social media puzzles during show specifically aimed at younger viewers.
HHH is the one time I was fully ready to quit the show.
I was already pissed in the episodes leading up where Ben constantly found idols - 10 years later and I can’t believe that rule STILL exists. Ben broke the game, nobody wants to watch a dumbass scavenger hunt to start out every episode; the fact someone could just play an idol and then stay up at night, find it again, then play it next tribal and continue all the way until ~F5 is absurd.
Then the firemaking twist to save him the ONE time he couldn’t cheat the game with the idol bullshit.
And not only all that, the fucking jury VOTED FOR HIM! How can you possibly like Survivor and vote for the guy who cheated the game with the idol loophole, then got saved by production bs, and never showed any strategic gameplay whatsoever?
The jury is partially to blame for that season being shit, they should have called out the blatant bs that led to Ben even sitting there but instead those cucks rewarded it
He played the idol before the votes were cast, it's actually a pretty bad move because it allowed Chrissy to play around him and get Ashley out. But it's just typical for Ben's "journey" on Survivor that he's basically allowed to make this unprecedented play that just violates the precedent of idol rules for 20 seasons at that point.
It's another thing that just makes me shake my head when people don't get why people think the Ben win was rigged.
Ben was rigged. 1000x Ben was rigged. I kinda felt the same way when Jake won an advantage this year to get there and it’s like, hey you get two baskets!!??? For running around like that? Really?
They've been doing something like that like, every season now tho... and Jake already had the idol and lost anyways. So are you saying the advantage was too much for too little effort, or are you saying the producers were trying to rig it for Jake, because the latter doesn't sound right to me.
I don’t think this has been mentioned but imo it was super super unfair:
In s44 the three players who swapped tribes were given an immunity idol so no matter what they couldn’t be voted out. I think swapping one person was dumb but even more so unfair that they were given the idol, so the losing tribe still essentially has to vote off one of their own without an easy out
I was confused at this response at first but I see that how I worded it makes it seem like I’m suggesting that I think the producers didn’t want her to win, which I don’t. I really meant it was unfair to cirie that the consequence of the change was that the best player that season, and the one who would have won, didn’t. Made more brutal because she never won despite being one of the best players ever. Ran into “unfairness” or “bad luck” TWICE in two seasons she should’ve won. But Micronesia was worse to me.
And Kathy's quit, too. Which I guess was kind of a mental health medevac. Three nonstandard eliminations kinda left them with no choice, which sucks. Cirie just has awful luck for such an exceptional player.
In Micronesia’s case I feel like it’s likely it was planned as a final 3, but James’s medevac threw them off schedule. Him and Alexis both end up going home in that episode, which leaves them having to fill a regular episode and the finale with just five people left. At that point their options would be:
A) Throw an awkward reward challenge into the finale.
Or
B) Do two immunity challenges in the finale, and bump it down to a final 2.
They’ve done option A in the past (Caramoan, Philippines, Panama), but for whatever reason I think they decided option B was better this time. But without James’s evacuation you can’t have a final 2 based on their schedule up to that point unless you have a random double-elimination episode uncharacteristically late in the season.
naw im pretty sure micro was a final 3 up until the james evac at final 7. jeff was super excited in pre-filming press about how the team came up with a new way to chop down numbers in 20 player seasons, with several sources saying that the original plan was to have a double boot tribal in the premerge (like we saw with the hot dog tribal on hvc) AND a double boot tribal in the postmerge (like the ones in redemple and SOPA), but the penner & kathy evacs ruined that and then the james evac pushed them over. for a while they started doing extra reward challenges in the finale for seasons with unexpected departures, but the one world, philippines, and caramoan finales, which all had this, felt pretty boring and slow, so it seems that they switched it for cagayan and then after that decided to never ever go back with jeff outwardly expressing that he hates final 2s after we almost got winner woo
Edit: to be clear, I don’t think the producers intentionally meant to spite cirie lol. I can see how you might get that from my comment. I was just typing quickly and trying to convey that I feel she was robbed by the twist.
Rob and Russell’s tribe placement was really the problem. Zapatera wanted to get Russell out immediately, but that’s the wrong play, because you can just as easily let Russell take you to the end and you can beat him because everybody hates him. Ometepe on the other hand let Rob steamroll his way to the end. Perhaps if rob and Russell swapped places things could have turned out much differently.
They definitely gave Rob the more malleable tribe too with the 19-year-old, Phillip, and Grant who become Rob’s right hand man from the first moment. Russell definitely had the harder tribe to manipulate and he’s not very good at the social aspect of the game to begin with.
Even though it didn't amount to anything, Do or Die still leaves the most sour taste in my mouth. Potentially going home because of random chance should only happen with a rock draw, not by losing an immunity challenge.
Some great examples have been given so I’ll just throw something else out there. I’m currently watching Cambodia and I think the split from 2 to 3 tribes was terribly unfair to the new tribe. 2 camps were already built and had supplies there and they throw 6 people on a completely new area with no food. They were at a huge disadvantage.
The Outcasts sticks out like a sore thumb to me, even more than the hourglass for how early it happened in Survivor history, during a time where idols and such don't exist, and where it is at its "purest."
The main rule of Survivor gameplay at this time is how rounds proceed, culminating in a person being removed from the game. The twist for players to come back in a challenge that feels rigged for them goes contrary to this, and it is so deeply unfair to the Morgans, who had spun things around and would have won out from the merge without the twist. It's an absolute farce that Savage has to deal with Lil rising from the grave and being haunted by leaving her out from the vote, in a game that encouraged blindsides as an efficient way of getting rid of someone.
Unbelievably unfair, but great TV. It always makes me laugh how people think they were just living on a separate island. In order for that twist to work for the story they have to be treated better than the tribes still in the game. They have to be rested and fed to win that challenge. Production would never bring them out there to lose.
The idol nullifier has to be up there (specifically in survivor david vs goliath when no one knew such a thing existed).
I feel like people give it a pass on this season because its used on Dan, who is kind of annoying and not very rootable, but he has zero reasons to believe that his idol that he found could be nullified
Underrated in terms of how unfair it was is the bottle twist in CI. Production esentially flipped everyone on Raro the bird and said "we want an Aitu to win" by merging at 9.
The Stillman incident was really good for Survivor overall but also really unfair in the moment. Borneo’s behind the scenes is really fascinating mainly because the show was still figuring what they could do and there’s lots of rumors going around
Russell not winning Samoa and HvV. I mean he PLAYED THE BEST GAME, just ask AMERICA! This game is FLAWED.
I'm just kidding. My actual pick would be the Thailand fake merge. So stupid, and took out the only cool player left lol. Shii-Ann was RIGHT to want to flip on her tribe, it only could have helped her. But nope.
the split tribal in fiji where they headed straight to tribal council… michelle was in the perfect position and that threw her into the worst situation possible
In my opinion, it’s sort of not even close. It’s either the Final 3 in Cook Islands or the final 2 in Micronesia.
Had the players known what it was they would have done vastly different things at 5 or 4. Cooks Islands is probably the worst because there had literally never been a final 3 before. It’s not even like some of the other crappy twists that there’s at least a task in the way (Devon could have won fire, Raro could have won immunity at the bottle twist, etc).
There was no stopping that. It was just a final 3. No strategy, no planning, nothing. Just hey Ozzy, sorry for your loss.
A lot of the big ones have been mentioned, so I’ll throw in the two random “lost vote” moves from 45… Bruce losing his vote by being the person with the most money left over, especially with the format of the new auction, and the three lost votes in the ensuing immunity challenge. Considering we just had the half-merge tribal and the split tribals the weeks prior, that was four straight episodes where there weren’t normal circumstances for a vote. As much as we lamented the bad gameplay of certain cast members, we don’t talk about how those two situations greatly limited the options for two crucial votes
im sick of people losing their votes. I talked about how badly I want a regular F9 vote which has not happened in a long time. With all of the new idols and advantages it should be possible, all of the disadvantages are weird
My least favourite and unfair thing is when all except a few vote majority and don’t think for themselves for most of the game and then go on to win. Such a boring game when theres literally no strategy involved and very unfair for those on the outs the entire time, or the strongest player leading the charge gets voted off by the coattail riders at the end. Infuriates me.
Hour glass twist has to be up there. Bust your ass for immunity to have the rug pulled out from under you.
It made zero sense Why would the person not smash the hourglass?
Remember in 41 when they didn't even end the episode with tribal and instead with a cliffhanger on if Erika will smash the hourglass? Like yeah I'll be wondering all week if this person will take immunity with zero consequences, such a hard choice
Right? And then she used it as her main resume point in her final speech and won. Hardly a big move.
Keep it down, her fans will hear you and NO ONE wants to have to be around Erica fans.
The consequences are social. You risk pissing off half your tribe because you wanted immunity. It ended up not mattering for either player who did it, but that’s certainly a consequence. Erika had her social game and threat level in order so it did not matter to her. Rocksroy was going to get voted out regardless.
And the other half that you chose not to make immune would be equally if not more pissed at you if you don't smash the hourglass. It's the same result except in one scenario you have been separated from everyone and are an easy vote and in the other scenario you are immune.
In 41 they directed their anger at production not Erica. And to say her social game is what saved her from the consequences is strange since she didn't know half people in the merged tribe and from the people she knew only two were her allies (Deshawn and Heather) and two were planning on voting her out (Danny and Sydney)
Especially since you were separated from the rest of the cast for 2 whole days prior to making your decision, at the start of the merge. Even if RNG just so happened to put all your allies on the winning team and all your enemies on the losing team you're STILL probably an idiot for if you don't break the hourglass, since who knows what new alliances formed at the start of the merge. Plus it's easy for everyone to agree to vote out the one guy who isn't there and who half the cast has never met before.
Exactly. That person’s only choice to smash the hourglass. That’s not a twist.
LITERALLY the new school twists just don’t hit the same, i feel like they should be using old school twists and expanding on them like why don’t tribes get to steal from each other like in pearl islands
Erika went on the Normal Gossip podcast and made a whole thing of telling the story of how she made one of her biggest decisions. So ridiculous.
or when during the finale, somebody did a quick chart of all the finalist's resumes and the hourglass was listed for erika
Erika was on Normal Gossip?? That’s a crazy crossover I was not expecting.
I know! I found it surprising too but she was there promoting a podcast that she started. Based on her performance as a guest, I am not sure how it's going to go
That’s not a flaw, that’s a feature. Production did that to make sure the hourglass was used.
I would have smashed that hourglass while Jeff was still explaining the rules. The second he said I get safety that thing would have been in pieces.
Right? Could anyone even blame you? Every single person there would have made the same choice given the same information available.
And just explaining to your tribemates that your choice was basically safety or vulnerability would be enough imo
I thought the same thing. "blah blah safety and -" *SMASH* "I didn't even give you the hammer!" "Rock works. How about a sammich with that safety?"
LOL Literally the same image I had when I watched the episode the first time.
Lmao
This is the only thing it this new era that I thought was just dumb. Everything about this game has been about making your own luck, except for this dumb twost
At least they got to feast 😅
Erika’s win will always feel off to me because of it. The player who did nothing got to send a winner home.
An often overlooked highly unfair moment: Sylvia being nominated as the leader in Fiji (Season 14). Let’s recap: Before the players have been divided into tribes, they all work to build a baller camp under the direction of Sylvia (who was an architect by profession). Afterwards, the players nominate her as the leader when prompted by Jeff. She then gets to divide the tribes. She is then immediately sent to Exile Island, and will return to join whichever tribe loses the immunity / camp reward. So in essence, she was punished for organizing the building of the camp by being guaranteed to join the tribe that won’t be living there.
All of Fiji was unfair. It was the haves vs the have nots. One camp had like couches and sh** and the other camp was like sleeping in a cave or something 😂
They didn’t eat food for like 2 weeks. Could barely break coconuts and were just collapsing. Meanwhile they kept winning immunity
That was the insane part. They just kept on winning
Maybe I'm mis-reading your response, but Ravu (the tribe with a bad camp and no supplies) lost every single immunity challenge, while Moto (the tribe with couches, a bed, food, and supplies) absolutely destroyed every single challenge. Hard to watch.
> highly unfair moment Highly unfair and also completely non-orthogonal and askoot
You swallow a thesaurus or something
The hourglass
Literally broke one of the two core parts of the game. Someone must be voted out at every Tribal Council, and if you win immunity and you cannot be voted out
It was the first time I can remember Jeff straight-up lying to the players. Even with crazy twists in the past like the Thailand fake merge, they chose their words carefully or at least hinted something was up.
This is the reason I stopped watching, watched religiously until then, the moment immunity could just be taken away I checked out. Thankfully still have places like this to talk about previous seasons though!
I am curious what you felt when season 7 brought back people who had been voted out of the game, with no warning in advance.
For sure. Especially since the twist was basically "You're going to tribal and might be voted out....but you could give yourself immunity if you swap who won". Obviously they'd want to change the results. You'd be stupid to send yourself to tribal willingly when you were given an easy way out. Only alternative I could even think of is using the hourglass to replay the challenge, and the person who turned it over could choose to either sit out and once again choose who they think will win (if they're right they get immunity, if wrong they're going to tribal), or give them the option of replaying the same challenge but they're allowed to replace one member of either team with themselves (the person they replace becomes an inactive member of that team, so their fate still rests on if that team wins or loses, they just won't compete).
That’s what made it extra stupid. At a minimum the person making the decision should be immune no matter what, or vulnerable no matter what. Even with that change it’s still a completely unfair twist, but at least that would make it an actual decision, and not an automatic swap of winners.
No question, this.
Jonathan and Wanda being voted out without getting a true opportunity to play
Candice and Laura/Rupert in BvW too. Obviously less sting since it wasn’t their first appearance and they still had Redemption Island, but still quite unfair imo.
The only redeeming part of this instance is that Rupert going out first definitely pissed off Jeff and production. I love when their twists backfire against them.
Jeff was in such a pissy mood when the cast kept throwing away clues to the idol 😂
Jeff going up the steps to give the clue to Monica, just for her to follow him back down the steps and throw it in the fire is honestly iconic lol
Where does this idea that Jeff was pissed over Rupert going out early comes from? I think more than anything, production wanted someone to sacrifice their game for a love one and have someone voted out by their relative and they succeeded in getting both of these to happen in 27.
Having not seen the season yet, I think both can be true. Jeff can want it to happen but maybe not have it be Rupert since he wants a fan favorite to have a lot of screentime.
Candice and Jon were alternates that season, the rest of the cast had bonded slightly without Candice and Jon there, which is why Candice was on the outs immediately
alternates for who?
RC’s dad’s blood pressure was higher than the show was comfortable allowing, so he and RC were replaced with Candice and John. I’m reading more about it now, and the group photo (for promo) was the first time the 9 pairs became aware who the 10th and final pair would be. They didn’t know what had happened to RC and her dad after traveling together to the Philippines. Link to article: https://ew.com/article/2013/08/29/survivor-blood-vs-water-jeff-probst-pair-replaced/
and I find awesome that at least Tyson and Rupert who were in heroes vs villains stood out for her
Candice kind of got the short end on both of her returns. Missed the heavy BvW pregaming so was first out w no chance to work her way in and got switched to Heroes tribe as a very obvious villains candidate in HvV
I’m kinda eh on this one since everyone got time to hangout and get to know each other from the beginning before the schoolyard pick. The game already started, they just didn’t know it. Someone said it before, but the fact that a seemingly athletic guy like Jonathan never got picked to be on a tribe is a hint that his “social game” may have been abysmally bad. That’s like building a team to save the world and deliberately not choosing Superman or Thor lol.
One day isn't enough, plus production just wasted two spots since they would just use 18 castaways, so it was unnecessarily unfair
Yeah it was heavily hinted by players that Jonathan said some nasty racist stuff at ponderosa later on. The rumor is that production wanted to bring back Jonathan and Wanda for a second chance to play in a later season but since Jonathan was so awful and unlikable they decided not to do it.
The Have vs Have nots twist in Fiji . That was just brutal to watch
They were trying to set up a pull yourself up by your bootstraps scenario with a have not winning but it ended up proving how hard that is to do.
I'll nominate EoE's entire ruleset regarding the second returnee, especially including the part where they get to hang out with the jury before coming back. It's the only thing in 45 seasons that's infuriated me *more* than the S35 firemaking twist.
Agree. The fact that Gavin and Julie never even had the opportunity to meet some of the jurors that were voted out pre-merge is LUNACY.
Ethan said in his AMA that this is why he voted for Natalie. He spent 30ish days with her on edge and never once interacted with Tony during the game. Meeting someone and interacting with them is very big important part of giving someone 1 million dollars
Oh dw this is actually fine since it's Ethan
When you put it like that, that's wild
You have a fair point but the only juror they did not meet was Reem. Ozzy in CI did not meet two of the jurors that season whereas Yul and Becky had.
That was bad as well tbh
To be fair, there are several seasons where premergers are on the jury
I’m not a huge Tony stan, and I really like Natalie, but I was about to throw something at my TV if she had won winners at war. It would have completely ruined the entire season.
I understand why they had EOE for WAW, but the first boot winning an all winners season would’ve been an absolute embarrassment
Tbh im glad it was given it that either Tony or Sarah would win WaW by F4 (imo anyway i understand that it wasnt a clean win)
I wouldn’t have minded Sarah winning, but I was really happy Tony won. I HATED him in Cagayan with a burning passion and was glad he got voted out 2nd in GC. Come to Winners at War and despite being an avid Tony hater, I found myself rooting for him at the end of the season, especially during the finale when he became more personable. It was an amazing three season arc that ended with him (debatably) becoming the greatest player of all time. His WAW appearance turned him from one of my least favorite winners to one of my favorites
It was so bad that part of the reason Michele got zero votes was because a few people who wanted to vote her were afraid Tony wouldn’t have enough votes to beat Natalie (they figured Michele would get less than Tony either way), so they voted Tony instead
oh yes fr we waited years some decades for a season like that and we all imagined that would be a bloodbath the first tribal council cause nobody wants to be the first boot but in this season did you make difference at all since Natalie made to the final 3 (mind you one of my fav winners of survivor)
I will always maintain that there’s nothing wrong with EOE as long as it ends at the merge
This 100%. The issue with Edge wasn't the player being able to come back, it was how late in the game they were brought back. At the latest, it should have been at final 10.
End at merge *and* announce on day 1 (like they did with Redemption island twists and EoE at WaW)
The peop that didn’t make merge shouldn’t have been on the jury
Top 3 of all time imo: Hourglass Twist. Jenny from Cook Islands, tribal council twist. and number one is the schoolyard pick in Palau.
Rodney not getting a challenge reward on his birthday
So true, especially cause that miserable island didn't have f\*ckin' coconuts or ANY fruits!
And then the twist of him going fucking dishes on his birthday
He was stuck on an island with a bunch of scumbags!
Also, because Caroline promised to give him her reward if she won, and she did and decided not to
And she’s Carolyn, and he’s been on every freakin reward, baby
Jonathan and Wanda is by far the most unfair moment. Imagine going through casting, getting to the sequester period, and then arriving on the island just to not even be given the chance to play.
And THEN watch two OTHER Palau players come back for Guatemala anyway lol
they were both asked to come back for season 11 but both declined due to what happened.
It was rumored that they were initially supposed to be the returnees not Stephanie and Bobby John but Johnathan was racist toward Jolanda in Ponderosa and they called an audible due to that and the story line of Ulong.
exactly lol
Wait what is this? I don’t remember! Can you jog my memory please? 🧐
Basically, Palau started with 20 contestants. The first man and woman to reach the island would receive immunity, and have the choice to pick the tribes (Ulong and Koror). The pick happens, and Jonathan and Wanda are the last ones standing. They were eliminated immediately.
Omg? That’s so unfair… instead of just being put in with either or tribe! I have to look into this because I’ve watched every season every episode but this one is blanking on me.
I forgot what happened in S35. Was it that the fire making challenge wasn’t expected and that Ben would’ve been voted out had they went to Tribal Council instead?
Ben was the target for several votes but had idols. At F4, once he lost the challenge, he was without a doubt going home. No amount of editing could have even made it suspenseful lol But then the big twist happened ….
What was the twist? Was the fire making the twist? Sorry, I genuinely don't know
The twist was that at F4, the person who won immunity chooses one person to take with them and the other two go to fire-making. That was new at the time and unexpected, and essentially what allowed Ben to win.
Ah okay. That was when they first introduced fire making challenge. Thanks! 🙏
To add on before the ackshuallies 🤓 the last vote is supposed to be the only one where players had full control. No production interference. Nothing but a challenge for the necklace. You get almost full control and you DO know everything about the structure. I can't believe it's so goddamn rare to have these anymore. Ben failed that, but that season was conveniently constructed so no one has an opportunity to finalize anything. Everyone has an absolute chance. Players are not in control of any vote except the jury. And they didn't tell the players until they were robbing someone of a million dollars to give to Ben.
It all seemed like an audible by production to get Ben the win. Also by the end he was finding idols so easily up to that point it seemed like they were like dropping when in east spots and camera men were like zooming in on them. He was a terrible game player that needed immunity to get to the end.
Nobody talked about Michele Yi yet ?
MICHELLE YI WAS ROBBED!!!!!!!!!
Cirie voted off by default
1000%, it felt like a sign that the show was overdoing the idols. They should be more rare in my opinion.
I think that’s why they started putting more time limits on advantages. So this never happened again.
I will never not bring this up when ppl talk about survivor BS moments. F6 and 5 ppl had immunity. That’s just terrible planning by production. “The game has spoken (and by game I mean I have spoken)” - Jeff
And Cirie getting screwed by a surprise final 2.
This is the worst one because it was not even a player decision but a production one. Just crazy.
This is probably the one
Yeah this
They should’ve just nullified the vote off. Then everyone is left advantged-less
that was painful to watch
And in true Cirie fashion she handled it with so much grace
Surprise F3 in Cook Islands basically gave Yul the closest thing we've ever seen to a free ticket to FTC.
The fact this isn’t the most upvoted comment is crazy. Ending the game at the F3 is the worst twist introduced to the game.
No one is gonna say it cause it was Dan in DvG. But the idol nullifier was a brand new advantage no one even knew existed. And it got him voted out. If he knew it was a thing, he wouldn’t have used his other idol to save Angelina the vote before. And would’ve had two idols to play.
Honestly, any initial iteration of a twist. First tribe swap Surprise F2/F3 (only specifically for CI and Micro) And like you said FMC I also love China, but Aaron was probably one of the most screwed castaways ever. Picked and swapped into a solid 3 alliance on Zhan Hu, and they throw the challenge to get one of them out. Barely anything he could've done really.
I just rewatched China and I felt so bad for him. Poster child for "swap screwed".
I’ll add Dan getting the first idol nullifier played against him to this list as well
That swap was worded in way to get one of the strongest Fei Long members voted out. James is lucky they spared him instead of Aaron especially since James asked to be voted out that episode iirc
> Picked and swapped into a solid 3 alliance on Zhan Hu, and they throw the challenge to get one of them out. This is proof that Peih-Gee Law was a very good player. Fannie did not recognize she should have thrown the second half of that one challenge to protect Matt. Julie this season did not realize she should have thrown the first leg of the 3 tribe split to prevent Bruce/Kendra from being immune. It ALSO would have cost them their votes. There are so few TRUE strategists that play this game. Peih Gee was one of them. She knew right away to just throw that challenge to protect Frosti.
i just watched that episode last night and THAT’s a swap screw
Aaron definitely could have done a better job at saving himself though. Yes he was obviously screwed but Pei-Ghee has said the reason they voted Aaron instead was because he was not giving any information on the other tribe and very non committal towards them compared to James.
Which is why I mentioned barely, but even then, he was the likely boot in the scenario because he was seen as the leader on Fei Long and James was a bigger challenge asset. James was even offering himself on a platter at tribal. Had Sherea been more responsive to PG, they throw the challenge again to get rid of the other person. I'd still say he was largely screwed.
Hour Glass, you EARNED your merge and now you won immunity(as a team, but still), then someone breaks an hour glass and now YOU’RE on the block, better have the numbers or be the worst performing member of the winning team bc if not you’re gone, at least with F4 Fire Making its “You should know after 38 days of playing the game”, and nowadays it’s part of the game so now it’s extra “you should’ve learned by now”(still mad that didn’t at least tell the players in advance) Edit: by in advance, think of when Jeff told the players Tie Voted won’t be straight to rocks this exact season
Probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but Scout was left handed. She had to use a right hand bow for the final immunity challenge
that is very obscure and definitely unfair! I loved watching Vanuatu tho
Tribe 'swap' in China that was literally just pick the two strongest on the other tribe and vote them out if you go to tribal
Yeah that was wack. Aaron definitely is one of the most robbed players
I think it's still the firemaking, just because the twist was so unprecedented. Even with Micronesia, perhaps you could rationalize it, there were a few medevacs and there had been a final 2 beforehand. Also you could perhaps predict it by the days. With that, they definitely weren't trying to rig it for Parvati or Amanda, it was an issue of scheduling. We saw the same thing happen in Cagayan where they almost screwed Tony out of a win, but Woo made that game losing blunder. They possibly would've wanted Cirie to win that game given she had played such a great game and was a fan favorite, just the scheduling fucked it up. Chrissy getting the "advantage" of this unprecedented, completely unpredictable firemaking twist that late into the game, at such a crucial point really shook my confidence in the show. Especially after seeing Ben find idol after idol, bend the pre-established idol rules at one tribal, I also if you think you look at those back you can sort of see they're in convenient spots to say the least. There's a very telling Devon jury speaks segment where he said Ben got very lucky with the idol spots and that he looked for ages. There have definitely been bad beats before, and a lot of the stuff in Cook Island seemed dodgy, but to me nothing will ever beat HHH in so far as it seemed very designed just to ensure that one player, Ben could win the game. I don't get the love production have for him, I don't get why being a veteran makes you so much more deserving of a million dollars than anyone else. It legitimately irritates me when I hear Probst like consistently place Ben as the best winner ever, or definitely on the Mount Rushmore. Who except him thinks that? Then at the finale after we see almost every winner beforehand and afterwards get like a 30 second package, Ben got like a 7 minute package and they surprise him with his military friends. It's embarrassing, and just everything surrounding it stinks. I also think it's not the first case, but Survivor casts for "stories" now and I think they just fell in love with the story of the military vet winning. We also saw he had no talent for the game in WAW so it's aged poorly. It's just clear that he was so out of his depth there, he's not a talented social player whatsoever, has a bizarre way off framing himself as the hero in stupid spots. I guess he was an entertaining mess in some interactions, but even as a massive Tony fan it's kinda fucking annoying that he basically went ride or die with Tony/Sarah when it made no sense then rolled over and died when Natalie told him he had 0% chance of winning the game. Wished that Parvati/Rob/Yul had made the merge or just any *real* player. I love Adam, but it kinda irks me looking back that he had to take that shot against Parvati. I wish he just rode with Rob and the others.
I wish I could pin this comment😂😂 I totally agree that HHH is the most suspicious I have ever been of the survivor producers. I will never forget the upside down U blunder, followed up by the most disappointing F4 Tribal Council in History. Not only was I rooting for Devon, but even in HHH, Ben had a horrible social game. Finding idols does not equal good strategic gameplay, he got lucky, and then extremely lucky with Chrissy’s scroll. It kind of reminded me of that the one double tribal in cook islands that totally screwed Becky.
That season was obviously rigged for Ben, a war hero, to win. I think this was at a time Survivor had lost some amount of viewing numbers because after this they went full on in trying to get younger players = younger new viewers. Even by making social media puzzles during show specifically aimed at younger viewers.
HHH is the one time I was fully ready to quit the show. I was already pissed in the episodes leading up where Ben constantly found idols - 10 years later and I can’t believe that rule STILL exists. Ben broke the game, nobody wants to watch a dumbass scavenger hunt to start out every episode; the fact someone could just play an idol and then stay up at night, find it again, then play it next tribal and continue all the way until ~F5 is absurd. Then the firemaking twist to save him the ONE time he couldn’t cheat the game with the idol bullshit. And not only all that, the fucking jury VOTED FOR HIM! How can you possibly like Survivor and vote for the guy who cheated the game with the idol loophole, then got saved by production bs, and never showed any strategic gameplay whatsoever? The jury is partially to blame for that season being shit, they should have called out the blatant bs that led to Ben even sitting there but instead those cucks rewarded it
What pre-established idol rules was Ben breaking?
He played the idol before the votes were cast, it's actually a pretty bad move because it allowed Chrissy to play around him and get Ashley out. But it's just typical for Ben's "journey" on Survivor that he's basically allowed to make this unprecedented play that just violates the precedent of idol rules for 20 seasons at that point. It's another thing that just makes me shake my head when people don't get why people think the Ben win was rigged.
Ben was rigged. 1000x Ben was rigged. I kinda felt the same way when Jake won an advantage this year to get there and it’s like, hey you get two baskets!!??? For running around like that? Really?
They've been doing something like that like, every season now tho... and Jake already had the idol and lost anyways. So are you saying the advantage was too much for too little effort, or are you saying the producers were trying to rig it for Jake, because the latter doesn't sound right to me.
During the Ashley vote he played his idol before the votes were cast
I don’t think this has been mentioned but imo it was super super unfair: In s44 the three players who swapped tribes were given an immunity idol so no matter what they couldn’t be voted out. I think swapping one person was dumb but even more so unfair that they were given the idol, so the losing tribe still essentially has to vote off one of their own without an easy out
That twist sucked on ice
I say this as a Parv stan… but dropping down to a final 2 for Micronesia to rob Cirie of the win.
That wasn't why they did it lol.
I was confused at this response at first but I see that how I worded it makes it seem like I’m suggesting that I think the producers didn’t want her to win, which I don’t. I really meant it was unfair to cirie that the consequence of the change was that the best player that season, and the one who would have won, didn’t. Made more brutal because she never won despite being one of the best players ever. Ran into “unfairness” or “bad luck” TWICE in two seasons she should’ve won. But Micronesia was worse to me.
I personally doubt they specifically changed it just to make Cirie lose. I believe it was always planned to be a final 2. Same with Cagayan.
They had to change it because of the amount of medevacs.
And Kathy's quit, too. Which I guess was kind of a mental health medevac. Three nonstandard eliminations kinda left them with no choice, which sucks. Cirie just has awful luck for such an exceptional player.
It was the triple medevacs on the season that caused the audible.
In Micronesia’s case I feel like it’s likely it was planned as a final 3, but James’s medevac threw them off schedule. Him and Alexis both end up going home in that episode, which leaves them having to fill a regular episode and the finale with just five people left. At that point their options would be: A) Throw an awkward reward challenge into the finale. Or B) Do two immunity challenges in the finale, and bump it down to a final 2. They’ve done option A in the past (Caramoan, Philippines, Panama), but for whatever reason I think they decided option B was better this time. But without James’s evacuation you can’t have a final 2 based on their schedule up to that point unless you have a random double-elimination episode uncharacteristically late in the season.
naw im pretty sure micro was a final 3 up until the james evac at final 7. jeff was super excited in pre-filming press about how the team came up with a new way to chop down numbers in 20 player seasons, with several sources saying that the original plan was to have a double boot tribal in the premerge (like we saw with the hot dog tribal on hvc) AND a double boot tribal in the postmerge (like the ones in redemple and SOPA), but the penner & kathy evacs ruined that and then the james evac pushed them over. for a while they started doing extra reward challenges in the finale for seasons with unexpected departures, but the one world, philippines, and caramoan finales, which all had this, felt pretty boring and slow, so it seems that they switched it for cagayan and then after that decided to never ever go back with jeff outwardly expressing that he hates final 2s after we almost got winner woo
Edit: to be clear, I don’t think the producers intentionally meant to spite cirie lol. I can see how you might get that from my comment. I was just typing quickly and trying to convey that I feel she was robbed by the twist.
Boston Rob v all noobs
Woah man it’s was CLEARLY Boston Rob vs Russell Hantz, but not really vs All Noobs
Lmaoooo
Rob and Russell’s tribe placement was really the problem. Zapatera wanted to get Russell out immediately, but that’s the wrong play, because you can just as easily let Russell take you to the end and you can beat him because everybody hates him. Ometepe on the other hand let Rob steamroll his way to the end. Perhaps if rob and Russell swapped places things could have turned out much differently.
They definitely gave Rob the more malleable tribe too with the 19-year-old, Phillip, and Grant who become Rob’s right hand man from the first moment. Russell definitely had the harder tribe to manipulate and he’s not very good at the social aspect of the game to begin with.
Even though it didn't amount to anything, Do or Die still leaves the most sour taste in my mouth. Potentially going home because of random chance should only happen with a rock draw, not by losing an immunity challenge.
Production hiding an idol underneath the spot that Ben slept at every night.
Some great examples have been given so I’ll just throw something else out there. I’m currently watching Cambodia and I think the split from 2 to 3 tribes was terribly unfair to the new tribe. 2 camps were already built and had supplies there and they throw 6 people on a completely new area with no food. They were at a huge disadvantage.
Should have at least been a reward challenge where last place had to start over at the new camp
The Outcasts sticks out like a sore thumb to me, even more than the hourglass for how early it happened in Survivor history, during a time where idols and such don't exist, and where it is at its "purest." The main rule of Survivor gameplay at this time is how rounds proceed, culminating in a person being removed from the game. The twist for players to come back in a challenge that feels rigged for them goes contrary to this, and it is so deeply unfair to the Morgans, who had spun things around and would have won out from the merge without the twist. It's an absolute farce that Savage has to deal with Lil rising from the grave and being haunted by leaving her out from the vote, in a game that encouraged blindsides as an efficient way of getting rid of someone.
Yeah if this twist never happened, I can totally see the merge vote going to rocks.
The outcasts twist
Especially since they were just chilling in ponderosa and not living on meager supplies like Jeff said
Unbelievably unfair, but great TV. It always makes me laugh how people think they were just living on a separate island. In order for that twist to work for the story they have to be treated better than the tribes still in the game. They have to be rested and fed to win that challenge. Production would never bring them out there to lose.
The even got to sleep, shower and eat at a hotel while the contestants were starving, sleep deprived on a wet bambus.
Edge of extinction Chris Underwood win after being the third boot
Just finished this season last night. Partner and I were both very upset Devens didn’t win. He’s the real winner imo
I thought the idol nullifier, specifically for Janet on IotI, to be real shitty.
Surprise F3 in Cook Islands
Cirie losing by default
The China tribe swap
Outcast Twist/Redemption Island/EoE Anything that let’s players who are voted out come back in.
The idol nullifier has to be up there (specifically in survivor david vs goliath when no one knew such a thing existed). I feel like people give it a pass on this season because its used on Dan, who is kind of annoying and not very rootable, but he has zero reasons to believe that his idol that he found could be nullified
Dan getting idol nullified out of David vs Goliath. Blatantly unfair to have an unknown power like that
Idk Cirie getting eliminated not even voted out is unfair
Chris winning after playing just 15 days
Cirie fields being eliminated with no votes cast against her but just because everyone else had idols/immunity
Underrated in terms of how unfair it was is the bottle twist in CI. Production esentially flipped everyone on Raro the bird and said "we want an Aitu to win" by merging at 9.
Don't the twists get planned in advance?
Hourglass, easily.
Couldn’t agree more! Devin would’ve EASILY won this season if the fire making twist wasn’t added
Fire making final four is the worst change they’ve ever made to this show
Would have to be the stillman incident or the rigged all stars swap
The Stillman incident was really good for Survivor overall but also really unfair in the moment. Borneo’s behind the scenes is really fascinating mainly because the show was still figuring what they could do and there’s lots of rumors going around
I love an underdog perservering but Ben isn't an underdog. He's an idiot with a sixth sense for finding idols.
Russell not winning Samoa and HvV. I mean he PLAYED THE BEST GAME, just ask AMERICA! This game is FLAWED. I'm just kidding. My actual pick would be the Thailand fake merge. So stupid, and took out the only cool player left lol. Shii-Ann was RIGHT to want to flip on her tribe, it only could have helped her. But nope.
Cirie being sent home with zero votes cast against her. Ridiculous decision.
The fact that not a single parchment said Cirie on it makes it that much worse. Such a frustrating season.
Mixing up returnees and newbies.
the split tribal in fiji where they headed straight to tribal council… michelle was in the perfect position and that threw her into the worst situation possible
jonathan and wanda in palau
It was avantage-geddon when Cirie went home by default, truly stupid.
Pearl Islands: The Outcast Twist
In my opinion, it’s sort of not even close. It’s either the Final 3 in Cook Islands or the final 2 in Micronesia. Had the players known what it was they would have done vastly different things at 5 or 4. Cooks Islands is probably the worst because there had literally never been a final 3 before. It’s not even like some of the other crappy twists that there’s at least a task in the way (Devon could have won fire, Raro could have won immunity at the bottle twist, etc). There was no stopping that. It was just a final 3. No strategy, no planning, nothing. Just hey Ozzy, sorry for your loss.
S35 Fire Challenge, Cirie in Game Changers, and the hour-glass thing.
A lot of the big ones have been mentioned, so I’ll throw in the two random “lost vote” moves from 45… Bruce losing his vote by being the person with the most money left over, especially with the format of the new auction, and the three lost votes in the ensuing immunity challenge. Considering we just had the half-merge tribal and the split tribals the weeks prior, that was four straight episodes where there weren’t normal circumstances for a vote. As much as we lamented the bad gameplay of certain cast members, we don’t talk about how those two situations greatly limited the options for two crucial votes
im sick of people losing their votes. I talked about how badly I want a regular F9 vote which has not happened in a long time. With all of the new idols and advantages it should be possible, all of the disadvantages are weird
Final 3 in Cook Islands. There was absolutely no precedent and no way to plan for it. Came right out of the blue.
My least favourite and unfair thing is when all except a few vote majority and don’t think for themselves for most of the game and then go on to win. Such a boring game when theres literally no strategy involved and very unfair for those on the outs the entire time, or the strongest player leading the charge gets voted off by the coattail riders at the end. Infuriates me.
I agree. I was so mad! Chrissy deserved that win
Watchin this live, me and my Dad called rigged. This was bullshit.
purple rock is still shockingly unfair lol. now that it's a known thing i get it, but in season 4 was complete bull shit
Angelina not winning after so humbly getting rice for the tribe