Survivor (TV series)/Characters/Africa

Ethan Zohn


 * Beleaguered Assistant/ Number Two: To Lex.
 * Mr. Fanservice
 * Informed Judaism: He obviously looks the part, but any religious beliefs Ethan may have are never mentioned outside of his inability to eat ham.
 * Nice Guy: The first universally liked winner because of this.
 * No Damage Run
 * Odd Friendship: With Big Tom and Lex specifically.
 * The Quiet One
 * Sole Survivor
 * Tall, Dark and Handsome
 * Vitriolic Best Bud: Ethan references this trope directly when talking about his friendship with Big Tom.

Kim Johnson


 * Cool Old Lady
 * Graceful Loser
 * Hard Work Hardly Works
 * Never Mess with Granny: Outlasting Lex and Ethan in terrible heat and physical exhaustion during the last Immunity Challenge, despite being respectively twenty and thirty years older then them.
 * One Steve Limit: With Kim Powers
 * Plucky Girl
 * The Pollyanna
 * White-Haired Pretty Girl

Lex van den Berghe

"Jeff: It seems like every time I turn around, I'm handing you something. Now I'm handing you my Visa card."
 * The Ace: He won five individual challenges(three immunities and two rewards), and even when he didn't win, he still got to go on most of the rewards as a tag along. Jeff lampshaded this when Lex won the reward where he got to go to the Massai Mara National Reserve


 * Badass
 * Berserk Button: Teresa voting for him instead of Clarence gives the viewers their first real glimpse at Lex in a much less flattering light than he'd been portrayed before that point; he goes into a paranoid rage, vowing to figure out who voted for him and get rid of them immediately (and doesn't even get it right).
 * The Charmer: One of the reasons he was so threatening. Most of the contestants who've played with him have said that he's very persuasive and likable when he's not too busy being a paranoid Jerkass.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Control Freak: Borderline.
 * Death Glare: Not intentionally. He just has really intense looking eyes when he's frustrated.
 * Diabolus Ex Machina: Getting sick at the second to last day, during the final immunity challenge!
 * Evil Genius / The Smart Guy
 * Hot Dad
 * Idiot Ball: During the merge, Lex gave up a 6-4 lead for his Boran tribe by voting out Clarence, and almost gets voted out himself in the next round because Kelly was sick of him and wanted to defect to the Samburu's. In a very close vote(5-4), Kelly left instead of Lex, but only because Brandon was holding an even bigger one by becoming a defector to Boran.
 * Ineffectual Death Threats: He threatens to (literally) slit the throat of whoever votes against him at several points(to be fair though, one of these threats was during a confessional). Thankfully, he never follows up on any of these threats.


 * Manipulative Bastard
 * Moral Myopia: Has no problem with voting for anyone else however he wants, but the moment he got even one vote cast against him he had a huge Freak-Out.
 * Narrator: Lex probably has the most confessionals out of anyone(though not excessively like what you find in recent seasons), and is pretty eloquent in them too.
 * Odd Friendship: With Big Tom.
 * Spiky Hair
 * Tall, Dark and Snarky
 * Tattooed Crook
 * Witch Hunt: He started one after receiving a vote against him that he wasn't expecting. See Berserk Button above.

Tom Buchanan


 * Big Fun
 * The Big Guy
 * Chivalrous Pervert: In a big way.
 * Cool Old Guy
 * Drunken Master
 * Establishing Character Moment: See Mooning
 * Farm Boy
 * Gentle Giant
 * Large Ham: Especially when it comes to ham!
 * Mooning: During the S.O.S Message Immunity Challenge, Tom moons everyone with a black feather stuck up his butt.
 * Nice Hat
 * Take That: His jury "question" which was pretty much just a shot at Kim's cooking.
 * The Unintelligible
 * Vitriolic Best Buds: With Ethan and Lex.
 * Younger Than They Look: Tom was 45 during Africa. Does he look it?

Teresa Cooper


 * Expy: Slightly subverted. She was clearly casted to be a Tina Wesson type character, and while she was to a degree, Teresa had enough individual quirks and genuine sweetness in her, to make her a unique character.
 * Odd Friendship: Her and Frank.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: Referred to as "T" and/or "T-Bird" way, way more than her actual name.
 * Southern-Fried Genius: In terms of game strategy she was deceptively cunning and never stopped trying to come up with ways to break up the Boran alliance even when she was the last Samburu tribe member left.

Kim Powers


 * The Chick: To her Samburu "Mall Rat" alliance.
 * Hello, Nurse!
 * One Steve Limit: With Kim Johnson.
 * The Pollyanna
 * Shorttank

Frank Garrison

"Carl: Hey Frank, what branch of the service were you in?"
 * Butt Monkey: He's anti-social and a little rough around the edges, and in a social game like Survivor, you do not want to be this.
 * The Comically Serious: Occasionally filled this role.
 * Crazy Survivalist: In one episode he said that if he weren't playing the game for his friends or family, he would dump all the water and food that wasn't his own so the younger, brattier members of his tribe would suffer. Also, in one interview post show, he said he regretted that he wasn't able to hunt on the national preserve they were stranded in.
 * Deadpan Snarker:

Frank: I was in the American branch. It's called Freedom."


 * Establishing Character Moment: See Deadpan Snarker.
 * Hidden Depths: Both supported and subverted. Frank at first came off like a two dimensional Fish Out of Water curmudgeon with conservative values, but in later episodes it was obvious that there was a lot more nuance to his personality (like when he waxed philosophic when he watched the sunrise).
 * Hilarity Ensues: During his movie date reward with card carrying Camp Gay member Brandon.
 * Jaded Washout: To his tribe. Off the show, he seems to be pretty happy guy, well adjusted and has a nice family.
 * Knight in Sour Armor: Especially after Carl left and the Mall Rats(an alliance of the younger tribe members) took over Samburu.
 * Odd Friendship: Him and Teresa, and Big Tom as well.
 * Seinfeldian Conversation: There was a somewhat lengthy segment on how Frank doesn't know what the term "brunch" means.

Brandon Quinton


 * Camp Gay: To be fair about it though, Brandon wasn't weak in the challenges and stood up for himself. His personality though was as gay as a three dollar bill.
 * Hilarity Ensues: When Brandon and Frank won an obstacle course reward challenge and got to see the movie Out Of Africa together at a drive in.
 * Idiot Ball: Defecting from Samburu by voting for Kelly, instead of sticking with his tribe and voting out Lex.
 * Odd Couple: Brandon and Frank during the drive in movie trip they won together.
 * Smug Snake: Seemed deeply confident that he had a good mind for game strategy, and then he made probably the stupidest move of the entire game by turning on Samburu and joining Lex (whilst at the same time confirming to the other' members of the Boran alliance that he wasn't trustworthy at all).
 * The Quisling: He prevented his Samburu tribemates and Boran defector Kelly from having a shot at voting off Boran leader Lex out of a petty dislike for and refusal to work with Frank. He was then promptly voted out by everyone except for Lex.

Kelly Goldsmith


 * Anti-Villain
 * Badass Adorable
 * The Cassandra: She was the first one to point out Lex's massive ego and hypocrisy when it comes to him voting out friends and allies at the drop of a hat but freaking out when he gets even one vote cast against him. No one listened to her, though nobody in that season really got it in the same way she did.
 * The Chick: To her Boran tribe.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Death by Genre Savviness
 * Death By Pragmatism
 * Foe Yay: To Lex
 * Large Ham: In her Final Jury vote.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Took the Sue Hawk approach to her jury question at the final tribal council.

Clarence Black


 * The Atoner: By the time he got voted out in 10th, he'd more than redeemed himself for his earlier transgressions regarding his appetite.
 * Big Eater: Half of Clarence's story arc revolved around him being hungry all the time and eating food whenever he could get his hands on it.
 * The Big Guy
 * Black Guy Dies First: Hilariously subverted in one episode when Clarence is almost stomped to death by an elephant after said elephant walks into the area Clarence was defecating in. Also could be seen as Toilet Humor.

Lindsey Richter


 * Alpha Bitch: She got better though.
 * Chekhov's Boomerang: The votes against her in her first Tribal Council.
 * Lady Macbeth: To Silas.
 * Redemption Equals Death: Or at least having a tribal swap and subsequent vote off equals redemption.
 * Wall of Blather

Silas Gaither


 * Asshole Victim: Fell victim to a major twist, had his entire new tribe pretty much conspire to take him out by all but throwing an immunity challenge to get rid of him, and since it was Silas there wasn't exactly a huge uproar from the fanbase.
 * Backstab Backfire: See below.
 * Cosmic Plaything: In what is perhaps the ultimate example of Hoist by His Own Petard in Survivor, Silas was the first victim of the tribal swap, a twist he never could have predicted. What's worse was that the swap took place only a week after he betrayed the people he initially aligned with so he could be the leader of Samburu, and the people he got stuck with were the very people he betrayed!
 * Disc One Final Boss
 * Do Not Call Me Paul: Was originally known as Chip, but insisted before the game started that everyone call him Silas instead.
 * Graceful Loser: For all his smugness, he did take his ouster very well especially when compared to later Survivor "villains".
 * Stepford Smiler: Had a habit of grinning really wide when something pissed him off.
 * Tall, Dark and Handsome
 * Tall, Dark and Snarky
 * Tempting Fate: "There's not an event in the future that could surprise me."

Linda Spencer


 * Cloudcuckoolander
 * Holier Than Thou: Averted, although she did often bring up her belief that the gods were invoking bad luck on her tribe for it's disharmony.
 * Sanity Slippage: According to Brandon.

Carl Bilancione


 * Cool Old Guy
 * Shocking Elimination: Not many people watching would have expected Lindsey to actually beat him in a tiebreaker.
 * Standardised Leader
 * Sacrificial Lion

Jessie Camacho


 * Action Girl: She's a cop in Real Life.
 * Dead Star Walking: Jessie had one of the highest pre-show scores in the popularity poll on CBS.com, and was one of the players the commercials focused on most. Needless to say, her popularity dropped dramatically after the first episode showed her being sick and unable to actively compete in challenges and plot strategy back at camp.
 * Hello, Nurse!

Diane Ogden


 * Ill Girl: Over-exerted herself leading the tribe to camp, leading to her getting sick in the first few days.