Interesting Survivor Coincidences

If you know me well enough by now, then you should know that I’m chalked full of various trivia relating to Survivor. This then leads to this post on different coincidences about the Survivor TV show. This may not be as basic as the car curse, but it will be full of different facts that you may or may not know about. Hopefully, there’s enough for me to think about for this blog post. In fact, I’m probably missing a lot of different facts, but here they are anyways.

For those of you familiar with Survivor: Borneo, you may remember Sean and his alphabetical way of voting. (I still don’t know why so many people think it was stupid of him to do that. It worked.) What makes this interesting was how it just so happened that all of the members of Pagong who made the merge had names that were alphabetically before the members of Tagi that made the merge. This has not happened in any other season. If either Dirk or Ramona hadn’t been voted out before the merge, this wouldn’t have happened. I’d have to do a map of how this could have happened in other seasons, if it could have at all. It’s just weird that it ever did happen, especially since it happened the very first time that Survivor was played.

Shii Ann was going to make a risky move in Thailand by flipping on her tribe after the merge. This famously backfired on her as there wasn’t actually a merge. But she later played All-Stars and improved on her first game. Here’s what’s interesting: if the merge had happened normally in Thailand, it is likely that Shii Ann would have come in sixth place and become the highest ranking member of her tribe. In All-Stars, the result of the game made it so that she came in sixth place and was the highest ranking member of her tribe.

Continuing on the topic of All-Stars, you might remember the tribe swap. Now you wouldn’t think that a swap would happen that would put everyone but one person on the opposing tribe, but it did happen. The odds of that happening had to be pretty low.

Bobby Jon is an interesting contestant in a rather mundane way. In Palau, he was eliminated one tribal council away from the jury. In Guatemala, he was the first jury member. I’m not sure if this applies to anyone else. It can actually be a bit sad that he only improved his game by three days the next time. But it is interesting, right?

When it was announced that Cook Islands would divide tribes by race, many declared this as racist segregation, ignoring the fact that only ¼ of the cast was white and many advertisers dropped the show because of it. Now many Survivor players declare that as a great twist and people forgot that they complained about how white the casts of other seasons tend to be. Now 80% of the applicants of Survivor are white (or were at the time the statistic was made known), and some people still don’t like the idea of intentionally casting minorities. But if there were actually a case for that season being racist, the returning players from it might be that case. Three white people from that season have become returning players. One Hispanic person has. None of the Asian-American contestants from that season have returned, although Yul has been asked back. And not only have none of the black contestants from that season returned for a future season, but there is no evidence that any of them have ever even been asked back for a second season.

Kota from Gabon is an interesting tribe. Well, maybe not all that interesting, but there is something interesting about it. Due to three tribe swaps that season, there were three incarnations of Kota. And each incarnation of Kota went to tribal council once and only once.

Before I end this blog post, I would like to say that just because coincidences happen on Survivor doesn’t mean that anything about it is rigged. Ugh. I hate the people who think that. And these are fans of Survivor who think that as often as the haters do.

Well, that’s all that I can think of for this blog post. There are probably more that I can’t think of. But I hope that I made a good list. I do wonder what else there is that works for the list. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.