Survival of the Fittest



""Look around. Look at your classmates. How many of them do you truly know? How many would you trust with your life?""

- Danya, V4 Prologue

Survival of the Fittest is a roleplaying board based on Battle Royale, which began in June 2005.

The premise is simple: a class of high-school students are abducted on the way to their end-of-year trip, fitted with collars, given randomly distributed weapons and are dropped onto an unknown island to fight their former peers until one remains alive. What ensues is drama, action, comedy, and most important, tragedy all rolled into a single RP. Gradually, over each "season", more and more secrets are revealed behind Danya and the terrorist organization which has managed to keep this twisted act running for over three years.

The roleplay is geared primarily towards intermediate-advanced level writers. SOTF is open for anyone to join - although there is a member approval process in place, as well as a rigorous character acceptance system.

Version 4 of SOTF has reached its conclusion, and the Pre-Game for Version 5 is now in progress.

SOTF can be found here. The wiki can be found here. Unfortunately, this recently suffered an error which cost it significant amounts of data, including a large number of student profiles. Board members are currently concentrating on wiki updates for version 4.

As of March 2010, SOTF also has a spin off site, known as SOTF Mini, geared towards faster games and newer writers, as well as being the site for 'official' larger-scale Alternate Universe RPs. All three of the games, The Program, SOTF-TV, and Virtua-SOTF, are nearing their conclusions. Meanwhile, a "Second Chances" edition has started up, exclusive to characters from previous games who have died before.

For reference, those RPing characters are called 'handlers' on the board, so if you see SotF examples using the word, this is what is meant by it.

If you thought this page was about the slogan used to summarise the theory of evolution and later appropriated by people who consider themselves fit, you're looking for The Social Darwinist.

General
"Mitch: Dog eat dog. Dogs don't eat dogs, they eat birds and cats and Kibblebits if they have a family. Those words are silly. But I would have gotten that right if that silly glasses boy hadn't answered before me. Yes, I would have gotten it right."
 * Abandoned Hospital: Every island used in the four seasons have had an abandoned clinic, usually small buildings. The location name on the forum is usually some variation of "Abandoned Hospital".
 * Aborted Arc: Considering the nature of the game, it's to be expected that a lot of storylines will be left hanging or unfinished.
 * Abusive Parents: This occurs very often, although most of the more obvious examples can be found within the first two games. For some, such as Mariavel Varella, this is a defining part of their Backstory.
 * All There in the Manual: A lot of extra information about the students, including their background and even appearance, is included in their profiles.
 * Anti-Hero: Many, the most notable being Bryan Calvert, Hawley Faust,
 * Anti-Villain: Just as many. Bobby Jacks and Aaron Hughes are examples of this trope:
 * For Bobby, whilst he does play the game, he is constantly plagued by his guilty conscience, being painfully aware of everything he is doing.
 * Aaron Hughes, on the other hand, is a plain Manipulative Bastard, given the perfect opportunity to kill Nick Reid, a known killer, but leaves him alive to kill one of his former friends and use his death to turn him into a martyr. And just so he can eliminate the competition.
 * Anyone Can Die
 * Art Evolution: Newer readers are regularly amazed when they see the writing... er, quality... back in V1, considering where the game is now.
 * Big Bad: Victor Danya, head of the terrorist group behind SOTF.
 * Bloodstained-Glass Windows: In each version there is always a church of some kind on the island.
 * Break the Cutie/Haughty: This happens a lot... Though given the nature of the story and the game, is that really so surprising?
 * Bulletproof Vest: Subverted for the most part - in SOTF, these tend to be treated very realistically. However, this is also played straight in the case of Shannon McLocke, who takes a close range shotgun blast to the chest and gets up with barely a scratch.
 * Chekhov's Skill: This sometimes happens with the profiles of the characters. Newbies often try to cram in as many potentially useful skills as possible (such as survival training, firearm proficiency and martial arts. Made ridiculous when you consider that the characters are supposed to be Ordinary High School Students.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Mitch Gunther, Anna Kateridge, Cisco Vasquez, Lily Ainsworth, Maria Graham, and Annaliese Hanson are definitely this:
 * Mitch:

"Anna: Oh dear... I regret to say this, but I feel as though I'm in the uncanny valley right now... oh my, did that inside joke come out alright? I hope I did..."
 * Anna:

"Cisco: Are...are you going to kill me?
 * Cisco:

George Leidman: What? No, no. Not at all! Why would I?

Cisco: Oh...that's...a bit disappointing."

"Lily: Blimey! I love watching the figure skaters twirl on the ice, they look so nice. Did you know that the figure skating dates back to prehistoric times? The first actual account of it was written by a monk in cantebury..."
 * Lily:

"Maria: (thinking) I wonder what happened? I'll have to ask him about it later...what, why am I still thinking in blue? Oh, there we go."
 * Maria:

"Annaliese: Ray, there’s a zombie in our yard."
 * Annaliese:

"Melina Frost: Go on then... show him why we're called the Poison Angles [sic].
 * Cluster F-Bomb: Adam Dodd in V1, Dorian Sanders in V3 and Kris Hartmann in V4, the lattermost in three different languages. Jimmy Brennan, on the other hand, should get points for sheer density.
 * Co-Dragons: Steven Wilson, Jim Greynolds, Melvin Carter and Sonia Ngyuen, collectively known as the Big Four.
 * Deserted Island: The main stage of Survival of the Fittest.
 * Disc One Final Boss: Players or villains who are killed off either before the halfway mark or before the story really kicks into high gear fall into this category - Jacob Starr in v1, Blood Boy in v3, Clio Gabriella in v4, and Cristo Ruiz in SOTF: Evolution.
 * Downer Ending: All the versions by default - when the game has only one survivor, there's going to be precious little to smile about.
 * Explosive Leash: Following the story of Battle Royale, collars are fitted to every character. They go off if they are in a dangerzone, if attempts are made to remove them, if the character attempts to escape, if they piss off Danya...
 * Expy: Some of the characters are blatant clones of either past SOTF characters (such as Gabriel Theobaldt for Oliver Dodd) or characters from Battle Royale (such as Mariavel Varela for Mitsuko Souma).
 * Flashbacks: Loads of them.
 * From Nobody to Nightmare: Take an entire senior class of normal high school students, trap them in a last man standing fight to the death with (supposedly) no chance of escape, and see how many psychos and mass murderers you get.
 * Genre Busting: In many ways; on one hand, like the source material, it is pretty difficult to define what kind of genre it is. On the other, with so many different writing styles across so many characters in one place, the final product of Survival of the Fittest is downright impossible to define as a single genre.
 * Handguns: A common weapon.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: Notably, handlers can do this, using their 'Hero Card' to have their own character killed off in order to save someone else's.
 * It can easily stray into Senseless Sacrifice territory however if the character who is saved then goes and dies soon after, e.g. through inactivity or being rolled again right away.
 * He Who Fights Monsters: The entire concept of player-killers is based in this. They're targeting people who are playing the game, but in doing so are becoming players themselves.
 * The scope of their player targeting can help this along, too. Sure, that girl who killed 6 people probably deserves it, but how do they know that guy who killed 1 didn't do it in self-defense?
 * Hidden Agenda Villain: Danya's agenda is so well hidden that even most of the handlers don't know what it is, let alone the characters. This is a bigger deal than it sounds when you take into account that the handlers are the ones who write the plot. After six years and four versions of the game, with a fifth on the way, only a few hints have been shown.
 * High School: Since the involved characters are high school students, the pregames versions two, three, four, and five, as well as spinoff seasons The Program, SOTF-TV and Second Chances, took place in the schools the characters attended (Bathurst, Hobbsborough, Franklyn Senior, and PJ Gilroy Academy in v2, Southridge in v3, Bayview Secondary in v4, Aurora High for v5, General’s Pride in The Program v1, Detroit Central High and Silver Dragon Academy in SOTF-TV v1, and Colehurst for Second Chances) and the cities they lived in (Denton for v2, Highland Beach for v3 and Second Chances, St. Paul for v4, Seattle for v5, Pittsburgh for The Program v1, and Detroit and Bryan, Texas, for SOTF-TV v1).
 * Improbable Weapon User: Due to the sick sense of humour of Danya in Survival of the Fittest, bobble-head dolls and plastic hammers have been known to come into play as assigned weapons.
 * Killed Off for Real: Subverted in the case of the v3 escapees and Burton Harris (the first time each of them were 'killed', that is)
 * Kill'Em All: The whole point of the game, being based on Battle Royale, is to force the involved students to kill each other off until there is only one survivor.
 * Kill the Cutie: Hey! Is there a character you like in Survival of the Fittest? It's almost definite they won't make it to the end, thanks to the premise.
 * Lampshade Hanging: Has proven to be quite common. For example:

Jeff Marontate: Poison Angles, huh? Oh, I'll give you a whole new set of angles in a minute, my darling."

"Danya: "Let's just say that Sera Wingfield took him to heaven before she sent him to hell. Hey, she was good to the man.""
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Each game has over one hundred students, and one of the test runs had two hundred, as did v3. V4 had 276 characters altogether. These character counts aren't including the terrorists themselves, adults, or side characters who don't make it into the games.
 * Made of Explodium: Cars and heads (the collars, so justified) are included in Survival of the Fittest. In the case of the exploding car, (in particular one in v1 with Jeremy Torres at the wheel) this causes an entire building to go up in a huge fireball too.
 * The Mole: Steven Wilson, aka. Principal Wilson, for Bathurst in v2, for the terrorists in v4.
 * Mutual Kill: Kiyoko Asakawa vs. Cassandra Roivas in v1, Sera Wingfield vs. Gail Smith in v2, Melina Frost vs. Beth Vandelinder in v3, Jaclyn Kusche vs. Charlotte Cave and Alex White vs. Jimmy Brennan in v4.
 * One of Us: Many of the members of the site, and even one of the admins, frequent TV Tropes and can consider themselves avid tropers. Even without TV Tropes as a criteria, you'd be hard pressed to find a member or handler who doesn't have some sort of interest that puts them square in this category.
 * The Power of Friendship: Subverted to hell in many, many instances. Sydney Morvran, winner of V0 (the final 'test run') is the most prominent example of this. He ends up being the sole survivor of his first game by using his best friend as a human shield after all the rest of his friends started attacking one another in a paranoid fit. Then Syd was put into the next game as punishment for not killing anybody.
 * Out with a Bang: Happens to a few characters in V1 and in V2. As Mr. Danya put it during his announcement of Matt Drew's death at the hands of Sera Wingfeld:


 * Rare Guns: The SPAS-12, Auto-Mag, Desert Eagle, and even the two-of-a-kind full-auto Pancor Jackhammer, all make multiple appearances.
 * Realism: The ultimate direction SOTF has been trying to take as of late. It serves as a double-edged sword a lot of the time, though; realism for the characters is the biggest focus, as it eliminates common Mary Sue traits and focuses more on the concept that any normal high-schooler, rather than the kid with an explicably good reason, can start killing their friends, but when it's applied to the setting and possible storylines, the whole thing starts to fall apart...
 * Schedule Slip: Every version has had the occasional slip in schedule, but this is most prevalent in v3, where there was a 5-month hiatus in between Eddie Sullivan's death (7th place), and James Brown and Alexis Machina's death (6th and 5th place), then a seven-month hiatus between then and endgame being released. This extended period of time allowed for one-and-a-half-years of pre-game.
 * Sinister Surveillance: The cameras all around the Island, along with the collars track everything the students are doing.
 * Sure Why Not: A staff member once joked that one of the terrorist programmers Dennis Lourvey paid his way through MIT by being a male stripper. This was quickly accepted as canon. Similar 'throw it in' moments happen at a startling rate.
 * Web Original: The RP is based on Koshun Takami's Battle Royale, but it has entirely original characters and a very different setting and plot; it started out being set in the Battle Royale universe, but was eventually retconned into an original world.
 * Write Who You Know: There are a large number of self insert characters or characters who are basically people each handler knows in real life. These characters are typically portrayed realistically, however.
 * Your Head Asplode: Collar detonation. Stay in a danger zone too long, try to remove the collar, suffer an unfortunate impact, get used as an example by Danya to try to scare off SADD or Liz Polanski...

Version 1

 * A Boy and His X: Cody Jenson, the villain of V1, has this with him and his bike. However, instead of starting him down the path to manhood, it starts him down the path to insanity.
 * Aerith and Bob: The main American high school from this version had students with regular names such as Andrew, Cleo, Duncan and Mallory. It also had students named Venka, Shoar, Umi, Rais and Nevera.
 * Attempted Rape: Johnny Lamika ambushes and tries to rape Adam Dodd. However, before things can get too far, Adam manages to bring out his taser and fend Lamika off, before proceeding to beat him to death.
 * Car Fu: is run over by . Repeatedly.
 * Consummate Liar: Cody Jenson (at least pre-psychotic) was a devilish liar, stringing along Adam Dodd for quite some considerable time before the latter even started to get suspicious. (Jenson pretended he was another kid, leading to Adam talking to him about how much he wanted to kill... well, him). When he finds out later who Jenson really is, Adam is needless to say, not pleased.
 * Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday: The day of the school trip (when the abductions took place) is that of Jacob Starr's sixteenth birthday.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him: Happens to ; a helicopter that's shot down crashes on top of her.
 * Dual-Wielding: Done briefly, where after the machete-wielding Andrew Klock is wounded with a corkscrew in his fight with Cole Hudson he pulls it out of himself and attacks Cole with both weapons, eventually lodging the corkscrew in an artery.
 * Early Installment Weirdness: Survival of the Fittest started out... oddly, to say the least. Many handlers are surprised when they read all the way back to version 1, which was more lenient about realism and good writing than the current version. This results in seeing character concepts that wouldn't work nowadays but made it through in a previous version, or seeing deaths that would be laughed off if you tried them now.
 * Gollum Made Me Do It: Cillian Crowe is more or less completely under control of a malevolent alter ego he calls "Haddy" which forces him to kill people and overall act like an extremely dangerous psychopath. This was something that was sometimes parodied with the phrase "Haddy tells me to SMASH!".
 * Guns Akimbo: Two examples came from v1, during the same gun battle. Peri Barclay wielded two revolvers, but this proved completely ineffective as he failed to hit anyone. Jacob Starr later did the same with his gun and one that an ally dropped, but he alternated fire between the two guns and it wasn't really to hit anyone as much as it was to force Peri and his ally Steven to keep their heads down, covering the other group's retreat.
 * He Who Fights Monsters: Adam Dodd in turns into one of these for a good while during his tenure on the v1 island. His obsession with getting revenge on Cody Jenson leads him to mow down a good six or seven of his fellow students, despite his supposedly heroic motives. In something of a subversion however, he lives to come to realise his actions have been misguided and returns to a more conventional Anti-Hero mold.
 * Hearing Voices: Turns out to be the case with Callum Hadley, who suffered from schizophrenia and constantly heard voices coming from a non-existent girl named "Beth".
 * Heroic BSOD: Adam Dodd, after the deaths of Madeleine Shirohara and Amanda Jones and a few other characters.
 * Ironic Nursery Tune: Cillian Crowe singing 'happy birthday' to himself, while not exactly a nursery rhyme, embodies this trope perfectly. That is, if you consider that he was currently thinking about killing the person he was talking to at the time - insisting on showing him his 'present' (a meat cleaver).
 * Is This Thing Still On?: Terrorists McLocke, Kaige and Rice accidentally activate the PA system in their headquarters, treating the students to a charming rendition of a Slash Fic (involving two of the students) they found on the web. Danya is not pleased, particularly when they go from reading the fic to insulting him and the entire organisation.
 * Leaning on the Furniture: David Jackson does this in a flashback, leaning back in his chair so it rises onto its back legs, and putting his legs on the table. However, this wasn't so much to be rude as to relax, as he was exhausted from practice earlier. Amusingly, he is sitting back to back with Jack O'Connor, his teammate, so not only is his chair resting against Jack's, but they converse (with a Shout-Out to Battle Royale) without even facing each other.
 * Made of Iron: While there were other examples, Jacob Starr has been the most egregious example by far. The SOTF community's term for this trope - the Jacob Treatment - was even named after him.
 * My Greatest Failure: Adam Dodd doesn't only have one of these, but two. The first of these is allowing himself to become separated from the other members of his group - among them his girlfriend and other close buddies of his. . Adam, of course, blames himself for this. His second stems from an incident where his (mentally unstable) brother attacked him. Adam regrets throughout version 1 his failure to forgive his older brother.
 * My Nayme Is: Gabrielle Minase, where a normally female name has been given to a male student. There's also Cillian Crowe (pronounced kill-yan, not sill-yan), Peri Barclay, Stevan Hyde, Cyndi Pullman and Angharad Davies (pronounced ann-harrud)
 * Naked First Impression: Marie Zaid walks in on a showering Adam Dodd. It's... awkward.
 * Parasol of Prettiness: Clemence Ceillet de Rousseau owned one such parasol. She quickly abandons it, though, considering "She had no time to bother with petty things".
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Adam Dodd swears vengeance against Cody Jensen after Cody's definitive crossing of the Moral Event Horizon, . After drifting for a while in a Heroic BSOD, Adam takes down everyone who tries to kill him one by one, and when Adam and Cody finally face off, Adam fulfills his vow of vengeance by putting a sword through Cody and then carving the word "rapist" into his chest.
 * Self-Made Orphan: Cillian Crowe and Daphne Rudko both murdered their own parents, though Cillian was confined to an insane asylum due to his actions while Daphne got off scot free.
 * Shoot the Dog: Adam Dodd was forced to euthanise his friend Marcus Roddy, as he had fallen into a coma. Most of the rest of his group didn't agree with the action, but Adam pointed out that had they left him catatonic, somebody else would have just come along and done the same, or he would have just been eaten by animals or some equally gruesome fate.
 * Stout Strength: Ian Hargrave, though relegated to an Informed Ability because he never gets to use it.
 * Stuffed Into the Fridge: This occurs with the death of at the hands of Cody Jenson. Arguably, it was overshadowed by the simultaneous death (and rape) of.
 * Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Sydney Morvran, the winner of Version 0 (the prequel to Version 1), is put into the following game as punishment for not actively killing anyone. He becomes one of the first fatalities.
 * Ten Paces and Turn: Happens in the climax. Interestingly,
 * Tongue Trauma: One of Cillian Crowe's kills in Survival of the Fittest v1 has him rip out a guy's tongue, and then slicing open his skull.
 * Turbine Blender: A variant. tried to swim away from the island, but winds up being shot by the patrol boats and then sucked into the propellers. While he's still alive as well.
 * Twang! "Hello.": The duel between Jacob Starr and David Jackson starts with Jacob throwing his knife at David, only for it to miss and hit the tree David was standing in front of.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Adam Dodd receives a horrified reaction from his friends after he shoots a comatose member of his group in the head. Needless to say, just about everybody there called him out on it.
 * Not to mention that during the final two, the other finalist Jack O'Connor brutally called him out on all of his murders throughout the game.

Version 2

 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: A sanitary sewer like this appears on the island used for version 2, spanning the entire island underground, but from the vague descriptions it's implied that people can only just barely move across the walkways on the sides, and that otherwise it's fairly cramped.
 * Big Damn Heroes: A notable example is that of Seth Mattlock rescuing Bryan Calvert and Tori Johnson from a player - pulling it off in the true spirit of the trope: just in the nick of time. Amusingly, this is because he waited before pulling off the save, although he was, admittedly, trying to get the best possible shot on the bad guy.
 * Cain and Abel: gets killed by
 * Car Fu: Subverted with Andrew Ponikarovsky: he nearly runs over Penelope Withers after getting hold of a car, but manages to swerve out of the way in time..
 * Cue the Sun: The last night of version two doesn't end until has finally won and is being airlifted off the island. Only then does the sun finally start to rise, as if confirming that  fight for survival is over.
 * Driven to Suicide: Right near the very end, kills himself after, who he'd been trying to protect throughout the entire game, is killed.
 * Dying Declaration of Love: gives one to.
 * Evil Teacher: Steven Wilson, the principle of Bathurst High School, is actually one of Danya's terrorists and is responsible for abducting his own students.
 * Flat What: Danya, in Caitlin Evans's post-game evaluation.
 * Four Is Death: The "Big Four", who answer only to Danya, debut in this version. They are Steven Wilson, Melvin Carter, Sonia Nguyen, and Jim Greynolds and are responsible for the high school students' abductions.
 * Hell Hotel: One of these cropped up in this version. It became one of the bloodiest places in the game - no fewer than fifteen students met their ends somewhere within it. Escapades taking places there included (and were not limited to): murder, castration, evisceration and necrophilia.
 * I Love the Dead: Sam Sorenson.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Shae Arnav thought it would be a good idea to cut up and eat one of the corpses..
 * Kill the Ones You Love: Bryan Calvert has to Mercy Kill his best friend, Seth Mattlock, en route to to fighting Mariavel Varella, a former friend turned psycho.
 * Laser Sight: One of the guns had a laser sight, though it went unused.
 * Ludicrous Gibs: spontaneously explodes due to a violent chemical reaction inside her stomach.
 * Murder by Mistake: Bryan Calvert shoots at who he believes to be principal murderess Mariavel Varella. He shoots and kills by mistake instead.
 * My Nayme Is: Andi Ayala, Derrin Istoli and Greggory Archer.
 * No Ending: V2 ends with  and... well, nothing. As of v5, people still don't know what happened after that. There was supposed to be a part two, but at this rate we'll never know other than Danya and Wilson got out of the situation alive. A final end may or may not be upcoming, however.
 * Street Urchin: Cathalie Meguro and Mitch Gunther, though they lived in an orphanage instead of on the streets.
 * Teen Genius: Brandon Cuthbert, who is in the 11th grade at the age of 12.
 * Wretched Hive: The students' hometown of Denton, New Jersey. Criminal gangs are everywhere in the city, which is practically run by the most powerful of them instead of by the Mayor himself. Like any other gangs, they've divided the city up between themselves, and they maintain a tense peace between them, as the bloodshed brought by a gang war is bad for business. Even then, though, shootouts and gang brawls are common, while anyone who sticks their nose in the wrong place turns up dead. This is considered highly unusual in SOTF's world, though, and no other city that has been seen is quite as bad as Denton. This came about as an attempt to justify all the gang members in Pregame, and the city apparently disintegrated into full-scale warfare after v2.

Version 3
"Anna: My mother's dead, and so's my sister, just like yours is gonna be at the end of this god damn GAME!"
 * Air Vent Passageway: Used to escape a dead-end by John Sheppard, Vera Lang and Kyrie Joseph, as killer Harry Tsai was hot on their heels and it was the only way out of the building they had run inside.
 * Alas, Poor Yorick: Alice takes the severed head of Guy Rapide and starts talking to it as if Guy were still alive. She then stuffs the head in her daypack.
 * Aloof Ally: Dominica Shapiro's part in SADD was very much one of these, although she was slowly becoming more and more of a part of the team.
 * Angry Black Man: Troy McCann tends to drop into this from time to time. Notably, he intentionally made himself out this way in order to be more like the rap stars he idolizes.
 * A Plague on Both Your Houses: Anna Vaan to Lenny Priestly:

"Danya: Sometimes, kiddos, you don't have to wait around for the competition to kill you. Some of you are so imperfect that Mother Nature decides to do it herself."
 * Apologetic Attacker: Bobby Jacks apologizes to Ivan Roeghmills before cutting his throat.
 * Asexuality: Bobby Jacks has been clearly shown to hold absolutely no attraction to anybody. Even when he suspects a fellow classmate has a crush on him his reaction can be summed up as 'Hm. Interesting'
 * Asian Gal with White Guy: Adam Dodd ends up getting Izzy Cheung, though considering the premise and the ending, it's hard to say what really happened next.
 * Awesome McCoolname: Adonis Zorba.
 * : is the winner of V3.
 * Becoming the Mask: this happened to Dominica Shapiro, who initially joined the group SADD on the off chance their plan would work, with the intent on a double cross if not, but gradually became more and more part of the group properly.
 * Bifauxnen: Dacey Ashcroft is described as being very ambiguous in gender - especially since she is very tall for a girl and in general, just doesn't act 'girly'. That she deliberately perpetrates this charade doesn't help matters for the confused.
 * Big Man on Campus: Arguably Steve Digaetano, probably the most popular guy at Southridge. He isn't perhaps a Jerkass of the highest order, but he certainly has his moments.
 * Born Unlucky: Karl Van Buren, a Survival of the Fittest v3 character, seems to have this problem, as he's notorious for having extremely bad luck. Some of the things noted in his backstory include, in no particular order, almost drowning, the plane he was on sucking in two people, an ax falling down and hurting people while he was reading about an ax murder, and a transvestite commiting suicide and landing on his car, among other things. He doesn't last very long in-game, having had his neck snapped by Gabriel Theobaldt. He even gets posthumous bad luck, as Victor Kurchatov comes across his corpse and... you don't want to know.
 * Calling Card: Blood Boy does this at one point: carving a smiley face into one of his victims. (Blood Boy wore a smiley face mask).
 * Casualty in the Ring: Part of Bobby Jacks' backstory is that he accidentally killed an opponent in a boxing match.
 * Caught with Your Pants Down: This happens to Beth Vandelinder - as Melina Frost walks in her. Particularly squicky as Melina then forces her to keep going before effectively joining in. Depraved Bisexual indeed... Oh, and Melina uses a vase to help.
 * Cute Mute: Dawn Beckworth. Mute and most certainly cute. Although not particularly supernatural.
 * Depraved Bisexual: Melina Frost. She lead the all woman group named the Poison Angels in an attempt to kill all the men on the island. She was about as Ax Crazy as it got. One of the best examples of her insanity is when she rapes Beth Vandelinder. With a vase.
 * Don't Explain the Joke: Carson Baye was a particularly unpopular character in V3 due to his habit of referencing anime, then immediately explaining the references. Although, there were a number of other (mostly out of character) reasons for this too.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him: Mods are often forced to do this to inactive characters. A massive wave of inactivity in V3 forced the admins to (allegedly) kill off a large number of characters off screen en masse, including major characters such as Neil Sinclair, Julie Mikan, Darnell Butler, and even Adam Dodd.
 * Everything's Worse with Bees: Katherine Blanco dies after a severe allergic reaction from a bee sting. Mr. Danya is less than sympathetic.

"Melina: You know? I never really liked men. Do you know why? It's because they always WANT something. Did you know that? Well, obviously you do. Men constantly WANT. They want to hold you, touch you, kiss you. They want to make you THEIRS. But? I never really liked that you know. That's why, instead of letting them TAKE whatever they want? I decided to WANT and TAKE from them first!"
 * Extremity Extremist: Bobby Jacks almost invariably resorts to his fists in combat. He is, however, a boxer, so that isn't a huge surprise. He doesn't seem to have many compunctions about using his head either. It's mostly a case of sticking to what he's good at. (In fact, the one time he tried to kick somebody he immediately got his ass kicked).
 * Genius Bruiser: professional boxer Bobby Jacks stands at 190-1 cm and weighs in at 93 kg. He's also shown to be very intelligent, capable of trickery, fighting very tactically, and being able to quote Shakespeare (relevantly) purely from memory.
 * Genius Ditz: Keiji Tanaka is firmly established to be an utter moron within moments of his entry into V3. However, he has an almost unparalleled skill handling a sword (due to years of practice), to the point where he comes close to defeating an axe-wielding opponent with a broken sabre whilst
 * Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Alice Jones for most of the game carries around a plush rabbit, and is mentioned as having a collection of stuffed animals back home. Later on, she starts to hallucinate said rabbit talking to her, and eventually replaces it with
 * Heel Face Revolving Door: Happens with Julie Mikan. She undergoes a Face Heel Turn at the very start whilst deciding to play, killing Owen Fontaine gives her a Heel Face Turn and a Heroic BSOD, before a few days later, she once again decides to play, becoming a 'heel' for the second time.
 * He's Back: A villainous variation occurs with Julie Mikan. After killing a fellow classmate she goes into a Heroic BSOD, before somewhat reforming. However, a couple of days later, Julie finally breaks down due to the heat and sleep deprivation, signifying a return for her villainous self.
 * Heroic Sociopath: Near the end of V3, Dominica Shapiro realizes that she has become this
 * Hit Me Dammit: In a more lethal instance, Wade Wilson of tells Edward Sullivan to shoot him. Edward, seeking vengeance against Wade for killing a girl he had a crush on, is all too happy to oblige.
 * Honor Before Reason: Neil Sinclair fits this trope to the letter. The primary example of such behaviour is trusting Dominica Sharpiro by offering her a place in his Pro escape group, despite knowing, for certain that she who became separated from the others.
 * Hope Spot: Laeil Burbank is tortured by Riz, who cuts her eye out and leaves her to bleed out in a burning hanger, only for her to be rescued and patched up. At which point she dies of a heart attack due to massive blood loss. Also counts as a Real Life Hope Spot, as she wasn't rolled until immediately after she was patched up.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: Bobby Jacks, was carrying about his person and in a smallish daypack at one point, the following: An English Claymore, an Armalon Carbine, a SIG Sauer, a scalpel, a syringe (and the pot of insulin that came with it), a pipewrench, ammo for the carbine (implied to be a lot), supplies five or six time the normal amount, an extensive medical kit, and a lock of hair.
 * I Did What I Had to Do: Bobby Jacks's justification of becoming a player in v3: he wanted to survive by any means necessary.
 * Ignored Epiphany: Bobby Jacks. He quickly comes to the realisation that he's one of the bad guys, but immediately after he decides that he's gone too far to try and repent. He even supplements this with a quote from Macbeth (the exact same one which Macbeth himself uses in this selfsame situation).
 * Ironic Echo: in a scene that's an homage to the Joker, Blood Boy says "Why so serious?" as part of his intimidating speech to Matthew Wittany.
 * I Shall Taunt You: Happens on two separate occasions with the same characters: Tyson Neills and Bobby Jacks. The first time around, Tyson taunts Bobby in an attempt to provoke a fight with Troy Mc Cann (to raise his 'street credit'). The second time is on the island itself, in an attempt to make him lose his cool and do something stupid.
 * It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It: Adam Reeves attempts to justify his rape of Maxie Dasai by asserting that her body's arousal meant that she was into it. It's left ambiguous, but strongly implied that he brought her to orgasm (Reeves himself certainly thought so). He is the only one that thought it was okay.
 * Instant Death Bullet: Usually averted, but played straight in the v3 Endgame when
 * Knight Templar Big Brother: Lenny Priestly will do anything to make sure his twin sister Elizabeth is safe. Literally anything, as he kills people for this reason. Though possibly a subversion, as it has been implied that he used her as an excuse to kill, especially since he went Ax Crazy and stopped being an Anti-Villain.
 * Locked in a Freezer: Alex Steele gets locked in the freezer by Guy Rapide. He tries to escape by shooting the lock out, but instead has a bullet ricochet into his chest.
 * Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter!: Sean O'Cann has a 'word' with God. Over the course of V3 up to that point, his best friend, cousin, and boyfriend had all been killed, as well as it being very likely he would go the same way.
 * Meta Guy: Quincy Archer is the resident Meta Guy, writing a blog about the fake SOTF and the tropes it shows, and then commenting through out the stories on the actions of the various villains and heroes.
 * Morality Chain: Elizabeth Priestly is this to twin brother Lenny. When she's not around him, he acts even more of a complete bastard to get her back/find her.
 * Motive Rant: Melina Frost does this before attacking Dacey Ashcroft and Herman Johnson. Ironically, Dacey isn't a guy.

"Lulu: See this thing, Lenny? Now you take your fucking hands off your handgun or I'll blow a hole through your head."
 * Mushroom Samba: James Brown accidentally ends up with Beth Vandelinder's acid pills when he wakes up, under the impression that they were aspirin.
 * My Nayme Is: Ivye Dewley and Khrysta Lawrence.
 * Near-Rape Experience: J.R. Rizzolo's torture of Laeil Burbank ALMOST starts out with a rape scene, but then Riz decides it'd be a better idea to cut out her eye instead. This was due to Riz' writer planning a rape scene, but deciding at the last minute that he wasn't up for it.
 * Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight: Subverted when Ric Chee and Bobby Jacks fight with Good Old Fisticuffs. When Bobby realises that, conversely to his expectations, he is getting beaten down mercilessly (by a guy with no combat expertise whatsoever) he pulls out a scalpel and
 * Offhand Backhand: Bobby Jacks pulls off the firearm based version with Andy Mc Cann. Bobby hears the latter cry out behind him and shoots him in the head with a pistol without even turning around.
 * Paper Cutting: Maxie Dasai gets hit in the face by an arrow and comes away with a minor wound across her cheek, somehow managing to avoid any serious harm.
 * Pay Evil Unto Evil: Well-Intentioned Extremist Lenny Priestly kills and runs off into the woods, leaving Gabe McCallum and Steve Digaetano to mourn her. Next time they meet, Gabe shoots down  in a fit of rage, despite Steve's best efforts.
 * Poisoned Weapons: Blood Boy's assigned weapons were an Ida (an African sword) and a vial of poison meant to be applied to the blade.
 * Poor Communication Kills: Simon Wood mistakes Darnell Butler for a player of the game (not altogether unreasonable, as he is holding a bloodied sword) and attacks to buy his girlfriend time to escape. Before Darnell can get the chance to explain, he has
 * Precision F-Strike: Used spectacularly. Yes, while most characters swear like sailors, cute, Meganekko, sugary sweet Louise "Lulu" Altaire manages to pull this off. When she meets Lenny for the third time, after he has just killed her friends the previous times, this time she's prepared. She's killed people, she has a gun and isn't afraid to use it.

"Goodman: "It's ove-""
 * Psycho Lesbian: Lyn "Laeil" Burbank of Survival of the Fittest's third version. After confessing her love to a female friend, she gets bullied by her classmates for being a "dyke". Once she gets on the island, she kills her cousin (who was one of her major bullies) by stabbing him in the groin repeatedly. Afterwards, she decides that she was going to die anyways, and that she was going to get revenge on everyone who ever bullied her.
 * Quicksand Sucks: Shows up in v3, where it's used to kill both and, one getting stuck in the sand long enough to be stabbed, the other being pulled in head-first by Melina and drowned.
 * Revenge by Proxy: Lenny Priestly kills Gabe McCallum's love interest Viki Valentine. Later on, Gabe gets his revenge on Lenny by.
 * Rope Bridge: There's a rope bridge over a ravine, but subverts the collapsing part by having it be about as durable as you'd expect from a bridge on a military base. Gabe McCallum lampshades this while crossing it and wondering if it'll fall, reminding himself that the military wouldn't risk men and equipment by making a bridge that wasn't sturdy.
 * Sad Clown: Sean O'Cann, to which the page quote applies almost perfectly. Prior to the point in the game (Day 3) that he found out his best friend, boy friend, and cousin died (three different people, before anyone says anything) he still cracked a joke every now and then. Afterward though, Sean begins making all sorts of remarks, not all of which are in the best taste, and sometimes are just plain offensive.
 * Satellite Character: Elizabeth Priestly, who plays the satellite to her twin brother, Lenny. Most of what she does consists of following Lenny around and angsting about his psychotic behavior.
 * Sedgwick Speech: Josh Goodman.

"Kathleen: "Oh Adam, there's no way you could shoot me with that gun. You see, people like you aren't fit for these kinds of situations. Sure, you're basically a big load of muscle with more than enough attitude to compensate, but compared to people like me, you're nothing. Ultimately, it's the smart, the beautiful, and the well-prepared that are going to make it far in this game, and when it comes to you-""
 * Kathleen Martin too.


 * Shell-Shocked Veteran: Adam Dodd,.
 * Stalker with a Crush: An odd variation (a non-villain example), from Survival of the Fittest is Matthew Wittany, V3's resident Woobie. A fan of photography, he carried around an album filled with pictures of boys he found attractive. Anderson Walker, the subject of most of these pictures, was not best pleased when he discovered this. Neither was his boyfriend, Sean O'Cann.
 * Sweet Polly Oliver: Huge Schoolgirl Dacey "Dawson" Ashcroft pretends to be a guy due to the negative attention she received in her previous school, feeling it easier to get through highschool if everyone believes her to be a man. Luckily, she doesn't look all that feminine, and unlike some of the other female Southridge students lacks large breasts.
 * Taking You with Me: Melina Frost from kills Beth Vandelinder this way. After the latter stabbed another almost fatally and left her to die in quicksand, the former grabbed hold of her hair in her last act and dragged Beth under with her, killing them both.
 * The Fatalist: Adam Reeves in Survival of the Fittest. Also a Social Darwinist.
 * The Load: Cara Scholte. Maxie Dasai has to literally pull Cara around for a good half a day and was prevented from fleeing from a dangerous encounter with Adam Reeves in concern for her companion's well-being. Sure, Cara was catatonic at the time, but given the outcome of the fight...
 * The Messiah: Neil Sinclair. No matter how many times he is knocked back by more cynical or pessimistic characters, he keeps on trying, time and again, to gather as many students he can in an attempt to escape. His hugely idealist approach includes but is not limited to inviting a classmate into the group who had previously killed one of the other members of his group - S.A.D.D.
 * The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In a fight between Laeil Burbank and Melina Frost, Madison Conner suddenly appears and attacks Laeil to keep her from killing Melina before she can. Laeil also swears to be the only one to kill Melina, as well as kill anyone who tries to beat her to it.
 * The Stoic: Bobby Jacks very much embodied this trope, at least in pregrame. During version 3, he has, however, shown emotion a couple of times. On the other hand, most of these occurrences happened either when he was alone or internally - so other characters wouldn't be privy to the same knowledge as readers. The three occasions where Bobby shows real emotion are justified however. Once because he had just been shot, the other two times because his Berserk Button was pushed.
 * The Unfavourite: Lyn "Laeil" Burbank. While actually a niece rather than a daughter, her uncle and aunt still give her the same unfavorite treatment, treating her like something that just has to be tolerated, while lavishing all their attention on her Jerk Jock cousin, Anthony, who regularily makes her life hell. Once she's on the island, though, it isn't long before she gets bloody revenge on him.
 * The Unpronounceable: Vilhjalmur Sigurbjornsson. Though his first name is often shortened down to Will, his last name still causes problems for Danya.
 * Victoria's Secret Compartment: Maxie Dasai does this with a gun.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: During the big stand-off between SADD and Bobby Jacks, Arty Williams stumbled onto the scene with a password-locked cell phone, upon which he tossed SADD the cell phone (telling them the password,) telling them it might be their ticket to getting off the island before running off to get himself killed in a (failed) attempt to save Ivan Roeghmills from a hostage situation. SADD decides to honor his noble sacrifice by never mentioning him or the phone ever again.
 * While Rome Burns: A particularly notable version occurs, where Carson Baye plays on his DS while a gunfight is starting around him.
 * Whip It Good: Brendan Bredard is assigned a bullwhip as a weapon, which he later uses to strangle Luis Chezinski to death.
 * Worthy Opponent: refers to  as this at the end of v3.
 * You Can't Go Home Again: manages to return home after (ostensibly) being the Sole Survivor, only to find that.

Version 4
"Aston: "And who better to null my own pain than the only person I truly hate on this island? You disgust me that much."
 * Accidental Murder: A couple of deaths have occured this way; (shot by  with a lipstick gun) and  (pushed over by  and cracking his head on a cinderblock),  (shot by ),  (impaled on a tree branch by ), and   (shot by  in the leg and bled out).
 * Adam and or Eve: Eve Walker-Luther and Eva Lancaster.
 * Afraid of Blood: Liam "Brook" Brooks and Rena Peters suffers from this. Sadly, they're also on a deserted island and forced to kill their classmates...
 * All Drummers Are Animals: Maria "Animal" Graham, certified Cloudcuckoolander, plays the drums for Blank Nation.
 * All Girls Want Bad Boys: Rosa Fiametta's attraction to JJ Sturn, despite the fact he's pretty much a Jerkass (whilst they're dating, at least). This backfires on her in a major way.
 * Amusement Park of Doom: One of the locations in v4 is an abandoned fairground, with a ferris wheel and carousel, and a Hall of Mirrors nearby.
 * Axe Crazy:
 * Badass: Aston Bennett starts out relatively unassuming, but when she gets revenge on  for an earlier misfortune, she gets scary.

(shoots Quincy in the elbow)

Aston: "Hand slipped. The next one won't miss.""

""Come on! I deserve better than this! Kill me properly!""
 * Battle Amongst the Flames: The fight between Maria Graham and Maxwell Lombardi takes place inside a burning bunker.
 * Part of the endgame takes place inside a burning house, although no-one actually dies inside it.
 * Bear Trap: Lucy Ashmore's designated weapon in is one of these.
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted in the case of Celeste Beaumont. After days of wandering the swamps, she looks horrible.
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * On a smaller scale, Joe Rios interrupts a shootout between Aston Bennett and  by sneaking up on , kneecapping him with a borrowed pistol, and clocking him in the jaw with his own gun.
 * Big Screwed-Up Family: The Fiametta triplets. One (Rosa) is pretty much the poster girl for Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places, and has been known to hit on Anything That Moves, another (Frankie) regularly uses drugs, and the last, and the one male out of the three (Ilario), not only is heavily pressured by his father, but has to look after the other two in spite of actually being the youngest (albeit by a matter of minutes), and is somewhat neurotic as a result. Add to that mix a clueless stepmother with no emotional connection to the children whatsoever and a father who only really cares about his son, showing it by... insisting that he must perform well at school and more or less ignoring his daughters, and you get this trope.
 * Bi the Way: There's a lot more fluid sexuality in the class of v4 this time around. Mainly, compared to v2's 1 bisexual, v3's 1 bisexual, there are heaps more bisexual students than thought possible. Peter Siu, Brendan Wallace, Madelyn Prowers, Felicia Carmichael, Orn "Dutchy" Ayers, Charlene Norris, Megan Nelson, Dawne Jiang, Colin Falcone, Hayley Kelly, William Hearst...to say this is an overabundant trope says the least about its prevalence.
 * is the first of the terrorist leaders to die.
 * Blind Without'Em: Craig Hoyle and Marco Stonecastle both suffer from terrible vision. Marco loses his glasses during a scuffle with, his sight becomes blurred and he can no longer fight back. Needless to say, it doesn't end well for him...
 * Book Ends: Both Allen Birkman and Brendan Wallace in their final threads remark that they're standing in the same place where they first woke up on the island.
 * When she first wakes up, Tiffany Baker discards her gun into a puddle in the swamp. Some time later she returns to the exact same area and fishes out the gun..
 * Bring My Brown Pants: The very first thing that Jimmy Brennan does once he wakes up on the island is... wet himself. Then he starts crying and running around screaming throughout the forest, eventually shouting out that "Craig Hoyle will rape you and wear your skin as a coat!"
 * Tabi Gweneth similarly wets herself (and passes out) soon after waking up on the island...notably, she still doesn't realize that she is in fact on Survival of the Fittest. Possibly a natural reaction to being threatened with an umbrella, but it still makes you wonder about her every-day life.
 * Cain and Abel: kills his brother.
 * Canon Immigrant: Yelizaveta 'Bounce' Volkova started off as a character in the 'In-Universe Chat' (a chatroom where SOTF members could RP being members of the show's audience). After some time, she was brought into the version four pregame as a fully-fledged character.
 * Casanova: Dustin Royal. Also may come off as a Handsome Lech.
 * Cold-Blooded Torture: goes mad and cruelly tortures  While filming it.
 * Companion Cube: Jake Crimson and his cinderblock.
 * Crash Into Hello: Reiko Ishida and Sarah Xu meet this way.
 * Cute Clumsy Girl: Lucy Ashmore has her moments, such as spilling school supplies all over the place when opening her pencil case, or accidentally pouring water on someone's leg. However, this is more out of nervousness, due to being picked on.
 * Darkness Von Gothickname: Meredith Hemmings, or as she prefers to be called, Pandora Black. According to her it's her "soul name".
 * Dead Person Conversation: Albert Lions comes across the body of his friend, and then right away he sees his ghost. Augustus follows Albert around, the pair conversing like normal ( even has to remind Albert that only he can see him). Whether Dougal's ghost is real or just a figment of Albert's imagination is unknown.
 * Later, Simon Telamon falls asleep, after which he manages to remove his collar, only to engage in conversation with his girlfriend . She herself reveals that the entire thing is a dream.
 * Janet Claymont also has a dream conversation with after she almost tries to kill herself by drinking chlorine where he snaps her out of it.
 * Death by Falling Over: Happens a fair bit. hits his head on a rock after being whacked with a stick by .  suffers a slow death, having struck his head on a cinderblock when pushed over by, and  dies when he hits his head on a rock after being shot by.
 * The unusual number of "Death by falling over and hitting your head on a rock" deaths (both in v4 and v3) have led to a few humorous Epileptic Trees.
 * Developing Doomed Characters: "Pre-Game" for v4 existed to establish character relationships, romances, etc, and took up about eighteen months before anything remotely game-related happened.
 * Disney Villain Death: Happens to when he falls backwards over a sheer drop after being shot repeatedly by.
 * Driven to Suicide: Dawne Jiang, Violetta Lindsberg, Hermione Miller, Brock Mason, Lily Ainsworth, Sofia Martelli and Courtney Bradley all kill themselves over the course of the game. Simon Fletcher, Jackie Maxwell, Hilary Strand, and Tyler Franklin also commit suicide, but through having someone else kill them.
 * Drop What You Are Doing: Reiko Ishida does something like this with a piece of bread she had been eating when she finds out that her twin sister Reika has been killed. This quickly reached Memetic Mutation.
 * Dying Declaration of Love: admits her feelings for  as she's dying. Unfortunately,  had feelings for her as well, so for him it was a Dying Declaration of Unrequited Love,.
 * Everything's Worse with Bears: There is a common joke among handlers that inactive characters are killed and eaten by an "Inactivity Bear". Also, in her first post, version 4 character Maria Graham has a dream where she was actually "Robo-Bear 5000", which was, of course, a robotic bear disguised as a student and was going to avenge its kidnapping.
 * Of course, when Version 4's  was due to die...
 * Evil Brit: Maxwell Lombardi fast became one of these after killing and . At the time of his death, he had more than quadrupled his body count. Without provocation.
 * Evil Cripple: Jackie Broughten in a nutshell, who had a permanently damaged leg from getting hit by a car. Her first action on the island? Slicing throat open with a saw. And that's not even going into her Hearing Voices...
 * Extreme Melee Revenge: got revenge on school bully  by beating him to death with a piece of driftwood, and continued to pummel his head in long after he'd died.
 * Eye Scream: There's eye being sliced apart with a cat claw wielded by, then  having his popped by  elbow and penetrated again by his molar, then  being stabbed in the eye with a pencil courtesy of .  thrust a sword hilt right into  eye, and then later on was a victim himself, being stabbed there by.
 * Face Palm: Aileen Borden seems to do this pretty often. To be fair, it fits her normal personality.
 * Face Your Fears: Allen Birkman, an aquaphobe, does this . When is badly injured and lying face-down in the water, he jumps in to pull  to safety.
 * Facing the Bullets One-Liner: when  is about to be killed by :
 * Face Your Fears: Allen Birkman, an aquaphobe, does this . When is badly injured and lying face-down in the water, he jumps in to pull  to safety.
 * Facing the Bullets One-Liner: when  is about to be killed by :

"Andrea: "And uh, Danya, if you want to see more crazy shirtless Andrea, don't blow my collar!""
 * Fan Service: Invoked by Andrea Raymer when Danya begins randomly detonating students' collars in retaliation to Liz Polanksi.

"Dave: "Listen, me and the Help, we're pretty fucking tired to be honest."
 * Flare Gun: recieved a flare gun as an assigned weapon. Later, she shot somebody with it, and while it ends up bouncing off his chest, it ricocheted into the girl next to him and got caught in her shirt, burning a hole right through her before igniting and vaporizing her torso, and then burning down everything in a 20 yard radius.
 * French Jerk: Alice Boucher is an example of this Trope: one of her biggest regrets about being in America is that she doesn't know any insults in English. Due to Character Development after being put on the island (as well as a change in writer), she grows out of this very quickly though.
 * Genki Girl: Maria Graham, who's an odd mix of Genki Girl, Cloudcuckoolander, and Stepford Smiler.
 * Genre Savvy: Bounce had been a massive fan of the series prior to her own involvement in it and as such references things like The Power of Friendship never working in SOTF and the fact that, as an unfit, unpopular nerd, there's no point in her making plans because people like her never stand a chance.
 * Gorn: Averted for the most part, as v4 has been focused more on realism rather than gore and horror. However, the death of was a very... over the top depiction of death by flare gun. To put it simply, liquefied, charred, vaporized, and immolated.
 * Griefer: Alex White holds the equivalent of a temper tantrum when he finds out
 * Groin Attack:
 * Gun Twirling: Harold Fisher tries this before killing Maxwell Lombardi. Naturally, he drops the gun, which Maxwell puts to much better use.
 * Joe Rios does it too out of sheer boredom, with much more success.
 * Hates Being Touched: Isabel Guerra seems to have problems with this. Flashbacks show her recoiling from touch and she screams and falls into a bush after brushing hands with Dave Morrison. It even has been shown to extend to other people being intimate, such as her pretty much having a panic attack when trapped in the restroom with Rosa Fiametta and Felicia Carmichael making out during prom.
 * Hates Everyone Equally: Zach Jamis hates everyone and everything in the world as much as the next thing he hates...except for his best friend Sammy Franklin.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Jacob Charles and Ben Powell, or as they're more affectionately known, "BROMIES!".
 * High School Dance: The lead up to and eventual event of the High School Dance in v4 is ultimately what takes up most of Pre-Game.
 * High School Sweethearts: Janet Claymont and Chadd Crossen. Turns out it was somewhat one sided though, as Chadd spent his dying moments forgiving Janet for cheating on him, whilst Janet spent hers regretting that she couldn't think of something more worthwhile than him.
 * Huge Schoolgirl: Raina Morales is the standout example at 6'6".
 * Human Shield: Occurs early on, where Gracie Wainright attempts to rob Anna Chase (who is not wearing her glasses) and Kitty Gittschall. After being threatened by Kitty and hit by Kyle Portman, Gracie is just distracted enough for Anna to attempt to run away. However, she is quickly caught and held by the hair by Gracie, taking her hostage in an attempt to hold off Kitty and Kyle, so she can rob Anna in peace.
 * I Call It Vera: Appears often. Hayley Kelly actually calls her gun Vera.
 * Informed Loner: Brendan Wallace is introduced as a somewhat cynical Australian New Transfer Student with social anxiety. However, by the end of pre-game he is a member of an activist club, previously had a Secret Relationship with one character, is currently in a relationship with another, has a Manic Pixie Dream Girl best friend, and is a tech guy for a band. However, this can be justified by Character Development / Characterization Marches On very easily.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Richard Han, while not actually a ninja, goofs off and pretends to be one for most of his time on the island. Which makes his first appearance on the island (being stuck in a tree) and that much more funnier.
 * Ironic Nickname: Meredith Hemmings is occasionally referred to as "Merry". She isn't.
 * Instant Fanclub: Reiko Ishida got one of these due to her success in ice skating, often referred to as her "entourage". Bit of a subversion, though, as, unlike most characters that have found themselves in this trope, she's actually quite close friends with them.
 * I'm Standing Right Here: Happens constantly between Isabel Guerra and Dave Morrison, mostly involving racist remarks towards Isabel:

Isabel: "I can hear you still.""

"Ema: I'm Ema, Ema Ryan. Sounds like the normal but only one 'm'. My parents were hipsters, I guess."
 * Instrument of Murder: Isabel Guerra making a shiv out of a trumpet and broken piece of glass. It's called Partario.
 * I Want My Mommy: Amber Whimsy cries for her mummy whilst bleeding to death after being shot in the stomach by Kris Hartmann.
 * Land Down Under: Three Australian students, Jason Harris, Brendan Wallace, and Ben Powell, attended Bayview.
 * Lesbian Jock: Reiko Ishida, of Survival of the Fittest, is a rare example of one of these that does ice skating. Despite the fact that, as noted above, it tends to be seen as "girly", she is masculine enough (and, well, the obvious) to count as being played straight.
 * From the same version is Charlotte Cave, a more traditional example.
 * Another possible example is Alice Blake. She belongs both to a fencing and gymnastics club, though her involvement in gymnastics is more of an Informed Ability considering it hasn't really been mentioned outside her profile.
 * Little Dead Riding Hood: Carol Burke is usually seen wearing a red hoodie. Said character is a Wide-Eyed Idealist in a Kill'Em All type story. This trope has actually been confirmed by her handler.
 * Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places: Rosa Fiametta. She managed to wise up a bit, but that just made future searches for Mr/Miss Right even worse.
 * Love Freak: Orn "Dutchy" Ayers. At one point, he makes a speech to the cameras that he and his friends will prevail over Danya and the game due to The Power of Friendship, saying that friendship will always win over evil. Worth noting, though, is during this speech he is showing the camera (which is broadcasting to live television) the island's map, in an attempt to help any rescuers find where they are. He's also portrayed a lot more sympathetically than most.
 * Love Makes You Evil: quickly swings this way, deciding to kill the rest of the students so that his love  can get off the island alive.
 * Madness Mantra: Kris Hartmann has, with variation, "Voice. Jump. Spin. Squeeze. Bang. Dead." She never actually says it, but it comes up in her thoughts frequently, starting from her Accidental Murder of.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Ladies and gentlemen, Aaron Hughes. This is a guy who, instead of killing an attacker, lets his ally get killed by said attacker, and goes back to his other allies portraying the poor victim as dying in a Heroic Sacrifice in an attempt to encourage them to get revenge on the murderer. Yikes.
 * Meaningful Rename: Spoofed with Meredith Hemmings, who, after identifying herself as a "goth" (she isn't; she's just a poser who is acting out what she thinks goths act like) renames herself "Pandora Black" and repeatedly insists that it's her soul name whenever anyone questions it. Jake Crimson also renamed himself from "Gomez", apparently after his parents' divorce (that, and Rule of Cool). Remy Kim is another character who has gone through this, originally having the last name "Trembley" before his parents separated and having it changed to his mother's maiden name sometime after. This serves to symbolize just how different he is from his sister, Josée Trembley.
 * Miles Gloriosus: Jimmy Brennan is built almost entirely on this trope, pissing his pants and losing his shit in one thread, and bragging about all the ass he's already kicked in the next.
 * Mismatched Eyes: A fair amount of students have heterochromia: Dave Morrison, Charlene Norris, Clio Gabriella and Rose Codreanu. According to his handler, Allen Birkman was also originally planned on having different colored eyes, though this was changed due to the number of students already having the condition.
 * My Nayme Is: Chadd Crossen, Neill Robertson, Remi Pierce, Micheal Raynor and Ema Ryan, the last of which gets lampshaded.
 * My Nayme Is: Chadd Crossen, Neill Robertson, Remi Pierce, Micheal Raynor and Ema Ryan, the last of which gets lampshaded.

": DUDE! CUT IT OUT NOW! WAKE! THE HELL! UP!"
 * Nice Guy: It happens. For example, Reika Ishida, in contrast to her sister. One of her defining traits was that she was nice and friendly, always trying to help out. However, true to the stereotype, she literally gets killed within almost two minutes once she gets to the island. Danya in the following announcement then called her "the less interesting of the Ishida sisters" for this reason.
 * Nightmare Fetishist: Anna Chase. She is a complete and utter aversion of Girls Are Really Scared of Horror Movies. She seems particularly fond of psychological horror and slasher movies, and can be described as a bit obsessed over them at times. It has been shown that on a couple of occasions, if something reminds her of a horror movie she could easily have a "Cool!" type reaction, though not always. Occasionally, this, combined with her normal personality, sides into Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant tendencies, as you might expect.
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: talks  out of commiting suicide and generally helps her out. How does she repay him? By shooting him in the chest and head.
 * Nothing Is Scarier: death. She goes to sleep in a danger zone during the announcements but before it's announced as one, and has a calm, happy, introspective dream... with a constant beeping increasing in frequency throughout. Then, in the middle of a sentence, it cuts off with the notice that she's deceased. Very much a break from the usual Gorn deaths.
 * Not Quite Dead: knocks  off a cliff and watches him plunge into the water below. She doesn't bother checking to see if he surfaces again and believes him to be dead (more than likely because she's exhausted, him almost having killed her). He survives the fall though, and  is furious when she finds that out.
 * Likewise, traps  in a burning building, only for her smash open a window and get out after he's left. He's not happy to find that her name isn't on the morning announcements.
 * Not So Harmless: Jimmy Brennan, who started out as a Miles Gloriosus type who ran around the forest screaming and pissing his pants in the first thread he appeared in, and bragging about being a Badass in the next. For the most part, his antics are fun in a Crosses the Line Twice sort of way, up until he.
 * Not the Fall That Kills You: Played for Laughs / Rule of Funny with 's death. He falls off a mountain, and screams as he falls... only for him to enter another thread as he falls, apparently screaming the entire time and only stopping when he hits the ground and dies. It's actually pretty funny as hell.
 * Obfuscating Insanity: When she first appears on the island, Liz Polanski's first actions are to make herself appear as Ax Crazy as possible to ward off potential attackers. How does she do this? By, among other things, smearing her face with make-up and severing the head off one of her classmates' corpse and carrying it around for a while. It works, for the most part. Except on Milo Taylor. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Off-Screen Breakup: Jonathan Jarocki and Anna Chase broke up before they got on the bus, as revealed in Anna's opening post, mainly due to the fact that the pairing was almost unanomously hated among the writers.
 * Off with His Head: is particularly keen on this method early on, decapitating  and  with a sword. Some collar explosions are also powerful enough to rip a person's head off.
 * Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Reiko Ishida is 4'9, which has been noted to technically make her a midget. However, she was an athlete before the island, and eventually racks up a high kill count.
 * Please Wake Up: This is reaction to finding  corpse.

"He lifted it up to his collar, he knew he was told not to mess with them, but if he was going to survive and win, he would need the damn thing off, let him travel through the danger zones."
 * Pointless Band-Aid: Orn "Dutchy" Ayers is mentioned as wearing a Band-Aid over the bridge of his nose. His profile confirms that this is more of a personality quirk/casual accessory than the result of an injury.
 * Rapunzel Hair: Bridget Connolly, who is well-known for having knee-length red hair, though usually tied back. This was until she cut it while on the island, after hearing about
 * Really Gets Around: Rosa Fiametta is an excellent example, and even comes complete with Anything That Moves tendencies. This has been explained as emotional issues, partly due to seeing herself as The Unfavorite among her siblings.
 * Clio Gabriella; the character's creator explained it was also because of abandonment issues; she was once tricked into believing she was in love, and ever since, she has been purposely sabotaging her relationships or picking the worst possible boyfriends to hook up with in order to stop herself from being hurt again.
 * Refuge in Audacity: The only thing keeping Milo Taylor from being ventilated by any of the assorted known killers he's antagonized. Particularly obvious in the case of Jackie Broughten, who ignores him because he's clearly mentally retarded.
 * Ruptured Appendix:  succumbs to this after several days of escalating symptoms.   suffers a similar fate, only
 * Sanity Slippage: Aston Bennett, after her only remaining friend is killed, starts to lose it a little, as evident by the text.
 * Self-Sacrifice Scheme: manages this by rigging up a power system that would activate the island's only computer, but upon realising he could do it, he also realised that doing so would alert Danya. What he does is
 * Shell-Shocked Veteran: Alice Blake. Before V4 started, she was in a car accident that killed her parents, as well as leaving her scarred. From that point on, she’s more or less the quiet type around everyone except her few close friends.
 * Shout-Out: Damn near everything Micheal Raynor says is a reference to some video game or movie. One character near the start even explodes at him because of the constant shout outs.
 * Shrinking Violet: Gloria Benson. She's always whispering, stuttering, and blushing when she speaks. Even when she talks to her friends, she's painfully shy/quiet, and keeps apologizing for what she says. Lucy Ashmore, also from v4, qualifies as well. She's just as shy, due to bullying. Not to mention sometimes this slides into Cute Clumsy Girl territory as well, due to her nervousness.
 * Sibling Rivalry: Remy Kim and Josee Trembley, who both see themselves as The Unfavorite to their mother, and have been known to attempt to "regain" her love from the other twin.
 * Storming the Castle:
 * Spock Speak: 'Bounce' speaks with excessive formality, which is possibly because English wasn't her parents' first language, although intelligence plays a part.
 * So Beautiful It's a Curse: Charlene Norris's first thoughts upon realizing she is on SOTF is that "people like her, the popular girls with bodies to die for, were rape targets".
 * Strange Girl: Version 4's Anna Chase is... a little off. To get an idea, she is an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with some level of Perky Goth to her, that is obsessed with horror movies, and is a massive Cloudcuckoolander. At one point (in her introductory thread in pre-game) she tells her best friend not to eat her brains (It Makes Sense in Context... sort of). And that's not even going into some of her other personality traits. Overall, she is generally seen as somewhat eccentric by other characters.
 * And then there's Lily Ainsworth, also from v4. She's even more of a Cloudcuckoolander. Her father was a historian, which caused her to grow up in a British castle most of her life due to his work, and she herself has a tendency to ramble off certain facts as an attempt at conversation, while generally having No Social Skills. Add in her odd dress sense and her perky nature, and most characters also see her as a little odd.
 * Sword Cane: Jeremy Franco was given this as his assigned weapon, and provides the page quote.
 * Sword Fight: The first SOTF swordfight happens in this version, between Nick Reid and Maf Tuigamala.
 * Ted Baxter: Jimmy Brennan is a mixture of this and Miles Gloriosus. He's definitely the most Badass, manly, and awesome character on the island who can kick ANY ass!
 * Teen Genius: Peter McCue and Jason Clarke, who are seniors at the age of 16.
 * Tender Tears: Orn "Dutchy" Ayers frequently cries when he reads about the plight of the less-fortunate countries.
 * The Atoner: JJ Sturn, although he wasn't quite as extreme as many examples listed here: He was a giant asshole especially towards women, although he did have his own share of more unpleasant actions.
 * The Dog Bites Back: Dorian Pello, having been manipulated into working for and constantly abused by Danya.
 * The Loins Sleep Tonight: Dustin Royal suffers this embarrassment when attempting to have sex with Maria Graham. Comedic, but also a relief, given he was taking advantage of Maria's highly distressed state at the time to make a move on her.
 * Theme Twin Naming: The Ishida twins, Reiko and Reika.
 * Thirteen Is Unlucky: Reiko Ishida is Female Student no. 13. She's also a Psycho Lesbian and multi-murderer.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Along with the students who refuse to defend themselves from deranged killers on principle, we have Remi Pierce, who . Seems a reasonable reaction...until you look at the thought process behind that:


 * Too Kinky to Torture: A non-sexual variant, where Rein Bumgarner is well-known for enjoying pain, enjoying the adrenaline rush that it gives him. As a result, he actually attempts dangerous stunts partly for this reason.
 * Unreliable Narrator: In the profile for Clio Gabriella, it explains several parts of her personality, yet her actions in the game contradict this. Reason? Clio spent nearly all of her teenage life lying to her parents, her therapist, and nearly everyone she knew so that she could put on a demeanor of a normal, well-adjusted teenage girl, when secretly she was a basket case very close to breaking point.
 * Use Your Head: The death of via a well-placed headbutt to the face, breaking his nose and sending bits of bone into his brain.
 * Victoria's Secret Compartment: Pre-game has a bizarre example, where a character puts around 6 to 8 jello shots down her bra. Needless to say, this reached Memetic Mutation very quickly.
 * Visible Silence: Ivan Kuznetsov is quite fond of these.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Carol Burke, Allen Birkman, and Sierra Manning of all suffer from aquaphobia, while Liam "Brook" Brooks and Rena Peters suffer from hemophobia.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: It's very egregious this version: Violet Druce has purple hair, Maria "Animal" Graham has blue streaks in her hair, her friend Cassidy Wakemore dyed her hair completely blue, as has Stacy Hart. Katelyn Wescott and Cisco Vasquez both have green hair, Violetta Lindsberg has red, yellow and brown streaks, Dawne Jiang has "christmas" hair, red green and white, and Fiona Sparki has red, green and the aformentioned blue.

SOTF Mini
""There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake.""
 * Acrofatic: Ramona Shirley in Virtua. Described as being pudgy, she is also a star basketballer.
 * A Date with Rosie Palms: SOTF-TV's Mae St. Clair on the first night of the island. Cesar Perdomo also did it on the second day.
 * Adaptation Dye Job: Taken literally in the Second Chances mini with Carol Burke. In both incarnations it's mentioned that she has a habit of dying her hair various colors. While in her original v4 incarnation it was dyed black, in Second Chances she is described as having dyed green hair.
 * A Glitch in the Matrix: In Virtua, there's a locked drawer in the Sheriff's office filled with used sheets of paper. But the programmers forgot to put any writing on them.
 * Alternate Universe: All of the Mini site games qualify to some extent, neither of them in the same continuity as the main site or each other. Second Chances takes it a step further, in that while the other Minis have original characters, it instead has characters from previous games returning in an alternate continuity.
 * Angry Black Man: The Program's Bryant Carver.
 * Anything That Moves: The Program's Matthew Payne. Virtua's Brian Larke.
 * An Axe to Grind: Virtua's Vivian Cathwell receives a Native American tomahawk as a weapon, in keeping with the Wild West theme.
 * Ascended Fan: Katie Tanaka was a big fan of Western movies. Take three guesses as to what the background for Virtua is.
 * Ax Crazy: While there are a fair portion of killers in SOTF-TV, Harold Smythe is by far the most batshit out of the lot. To some extent, Simon Mattheson of Virtua could qualify.
 * Backed by the Pentagon: An in universe example is present in SOTF-TV, where it is a TV show backed by the Government to keep people entertained.
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: According to her profile, Evolution character Ashlie Jackson was one of these before coming to the island. Also, from Virtua, Simon Leroy is a male example.
 * Body Horror: Many of the "powers" in Evolution fall into this. Some are pretty "standard" as powers go, such as solar-powered Super Strength and invisibility, "memory absorption", Telepathy, and control over electricity, while others are pretty pathetic. Others, however, include things such as mold growing from the mouth and a character developing cat-like claws that are poisonous. The most notable one, though, goes to Johnny Marsh's "power", in which his skin is invisible, but the rest of him (muscles, organs, etc.) aren't. This, of course, means that his muscles are completely visible like an anatomical model. This receives a Lampshade Hanging when the scientists puts a full-body scuba suit on him to avoid him scaring the other subjects and interfering with the research. And then there's Billy-Jay Clarke's death in which he suffers a power malfunction, causing his eyes to catch fire and melt out of their sockets...
 * Bring My Brown Pants: In SOTF-TV, Bob Lazenby and Todd Hudson both engage in this after waking up on the island.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer: Brigadier General David Adams of The Program. His antics include spontaneously breaking into the American national anthem during an announcement (when he's supposed to be reeling off who died), making bizarre jokes, contradicting himself midsentence and thinking out loud (both also in announcements). For all that, The Program was his idea, and given the setting, there's no possible way he can be an incompetent leader or tactician.
 * Character Blog: Survival of the Snarkiest, which is an in-universe Television Without Pity style blog for SOTF-TV.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Nate Chauncey and April Stone from TV.
 * Companion Cube: An odd example pops up in SOTF-TV, with Shawn Morrison and a dead snake. For bonus points? He also uses it as an Improvised Weapon. Virtua has Sycanus Appletin and Tobeyn, her teddy bear.
 * Coup De Grace: In Virtua, performs one on  by stabbing him in the heart after she sliced through his abdomen.
 * Creepy Twins: The Program's Sophie and Stephanie Mason.
 * Darker and Edgier: The Program is perhaps one of the darkest and most serious reditions of SOTF, even surpassing v1 and v2 in its bleakness and hopelessness.
 * Deadly Game: Virtua's Brian Larke believes that he is on a game show, and that there is some sort of monetary prize at the end.
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance: The Program is pretty much based entirely on this trope. It's set in a militaristic, extreme nationalist version of America Twenty Minutes in The Future. So, there's a fair amount of this. Most notably, as a result of their nationalist upbringings, many characters are to some extent xenophobic and treat "foreign" looking people not too kindly, which is most prominently seen with Japanese-American Marilyn Williams and Angry Black Man Bryant Carver.
 * Depraved Bisexual: SOTF-TV's Marvia Jones. See Kick the Dog for elaboration. Her handler has confirmed her as such. Shortly after that incident, she teams-up with Harold Finston Smythe, by far one of the least stable characters on the island.
 * Does Not Like Men: The Program's Chanel Mortimer.
 * Eagle Land: The Program is very much a Type 2, even though they'd say otherwise.
 * Embarrassing Middle Name: Both from SOTF-TV, Zachariah "Andross" Johnston, anyone? Not to mention Mae "Myfanwy" St. Clair.
 * Evil Laugh: Harold Smythe in SOTF-TV when plotting about "saving" the other players.
 * Face Heel Turn: Jacob Langston of SOTF-TV ditched his girlfriend and his former hookup so that Zach Johnston could teach him how to kill...after discussing plans to escape with everyone only moments before.
 * Famous Last Words: The Program:
 * Famous Last Words: The Program:

"David? really? he scolded himself, Did you just name your crossbow? And what's more, did you name your crossbow David? As in David Bow-ie? How the fuck did you come up with such a stupid pun on such short notice?"
 * From the same, Logan Sorenson's last words, directed at the camera, "Dad... before I go, I just want you to know... I know where you buried those hookers."
 * Fan Service: Everyone on the SOTF-TV island received Fanservice costumes in their packs.
 * Femme Fatale: Surprisingly (or not) this seems to be a fairly common tactic among female characters in SOTF-TV. Marvia Jones, Panya Bishara, Sidney Rice, and to some extent Odile Jones (no relation to Marvia) have all tried to use this sort of method, with varying degrees of success for each. According to Survival of the Snarkiest, this has happened quite a bit in previous seasons as well.
 * Five-Man Band: All of the teams in SOTF-TV to an extent.
 * Friends with Benefits: Sterling Odair and Amber Lyons from TV, along with (apparently) Kevin Fielding with Jeanette Buendia, David Myerez with Sidney Rice, and Jacob Langston with Mikaela Warner. In the latter's case, the "benefits" part of the arrangement ended when Jacob got in a more serious relationship with Madelyn Conner.
 * Full-Frontal Assault: Jay Harland pulled this off on Ashlie Jackson in Evolution as his practical solution to his nocturnal invisibility powers not extending to his clothes.
 * Gentle Giant: While mocking him for it has been hinted to be a Berserk Button of sorts for him, for the most part Michael "Big Mike" Gibraltar in Virtua has been described this way. He's about 6'3, weighs 225 pounds, plays hockey... and is actually pretty friendly, with a fondness for fashion and vampire romance stories.
 * Goth: Kiera McDonald from Evolution and Jaqueline "Cameo" Conroy from Virtua, the former of the Perky Goth variety and the latter played straight to the stereotype.
 * He Who Must Not Be Heard: Joel Deitrick of Survival of the Fittest: Evolution is notable for not speaking at all during his time on the island, his only lines of actual dialogue coming from flashbacks. Similar from Virtua is Simon Mattheson, who is also The Speechless.
 * I Call It Vera: The Program has Dom Brown's pipe wrench Janice, and Megan Jacobson's weapons - Helmut Von Slappenstien and Winston Choppington.
 * SOTF-TV had Skyler Thsani's crossbow, named David Bowie.

"Conclusion: So the drug addict now secretes a hallucinogen. Hm."
 * Having returned for Second Chances, Megan named her stun gun Nikoletta Sparks, or Nicky for short.
 * Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Kami Steele of The Program. Boy howdy, Kami. She tries her hardest to play, and while she does have a small body count, most characters she runs into don't take her seriously.
 * Infectious Insanity: Sycanus Appletin in Virtua. Shortly after she had an encounter with Simon Mattheson, she too started to hear voices.
 * Instrument of Murder: The Program had John Ferrara use, of all things, a banjo to beat Matthew Gourlay to a pulp.
 * Kick the Dog: Marvia Jones' first appearance in SOTF-TV was getting high, drugging another woman, having sex with her, and then beating her up before stealing her supplies.
 * Jacqueline "Cameo" Conroy from Virtua was perhaps the only person who Simon Mattheson could trust in their time in the game. She's somewhat okay with the fact that he's murdered four of her classmates; however, once she finds out that he's doing it specifically for her, she cruelly abandons him, causing him to have a mental breakdown.
 * Lighter and Softer: SOTF-TV is generally considered to be a lot more light-hearted in tone in comparison to the main games and the other Minis, especially when compared to its immediate predecessor The Program. The basic premise is the same, but a lot of elements (mostly relating to the reality TV aspect) allow more opportunities for humor. Your Mileage May Vary if this is good or bad.
 * Love Dodecahedron: Cesar Perdomo loves Odile Jones, who loves both him and Amber Lyons, who in turn loves both her and Sterling Odair. For bonus points, the latter three are bisexual, while the former is biromantic.
 * Love Triangle: The most prominant one in SOTF-TV is the triangle of Shawn Morrison, Zachariah Johnston, and Mae St. Clair
 * Love Martyr: Zachariah Johnston.
 * Mad Artist: The Program's Madeline Harris, who is killing people to fill the gallery in her mind. She is very prolific.
 * Made of Iron: According to the lore, one of SOTF-TV's past winners was one Archibald "Archie" Stewart, who was this. Subverted slightly when he turned out to be wounded too badly to leave the arena (a shopping mall) under his own power, and nearly died in hospital.
 * Man in a Kilt: Benny Lightfield from Virtua. Definitely not of the fanservice flavor, though.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Odile Jones from SOTF-TV takes the cake.
 * Male Gaze: In SOTF-TV, Zach Johnson to Mae's butt and Bobby Goldman to Amber's breasts.
 * There's also Virtua's Brian Larke. There's a scene where he's trying not to look at Renee Murphy's hindquarters while she's trotting out of a house.
 * Personality Powers: Despite the fact that the powers are completely randomized, some of the mutations in Evolution ended up coincidentally fitting the characters' personalities. The most notable example would be Cristo Ruiz, a drug addict, having hallucinogenic venom secreting from under his fingernails. Lampshade hung in his profile's conclusion:


 * Playing with Syringes: What The Organisation does in Evolution to induce the superpowers in the students. The Super Serum is a success, although the powers created have varying values of 'super'.
 * Product Placement: SOTF-TV gets a lot of endorsements In-Universe, due to it being a reality show. It reaches the point where one of the mentors has a habit of asking contestants to throw in a line to advertise Verizon.
 * Rape by Proxy: Attempted (thank god) in a notable scene in SOTF-TV. There's a scene where Sterling Odair and Amber Lyons start to "get intimate", only for their mentor to interrupt humorously. It results in Mood Whiplash when Lou Becker, having seen everything, breaks in and tries to force them to continue.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: As of the first announcement, Katie Tanaka has been planning this in regards to Simon Mattheson, and implicitly other major players.
 * Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: Evolution's Kate Black and Taryn Gregory, to a tee.
 * Sassy Black Woman: Ramona Shirley in Virtua.
 * Scary Black Man: The Program's Bryant Carver.
 * Scholarship Student: Mikaela Warner in SOTF-TV.
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The ending of Evolution is that
 * Sorry, Billy, But You Just Don't Have Legs / I Coulda Been a Contender: Virtua character Clarisse Huntingdon was gearing up to become a model in her backstory. However, in the same car accident that killed her friends she broke her nose, rendering her incapable of modelling.
 * The Speechless: Simon Mattheson in Virtua. He has a severe social phobia, rendering him incapable of speech.
 * Stepford Smiler: David Myerez of SOTF-TV is heavily implied to be a Type A example.
 * Stout Strength: The same winner as in SOTF-TV's Made of Iron example was a very large man, a bit on the pudgy side but still very strong and a highly skilled wrestler. He ended up losing a good bit of the extra weight during his recovery.
 * Kevlard: the official explanation why he was Made of Iron.
 * Super Serum: Every single character in Evolution that takes part in the game gets their power via an injection of chemicals. Some of the powers are... questionably useful, though.
 * "Take That!" Kiss: Matthew Payne from The Program delivers one to
 * Troll: In-universe examples would be Logan Sorenson of The Program and Sidney Rice of SOTF-TV, who have both been described this way IC and OOC.
 * Troubled Fetal Position: In The Program, Marilyn Williams does this in reaction to being thrown into the compound, under a bed, no less.
 * Unusual Euphemism: Harold Finston Smythe in SOTF-TV tends to describe the act of killing someone as "saving" them. Similarly, in Virtua Katie Tanaka quickly developed the habit of calling players "bandits".
 * Useless Superpowers: Most of the Evo powers.
 * Voice with an Internet Connection: The mentors in SOTF-TV, who occasionally give advice to the players. In terms of usefulness they range from actually pretty helpful to making Captain Obvious statements to not really all that helpful advice at all to suggesting the players advertise their product.
 * Wild West: The setting for Virtua.
 * You Can't Fight Fate: In The Program, Durriken Lovel, as the youngest child of a Gypsy family is cursed to have terrible luck. Of course, he's put in the Program.