Survivor (TV series)/Characters/Borneo

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Richard Hatch

  • Affably Evil: Is a pretty nice guy and is very relatable.
  • Badass Beard
  • Badass Boast: Before he was even officially cast, here's what he had to say to Mark Burnett, Jeff Probst, and Les Moonves:

You know you're going to pick me, but what you don't know is that I'm going to win. And after I win, I'm going to host next year's show.

    • Of course, on the very first day of Borneo, he said this:

I'm good to go survival-wise. People-wise, it'll be a little more challengin', but I've got the million-dollar check written already. I mean, I'm the winner. It's that kind of cocky attitude that makes people really hate your guts. So, that's the kind of thing I have to keep under wraps.

    • Again, in Episode 9, referring to to the last Tribal Council where Sean referred to Richard's fishing as the reason he hasn't been voted out yet:

...Catching fish makes people happy, but that's not the reason they're voting me here. They're not voting me off because I'm not letting them.

  • Badass Gay
  • The Bad Guy Wins
  • Batman Gambit: Throwing the final challenge. He correctly assumed that Kelly would win and vote out Rudy, ensuring that he didn't have to vote out Rudy. Although they were extremely loyal allies throughout the whole game, Richard believed that he couldn't win against Rudy, so if he had won, he would have voted him vote over Kelly. This raises the possibility of Rudy feeling betrayed by Rich and voting for Kelly, so by throwing the challenge, Richard gets to throw the dirt onto Kelly. He also knew that Kelly felt the same way about Rudy (that she couldn't win against him, but could possibly win against Richard). He also waited long enough to get the temptation (food, in this case oranges) from the host.
  • Big Bad/Anti-Hero: To the Tagi alliance.
  • The Chessmaster
  • Evil Genius / The Smart Guy
  • Hero-Killer: Getting rid of Gretchen.
  • Jerkass Woobie: He had a tough childhood and was discriminated against in his lifetime for being gay.
  • Large and In Charge: He's 6'4, and over 200 lbs. Before the show, he was even bigger (at one point he mentions how he dropped one hundred pounds just to get in shape enough to pass the physical).
  • Large Ham: His obnoxious, over the top rendition of 99 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall during the final six Immunity Challenge would qualify him for this. Not to mention his weird little Happy Dance that he does when he wins immunity during the Episode 10 challenge.
  • Manipulative Bastard
  • Naked People Are Funny
  • Name's the Same: With the Battlestar Galactica actor.
  • Intergenerational Odd Friendship: With Rudy.
  • Self-Deprecation:

(Referring to Rudy) They think he's arrogant? I'm out of here!

  • Small Name, Big Ego: Subverted. While Richard is the first person to admit that he's an arrogant bastard, in this case he really is the smartest guy in the room(...er, on the island).
  • Smug Snake: Early on. But by episode four, he shows that he knows what he's talking about when he forms Survivors first successful alliance.
  • Sole Survivor: The Ur Example.
  • Invisible to Gaydar
  • The Strategist: The prototypical version of this trope in the context of Survivor. More than a few players tried to pattern themselves after him in subsequent seasons.


Kelly Wigglesworth


Rudy Boesch

Me and Richard got to be pretty good friends,(but) not in a homosexual way. That's for sure.


Susan Hawk


Sean Kenniff

  • Awesome McCoolname / Trope 2000: His (useless) handcrafted fishing pole, which he dubs "The Superpole 2000."
  • Being Good Sucks: He made the choice to vote alphabetically only because he was trying to find a way to vote that wasn't based on emotional decisions, and thus not upset the person he was voting for.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: While it's viewed as ridiculous and stupid now, his Alphabet Strategy actually had some merit to it - everyone from the other tribe had names that started with letters at the start of the alphabet (Colleen, Gervase, Greg, Gretchen, Jenna) as opposed to his own tribe (Kelly, Richard, Rudy, Sue), so it was a way to get rid of the other tribe members without forming an alliance, which was seen at the time as underhanded.
  • The Ditherer: The Alphabet Strategy was a way for Sean to never have to choose a side, but there are other examples too. For instance, after he had won the Reward Challenge where he got to spend overnight on a Yacht, he had promised to take Kelly on board the next morning for breakfast. When confronted by Jeff Probst with the decision on whom to take though, Sean chickened out at the last minute and took Rich instead. Sue in particular was always talking about how Sean lacked the balls to make any kind of decision in the game.
  • Ditzy Genius: Not just with the Alphabet Strategy, but in general. He's supposed to be really smart(given that he's a neurosurgeon, this should come with the territory) but really flaky and weird sometimes, with Gervase calling him "the dumbest smart guy that I ever met during the DVD commentary.
  • Honor Before Reason: The alphabet strategy.
  • Nice Hat
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His early post-merge decision to openly vote for people based on alphabetical order is what ultimately costs Pagong their last chance to topple the Richard/Sue/Rudy/Kelly alliance.
  • Odd Friendship: With Richard
  • Tall, Dark and Handsome
  • The Slacker: Briefly with Dirk. He gets better, shortly before Dirk is voted off.
  • The Smart Guy
  • Token Good Teammate: Of the Tagi Alliance.
  • Those Two Guys: With Dirk in the first few episodes.


Colleen Haskell

  • Broken Bird: Actually manages to turn into this the further along the season goes post-merge. As it becomes more and more hopeless for Pagong to win it's pretty clear she just wants the whole thing to be over with.
  • I Am Not Spock: Aside from a very brief foray into Hollywood (starring alongside Rob Schneider in the 2001 movie The Animal), Colleen hasn't been in the public eye at all since 2001, probably out of a desire not to be known as "that cute girl from Survivor".
  • Lampshade Hanging: When the tree mail indicates that the upcoming Reward Challenge involves a trivia contest, Colleen shouts out "Wait a minute...we're (already) on a Game Show."
  • Power Hair
  • Plucky Girl
  • Romance on the Set: With Greg (though they claimed it was only friendship)
  • Shorttank


Gervase Peterson

  • The Ace
  • Bald of Awesome
  • The Charmer: This was his strategy to winning the game. He made no effort to disguise the fact that he didn't particularly pitch in and help around the camp and instead banked on people finding him entertaining enough to keep around.
  • Chick Magnet
  • Hot Dad
  • Karma Houdini: While it was Gervase that made the infamous "cow joke," Joel ended up taking the fall for it and Gervase got off scot-free.
  • Lazy Bum
  • The Slacker
  • Straw Misogynist: Depending on whether or not you believe that his "Women are the stupidest things on the planet next to cows" comment was meant as a joke or not.


Jenna Lewis


Greg Buis

  • All There in the Manual: In the companion book to the show, Mark Burnett espouses in detail about how Greg basically drove the crew nuts.
  • Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: "If people are fear and self-preservation motivated they'll band together, they'll form alliances, they'll start beating people out to get rid of the strong ones and get rid of this and get rid of that and, you know, if that happens I hope they vote me off soon because that to me is -- whoa, cool flying fish."
  • Badass
  • Bishounen
  • Biting the Hand Humor: His general mockery of the show, especially the supposed seriousness of Tribal Council, counts as this.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: Rudy jokes about Greg being attracted to his sister based on the odd way the two communicate via the video messages they send one another(Dr. Sean takes a more lighthearted approach to the videos and says something to the effect of that being a Cloudcuckoolander must run in Greg's family).
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer
  • Cloudcuckoolander
  • Establishing Character Moment: When he hosted an impromptu island version of The Dating Game with the rest of his Pagong tribe, but the introduction of Greg's coconut phone in Episode 4 is when we really got to see an extensive look into his personality (or as much as the producers would allow us to see).
  • For Want of a Nail: Had he not won immunity at the merge, the Tagis were going to vote him off. Mario Lanza has speculated just how much would be different about Survivor if Greg had missed the jury instead of Gretchen.
  • I Am Not Spock: Greg has avoided all publicity he ever gained from the show, even refusing to do any exit interviews (when he was voted off, Ramona stood in for him on the CBS Early Show).
  • Insufferable Genius
  • Keet
  • Large Ham
  • Mr. Fanservice
  • Nice Character, Mean Actor: Perhaps not mean as much as supposedly incredibly difficult to deal with and edit around. Apparently he drove Jeff Probst and the production crew nuts.
  • Romance on the Set: With Colleen (Though they claimed it was only friendship). He may have been deliberately invoking this trope as another parody moment.
  • Stealth Parody: Several, but his "pick a number" request is perhaps the most well known.
  • Troll: If Mark Burnett's descriptions of his antics are anything to go by, he certainly qualifies as this.

Gretchen Cordy

  • Action Mom
  • Badass
  • Being Good Sucks
  • Honor Before Reason: Refused to consider an alliance between the members of her tribe against Tagi once they got past the merge. This cost her (and everyone else in her tribe subsequently).
  • Hot Mom
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With B.B
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Even though Gretchen was a great inspirational leader for Pagong and the one who knew the most about wilderness survival, she was also the one most responsible for Pagong coming into the merge naive and unprepared for the threat that was the Tagi Alliance. Some contestants (such as Joel, and later on, Colleen, Jenna, and Gervase) were perfectly willing to make alliances, and there's a possibility that they would have formed one earlier had Gretchen not convinced them that alliance making was wrong.
  • Oh Crap: When she realizes that she's about to be eliminated.
  • Redheaded Hero
  • Shocking Elimination: Her elimination post-merge marked both the start of the Tagi alliance taking out the much more strategically inept Pagong and also the start of players being voted out due to their strengths rather than their weaknesses; Gretchen was voted out first because Richard and company saw her as being the leader and most competent member of Pagong (and because Greg had won immunity).
  • Team Mom

Joel Klug

  • Boisterous Bruiser
  • The Cassandra: He was the only person on Pagong who even considered that forming alliances might be a good idea, and was booted because he was considered "arrogant" for even bringing up the idea.
  • Mr. Fanservice
  • Genius Bruiser
  • Misblamed: During Episode 6. According to the women of Pagong, Joel is a chauvinist for laughing at a mildly sexist comment that Gervase made. He is voted out in the very same episode.
  • The Stinger: During the montage where the women of Pagong proclaim that Joel is a chauvinist, Joel adamantly denies that he is one and says that he thinks that women are equal to men. But at the very end, Joel makes a weird little fluttering movement with his eyes that suggests that maybe he really is one.
  • Straw Misogynist: Maybe. See The Stinger above.


Dirk Been

  • A Man Is Not a Virgin: Subverted, at least in the modern way we think of the word "virgin". A big to-do is made by his tribe of the fact that he's twenty-three and has never had sex.
  • Lazy Bum: In the last episode or two that he was in.
  • Precocious Crush: With Kelly. It's actually a little cute once you realize that it geniunely is just precocious and not sexual in nature.
  • Religious Bruiser

Ramona Grey

  • Black Best Friend: To Jenna. Ramona's boot episode was centered heavily on the dilemma Jenna has on voting her out in spite of being her best friend on Pagong.
  • The Fundamentalist
  • Deadly Change-of-Heart: She was sick for most of the game, but she got better just in time for this to happen. In fact, the episode she was voted off in is entitled "Too Little, Too Late".
  • Hot Scientist
  • Ill Girl: On the paddle ride to camp, she accidentally swallowed a lot of sea water, causing her to be ill. She only got better a few days before getting voted off.

Stacey Stillman


B.B Andersen

  • Benevolent Boss : At least he TRIED to be this.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper: Unlike Rudy, B.B refused to alter his aggressive Type A personality in order to work with his tribe. Gervase even references this very trope just before Pagong heads to Tribal Council by saying that B.B dug his own grave.
  • Fish Out of Water: B.B was the oldest member of the youth dominated Pagong tribe, and his age combined with his abrasive personality didn't let him fit in. Or as best summed up by Greg:

Greg: "B.B's a good guy. He's pretty strong willed and he's got his plan as well. He's caring. He commands respect. Definitely feels the difference between his age and other people, and doesn't want to seem to bridge that gap as much as just be who he is."

  • Grumpy Old Man
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With Gretchen. Had good things to say about Jenna and Greg, though he didn't take the time to know Jenna's name and mistakenly thought Greg was named "Craig".
  • Pointy-Haired Boss: What most of his tribe thought of him.
  • Stupid Boss: Gretchen repeatedely told him that the Pagong shelter should be moved back farther from the ocean, but he didn't listen until the said shelter was almost flooded.
  • Suicide by Cop: He asked to be voted off, and even admits it several times during his boot episode. Interestingly, Mark Burnett makes an (possibly apocryphal) anecdote in the Borneo companion book about the psychologist who used to work for the show, Gene Ondrusek, and how he actually convinced B.B to quit the show when going through the pre-show tests.
  • Workaholic: This trope certainly applies to B.B in one respect, as he was a workaholic, but he doesn't totally fit into the trope on account of him being a millionaire in real life.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Parodied in the Mad Magazine article about the show, BB was thought of as too bossy to be kept around after he was done building the shelter.

Sonja Christopher

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