The Amazing Race/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about The Amazing Race are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

All Versions

  • Elimination Houdini: There's usually one per season.
  • The Load: It always seems there's one racer who's near-useless on tasks, leaving their partner to do all the work (limits on Roadblocks have been made to discourage this).
    • There are even times when teams become this. While every team leeches information in some way, there are also teams who constantly follow and copy off all the other teams, seeming never to do any of the work for themselves. Andre & Damon (US 3) and Flight Time & Big Easy (US 15 & 18) have gotten complaints about this by the fans and other teams.
  • Nausea Fuel: The Foreign Queasine challenges, or, if the food is palatable, the teams then have to eat either massive amounts of it or eat it really fast.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The Intersection. Making two teams work together is more in line with something a show like Survivor would do. Instead of creating interesting interactions between the racers, it made whatever team arrived in an odd-numbered position stand around and wait for the other teams to show up. Sometimes they would be stuck waiting for hours.
    • Not only that, but several of these were placed in legs where a team was "Marked for elimination". The intersection pretty much made survival impossible for these teams, as it bunched them with the pack until it's too late to get 30 minutes ahead of anyone else.
    • The "mugging" penalty of American Seasons 5-9 for teams saved by non-elimination legs was widely loathed because it forced the awkward situation of well-off Americans begging for money (and later, other possessions) in impoverished nations just to survive in a reality TV competition. On top of that, it barely penalized teams time-wise since, most of the time, begging easily made up for the resources lost and they could do it even during pit stop breaks. At least it was a step in the right direction, as it was still better than the saved teams getting off scot-free like in Seasons 1-4.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: ABC's Expedition Impossible is basically "Amazing Race, only 13 teams instead of 11, three team members instead of two, a far lamer prize ($150,000 + 3 SUVs, as opposed to Race's $1,000,000), and a helluva lot less exciting."
  • Spoiled by the Format: It's a pretty sure sign that it's a "To be continued..." leg if it's just a few minutes until the end of the episode and still no teams whatsoever have checked into the Pit Stop.
  • That One Leg & That One Challenge: Almost every race, a couple teams state they had difficulty with one or two legs. Not to mention, there's almost always one challenge of any kind that trips up almost every team on it. These include:
    • "Needle-in-a-haystack" challenges, where the teams have to find the right object in a sea of similar ones, a specific sign in a sea of neon, or a bunch of signs in a certain order. Especially if you're on a moving object and don't have time to stop if you didn't read a sign properly, or missed it.
    • Repeating a phrase you hear.
    • For female racers, there the oft repeated head shaving Fast Forward.
    • Eating challenges. When it's not Foreign Queasine, it's either eating a huge amount of it or eating it really fast.
    • Luck-based challenges; especially the infamous "Hay Bales". (see the American version)

American Version

  • Accidental Innuendo: Millie & Chuck (Season 4) are a little infamous for this, especially considering they were labeled "The Virgins".

Chuck (on his inability to get in an F1 race car due to his claustrophobia): It's feeling tight. Hot and tight.

    • Dustin & Kandice (Season 11), upset at Mirna for her attempt to cut in line and steal their standby tickets, gave this exchange to the camera:

Kandice: We're bigger than her.
Dustin: Yeah, we'll make a beauty queen sandwich out of her.

    • Season 20, episode 1:

Phil: The Express Pass is a great piece of power in your pocket.
Dave: That's a little perverse, but we'll take it.

    • Pretty much any task involving eating/making sausages are full of these.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Brook & Claire, big time. View #1: Brook was one of the single greatest racers ever, whose boundless energy and inability to be embarrassed made her the best part of Season 17, only she was held back by a partner who was average at best. View #2: Claire was a likable Everywoman, partnered with an annoying, hyper, shrieky-voiced ball of energy that dragged her along at a pace she could never hope to meet.
    • The Amazing Race anthology My Ox is Broken!, which repeatedly asserts that what is shown of the Racers on-screen is not necessarily reflective of their true selves because of Manipulative Editing and the unique stresses of the Race, did this with Flo, arguing that instead of the common view of her as a bitchy, useless drama queen who didn't deserve her half of the million dollars or the continuation of her friendship with Zach one bit, she was ultimately just someone who found that she wasn't as ready for the rigors of the Race as she thought, gradually cracked under very real stresses and found the strength to go on with the support of her best friend, and was able to laugh afterwards at the terrible impression she left on-screen.
    • Margie & Luke (14 & 18) either came off as a group of nice/average racers who performed beyond Luke's disability... or Luke was a Karma Houdini who acted like a spoiled asshat and managed to avoid being called out on it, especially since Margie refused to see him do any wrong.
    • Cindy was either a neurotic Control Freak who saw herself as better than everyone else and had to be perfect at everything, or she was just a woman who was over-pressurized into repeatedly having to prove herself and her relationship to her Education Mama.
  • Base Breaker: Some teams have garnered extremely polarized opinions in the fanbase:
    • "Alpha Male" teams in general. As fansite TARflies Times put it: "A term of great confusion. Some folks define an "Alpha Male" team as one that is young-ish, fit, relatively intelligent, and aggressive in the way they run the Race. (Rob & Brennan from TAR1, for example, or Chris & Alex from TAR2.) Others use it to refer to any team of young, good-looking males, no matter what their Race attitude (Brian & Greg from TAR7 or BJ & Tyler from TAR9). For some it's simply a descriptor. For others, it's an insult. Some posters believe that a team of Alpha Males is a shoo-in to win, and would be happy if no more of them are ever cast. Others have no problem with them. Some TARflies regard them as eye-candy. Context is your best friend when you come across a reference to Alpha Males." The base breaking nature of these teams has been generally alleviated over time, as "Alpha Males" have only won twice since Season 4, the last one being Tyler & James in Season 10, meaning most modern viewers don't even realize why there is a bias against such teams.
    • BJ & Tyler (Season 9) are the biggest example of this. Either you think that they're a quirky, lovable team that's fun to watch or an annoying, self-pretentious team that needs to stop mugging for the camera ASAP. There is no in-between. The majority of viewers fell into the first camp, but the ones that fell into the second camp instead were...quite vocal about it.
      • It didn't help that, when they weren't chosen for All-Stars, they started whining about it online, complained about the validity of the teams chosen, and called themselves the most popular team to ever run the race and the "most winningest winners ever to win." That temper tantrum alone might have cost them their title as the most popular team to ever run the race.
    • Dustin & Kandice (Seasons 10 & 11), especially early on. An intelligent, stereotype-defying team that knows how to play the game and deserves to win over teams that have an inflated opinion about their so-called moral superiority, or an obnoxious mean girl team that deserves to be taken down a peg by nicer teams? You decide!
    • The entire Top 4 from Season 14. Tammy & Victor, Jaime & Cara, Margie & Luke, and Kisha & Jen were all so polarizing, they had the fans split into four groups, not so much rooting for one team as they were rooting against the other three.
      • Jaime & Cara even cited themselves as such in the pre-race interviews for Unfinished Business, saying that they were a team people loved or hated, there was no middle ground with them.
    • Maria & Tiffany were set up as Season 15's Designated Villain team from the get go, first when they decided to withhold that they were professional poker players who'd raked in millions in winnings, instead telling the other teams that they worked for a charity (which they did), then later when they were shown to get into an argument with fan favorites Zev & Justin. However, while the majority of the fanbase naturally disliked them, the This Is A Race fans immediately took to them for (1) being the only female team cast against four male teams (at a time when a female team still hadn't won the race), (2) having an open and honest, if not snarky, attitude that was not playing up to the cameras (something that was starting to be particularly rare at that time), and (3) for being the most entertaining part of what was quickly becoming one of the Race's worst seasons.
    • Flight Time & Big Easy (Seasons 15 and 18), like BJ & Tyler, were a popular team with a small group of detractors, those who either thought they were trying, specifically and too hard, to be a fan favorite team, or else felt that "professional athletes" (as much as Harlem Globetrotters can be considered professional athletes) had no place on the Race. Made even worse when they came back for Unfinished Business, as they proceeded to consistently follow and leech information off of all the other teams. Though this strategy did not bother their fans, their detractors took issue with them "not running the race for themselves". Then they U-Turned the Cowboys, which pushed them into full on Base Breakers.
    • Midway through Season 19, Andy & Tommy started talking about their Christianity while at a Buddhist temple, and were, to say, a bit narrow-minded in their commentary (as opposed to fellow Christian Jennifer, who said the temple, while not her religion, deserved the same amount of respect). This incident, along with being another Stunt Casting team (completely embodying what fans hated about Seasons 15 and 16), and the most blatant Expies of BJ & Tyler yet, caused a bit of a rift. And that's not even touching on the explosion caused by their elimination by cabbie collusion, with their fans upset that they were beaten by two teams who never figured out how to get to the Pit Stop on their own, and their detractors calling it Karmic retribution for being so cocky when most of their wins had come more from other teams' mistakes and legs being specifically designed towards their strengths rather than their own racing skills.
    • Brendon & Rachel, Season 20. While they had some fans migrate over from their stint(s) on Big Brother, their presence was immediately dreaded by Race fans, and for good reason, too, as Rachel immediately turned into a whiny Attention Whore. That being said, seeing Rachel getting bullied by Art & JJ throughout the Race took a lot of the hatred off of her and put it squarely on the shoulders of Art & JJ. That and Rachel's constant meltdowns eventually ended up becoming some of the most-entertaining parts of that season's hated final four.
  • Attention Whore: Rachel Reilly (Season 20), is the only woman outside of Flo (Season 3) who seems to cry at the drop of a hat, but unlike Flo, who seemed to be just mentally and physically exhausted, Rachel just seems to cry for the sake of getting attention.
  • Broken Base: There's the This Is A Race fans, and the Call It Karma fans. They generally get along at the beginning of a season, until something sets them off and the flame wars carry on for the remainder of the season. Arguments about team selection and how the courses should be planned out can get pretty heated as well.
    • Ask the fans to rank the seasons. Though there seem to be a few seasons that will hit the bottom of most people's lists (the oft forgotten Season 4, the Family Edition, and the Stunt Casting riddled Seasons 15 and 16), every single Season will hit the top of someone's list. Especially since most fans tend to favor one group of races over all the others:
    • Seasons 1-4 have a freshness that the other seasons don't, as the lack of an established Metagame meant there was a lot more unpredictability than in later seasons, and teams would take bigger gambles without knowing whether they would pay off. Also, the lack of metagame meant there were dozens of racing styles employed by the teams, as opposed to the few that are employed in later seasons. There was more emphasis on teams exploring the game, with teams talking about their moves and strategies and how it affected their placement in the game, and heavy emphasis was put on how the teams interacted with each other. The clues, specifically figuring them out, were often more important than the actual tasks the teams had to do, with the emphasis being on the locations visited instead of what teams had to do at that location. Also, there were Fast Forwards on every leg (theoretically) giving every team one free pass per season, with the strategy of when to use it being a big deal.
      • On the other hand, because Seasons 1-4 were very light on strategy, the fields (with the exception of Season 3) overall were much weaker than later seasons, and were therefore dominated by teams who could power their way into the Final 3 without much use of the intelligence, travel skills, and communication skills that were necessary to excel in later seasons. Plus, since the producers were not that skilled at creating courses yet, there were an abundance of luck based and physical thrill tasks that offered little to no challenge beyond getting over ones fear (and that only stopped a team once), as well as a number of brute force tasks that further favored the strong male teams, leading to a lot of Schizophrenic Difficulty running rampant in the courses. For some strange reason, there were no penalties given out for teams finishing last on non-elimination legs, giving those legs much less meaning than the others. Finally, they were much slower paced than later seasons, with far more exposition than became normal later on.
    • Seasons 5-9 did a lot of work towards fixing the balance issues that plagued the first four seasons, and started taking money and possessions away from teams finishing last in non-elimination legs. They also added the Yield, giving teams the ability to effect the competition more directly on the course. These seasons focused more on the teams personalities and their interactions than the other seasons, with the racers themselves being the focus over the locations they were visiting or the game itself. At the same time, the metagame became more prominent, with teams coming up with strategies that blew away the teams still playing the more relaxed game that was more prominent in Seasons 1-4. Seasons 5-7, which were all aired during the 2004-2005 television season, got the most media attention and cultural saturation of the entire series, mostly due to the inclusion of teams like Charla & Mirna and Rob & Amber.
      • While they did fix some balance problems, Seasons 5-9 were also notorious for having a couple teams who had figured out the metagame, and were clearly a step above all the others, leading to completely different balance issues (being very top heavy, with only maybe two or three teams really having a good chance at winning), leading to a rather predictable elimination order in most cases. The elimination of the Fast Forward and the clues becoming more direct took a level of strategy out of the game, and put more emphasis on the tasks, which at this point were still a bit unbalanced and erratic at times (and consisted of way too much Eat That). And taking teams' money away as a penalty forced them to beg for money, while not only looking bad (considering some of the countries teams were asked to beg in), but also yielded more money than the producers normally gave out, encouraging teams to beg all the time (making it look even worse) and take the "money management" aspect out of the game.
    • Seasons 10-14 saw the proliferation of the metagame, not just amongst two or three teams, but most of the pack, which meant more teams had a chance to succeed, and made the races more unpredictable. It also made the fields on these seasons (with the exception of Season 13) overall stronger than what had come before. The episodes became much faster paced, with less exposition and interaction shown between the teams, and more focus put on the challenges and strategy. The courses themselves were streamlined (mostly due to budget cuts) with almost no more mid-leg flights (which cut down on the number of airport equalizers that made the first half of some legs completely pointless), and the challenges were balanced out, firstly so that both Detour options were viable and not every team took the same one, and secondly so that there were less Eat That, luck, and brute force tasks, which gave teams that relied on brains over brawn a much better chance to win the race. Finally, non-elimination penalties were changed to time wasters, and the money given out to teams was lessened, putting the money management aspect back into the game.
      • With the game focusing so much on strategy, the top teams tended to be more focused on the game instead of enjoying themselves, and the last few legs tended to be very cutthroat, turning off fans who liked watching the show for the teams. Also, less emphasis was put on the travel aspects of the show, both in the editing and on the course, with the airports making less and less of an impact on the game. Because of the increased use of strategy, and fewer advantages coming from flight booking, intelligent teams started to dominate physical and travel savvy teams.
    • For Seasons 15-19 the producers took steps to reduce the hyper competitiveness that overshadowed everything else on the previous five seasons and appeal more to the casual fan. They shifted focus away from the competition and back onto the racers and their interaction with their teammates. In order to keep the courses challenging, the producers lessened the number of “place holder” tasks that no longer caused teams problems (like physical thrill tasks), and increased the number of tricks, and deceptive and vague clues that they threw at the racers. (This was especially prevalent in Season 19; which is considered one of the hardest races)
      • Part of the “appealing to the casual viewer” involved casting far too much Stunt Casting, and not only did these psudo-celebrities take up a lot of airtime hamming it up for the cameras, they were also much less knowledgeable of the game, and the overall level of competition suffered as a result (though Season 17 did not seem to suffer, neither did 18, being an All-Star season). And the challenges, while more mentally challenging than before, were less visually thrilling, causing the “casual” base to complain that the race had gotten easier.
  • Designated Hero: There are many teams who the producers expect to be popular, and are edited thusly, but instead end up coming off as preachy or annoying. This was pretty much most of the teams on Season 10, which led to Dustin & Kandice's popularity. (See Base Breaker)
    • They tried so hard to sell Meghan & Cheyne as Invincible Heroes in Season 15, but most of the fans just didn't care either way about a team that came off as simply boring.
  • Designated Villain: Played fairly straight early on with Bill & Joe (Season 1) and Wil (2). However, later seasons tend to treat teams more fairly, showing the good sides of even the biggest Jerk Asses.
    • Phil has stated in interviews that, as of Season 17, The Race is deliberately trying not to create teams like this, as they feel it makes the show better, and the fans enjoy it more when they're not given a specific team they're supposed to root against.
      • The best example of this, so far, has been Art & JJ, who spent the first four episodes of Season 20 looking like the typical dominating, egotistical villain in the same vein as a Colin (5) or a Rob (7), but, starting with their giving Mark & Bopper half of their prize for winning leg 4, the editing has begun to show that there's more to their personality than brash egotism, and that their "villain" status was more than just editing.
  • Dork Age: Seasons 15 and 16, notable for being the only year in which the Race failed to win the Emmy for best Reality-Competition Show (Even Seasons 8 (The Family Edition) and 9 (which was widely considered sub-par for the first eight episodes) managed to win it). The biggest complaints came from the casting, which relied far too heavily on gimmick teams and pseudo-celebrities (of the 23 teams, 9 fit into one of these categories), though the courses and the competence of the teams also caused complaints.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Teams like Lena & Kristy (Season 6) and Debbie & Bianca (7) are quite popular with portions of the fanbase, despite only lasting three or four legs apiece. Zev & Justin even got an invitation back for "Unfinished Business" despite being eliminated on the fourth leg of Season 15.
  • Elimination Houdini:
    • Lenny & Karyn, Season 1, beat out several stronger teams despite finishing in the bottom 3 in every leg except the first one. They barely avoided elimination on several occasions due to a team getting lost in the desert, another team not having the proper currency to pay their taxi, and a non-elimination leg.
    • Steve & Dave, the air traffic controllers from Season 4. After an injury in the first leg they refused to run, yet lasted four more legs thanks to a Fast Forward and major blunders by other teams. On their penultimate leg, the show even played the "sad elimination" music for their finish, only to subsequently cut to a forgotten team that had taken a wrong turn and fallen hopelessly behind.
    • Kami & Karli, Season 5, finished either last or second-to-last on 6 of the first 9 legs, making many blunders along the way (such as being the only team who didn't figure out how to use puzzle pieces and a map to find out the next destination on their own), before finally getting eliminated on leg 10.
    • Adam & Rebecca, Season 6, finished in the top half of the field only once on their way to making the Final 3, and that one leg they won was by Fast Forward. They made several mistakes along the way, barely avoiding elimination at least 4 times. In the Sri Lanka leg, they had fallen over an hour and a half behind behind every other team, only to be saved by arguably the most badly placed equalizer in the series (at the END of the leg).
    • Meredith & Gretchen, Season 7, who were the first team to succeed while deliberately using the "Just beat one team" strategy, even though Gretchen got injured and they had their bags taken away on an early leg.
    • Ray & Yolanda, Season 9, appeared to be slow at everything, surviving mostly because Season 9 teams were extremely mistake prone. They finished second-to-last in 4 of the last 5 elimination legs, and at one point survived because another team Yielded the team right in front of them.
      • Despite winning five legs, BJ & Tyler went through a Houdini stage in the middle of Season 9. Over the course of four legs, they came in last on two different non-elimination legs, and survived a third time when another team got lost looking for the Pit Stop.
    • Probably the only reason Lyn & Karlyn, Season 10, don't fully qualify as Houdinis is that they teamed up with two hapless teams (David & Mary and Erwin & Godwin), and then capitalized off the mistakes of these other teams.
    • Eric & Danielle from Season 11, at the moment, are the only Elimination Houdinis to win the race. They are the only team to ever win the race while having more bottom 2 finishes than top 2 (in the first 11 legs, they had one top 2 finish). They also had two legs where they finished more than twelve hours behind the lead team, and were only able to catch up to the leaders due to the most blatantly contrived equalizer in race history.
    • Dan & Andrew from Season 13, who only made it to the Final 3 because they were repeatedly saved by non-elimination legs or another team making an even worse blunder than they did. They are probably the Race's worst offenders/best examples of this trope, and are widely credited as being the worst team to ever make the Final 3. Phil even told them at one point that he thought they were going to be the next team eliminated. They even acknowledged how bad they were, saying that there should be a YouTube compilation video of all their mistakes - and one *was* created. They at least are able to laugh at themselves.
    • Mark & Michael, Season 14, who had a knack for getting tragically lost on every single leg. They are the only team to ever get multiple penalties on two different legs, and two different penalties on the same task (for sabotaging the other teams, and getting outside help when the clue told them that was not allowed), yet they managed to barely escape elimination on at least three separate occasions. This includes another team getting U-Turned, a team not having enough time to make up their Speed Bump, and a non-elimination leg.
    • Brian & Ericka, Season 15, survived twice, despite huge deficits, because another team quit a task. Maria & Tiffany quit a Detour where they were physically unable to do either task, while Big Easy quit a Roadblock where he was unable to unscramble the name "Franz".
    • Brent & Caite, Season 16, they went through dehydration, got lost several times, and constantly bickered, yet made it to the Final 3 over several stronger teams. Cops Louie & Michael could also count, as other than a stretch of three legs without an equalizer, they spent all their time at or near the back of the pack, barely avoiding elimination at least four times.
    • Nick & Vicki, Season 17. They spent most of their time in the back of the pack, and rarely completed non-physical tasks on the first try, yet despite all this, and Nick's constant verbal abuse towards Vicki, they finished 4th due to other teams making mistakes, and twice were saved by non-elimination legs. On the third-to-last leg, Nick even gave up and napped during the Detour; and eventually dragged Vicki into accepting a 6-hour penalty to skip it, only to be saved by a non-elimination leg. Thankfully, it only turned out to delay the inevitable - their late start time on the following leg caused them to miss the flight the other racers took out of Hong Kong, and they never came close to catching up after that.
    • Season 17 also had mistake prone Chad & Stephanie, who at one point were saved despite finishing in last with a 30-minute penalty because another team had a longer penalty.
    • Season 18 had Kent & Vyxsin barely escape elimination several times, including after running probably the worst leg of any team ever. Leg 4 started with them driving in the wrong direction for several hours, and catching their mistake so late that they missed the production-arranged flight out of Japan; the usual equalizer that everyone else reached with hours to spare. They continued to panic and melt down throughout the leg, topping it off by leaving their Race pack behind on a gondola, losing their passports for the second time in the same leg. They got saved by the fact that it was a double leg, catching up at the next equalizer. Then, on the next leg, Kent fell off a ladder during a Roadblock, cracking his rib and spraining an ankle, yet the lasted five more legs after that.
    • Marcus & Amani, Season 19, were constantly making mistakes and putting themselves in the back of the pack and being forced to play catchup, surviving mostly due to other teams making even worse mistakes at the last minute. Marcus, despite being a former NFL tight end, got shown up on physical tasks by a 60-year-old man. And in the penultimate leg, despite not discovering the location of the Pit Stop for themselves, their cab driver got it from another team's cab driver, putting them in the Final 3.
    • Vanessa & Ralph, Season 20, several times got themselves dreadfully behind the lead pack, yet managed to survive because someone did just a little bit worse than them. They survived once when Elliot & Andrew struggled with the Detour for as long as they did, again when Joey "Fitness" & Danny wasted time on a Fast Forward they didn't get, then later almost blew a two-hour lead on Nary & Jamie on a leg without an equalizer.
      • Also from Season 20 are Mark & Bopper. While they are competent enough, they have been consistently plagued by injuries, illness, and bad navigation (mostly in leg 4). They have been saved twice by non-elimination legs; and even benefited from great luck on their final leg - just not enough to make up the massive time lost on the previous leg (nobody else had claimed the Fast Forward ahead of them, and it was shaving their heads when Mark was already bald).
  • Expy: The producers have definite character types they like to cast, to the point where often times it seems like you've seen half of these teams before:
    • The most blatant example is probably Season 14's Amanda & Kris, who were pretty much a carbon copy of Season 6 fan favorites Kris & Jon. Meghan & Cheyne were accused of the same thing on Season 15.
      • And originally, Kris & Jon might have been intended as an Expy of John Vito & Jill (3 & 11)
    • There's also Uchenna & Joyce from Season 7, who, like Chip & Kim from Season 5, were a married and amiable African-American couple who quickly became fan favorites and ultimately went on to beat out a strong and competitive, but fatally overconfident, team for the win. It's almost scary how similar these two teams were; Uchenna even shared Chip's baldness and facility with food-eating challenges. Dana & Adrian from Season 16 were expected to also follow this mold, that is, if they had lasted more than one leg. It helped that they, like the other two, were also facing off against a team who had participated in another CBS reality show.
    • Margie & Luke (Season 14) appeared to be set up as an Expy of Toni & Dallas from the previous season, and they did seem to be fitting that role... until they got into an ugly feud with Kisha & Jen, which did a lot to steer them away from the "nice mother/son team" many viewers had expected them to be too.
    • Hillbillies Steve & Linda (Season 14) were an obvious attempt to recreate the success of Kentucky hicks David & Mary (Seasons 10 & 11). Season 20's Mark & Bopper were much more successful at being Expies.
    • Brandy & Carol (Season 16) came off as Distaff Counterparts of Season 1's Joe & Bill, both being middle-aged, cultured, homosexual couples who got on the nerves of the other teams and got lots of airtime as a result.
      • Danny & Oswald (2 & 11), as another pair of cultured homosexuals, were probably intended as Expies of Joe & Bill as well, except that they were too good natured, and ended up becoming fan favorites instead of a Love to Hate team like the others.
    • An unusual example is Big Brother Rachel (20), the expy to Flo (3). They even managed to spend the entire season screaming, crying, and fighting with their partners.
    • Season 20's Nary & Jamie were assumed by many viewers, pre-race at least, to be expies of Season 17 winners Nat & Kat. Once the race started, however, it quickly became clear that they didn't quite share Nat & Kat's aptitude for the race.
    • The multiracial brother/sister trio of Azaria & Hendekea, Nick & Starr, and Tammy & Victor from Seasons 12-14 (respectively). They were all young, smart (though Nick & Starr were more crafty as compared to the other two's book smarts), below average physically, had communication issues (Azaria & Hendekea and Tammy & Victor with each other, Nick & Starr with other teams), and all had a bit of an ego. They were all even considered the strongest teams on their respective seasons at one point. It also helps that they were the first three brother/sister pairs cast since Season 3.
    • It's hard to keep track of the number of beauty queens paired with a borderline competent boyfriend/husband that have been cast. They all either argue their way through the race (Ron & Kelly, Season 7), bumble their way deep into the race (Brandon & Nicole, Season 5, and Brian & Ericka, Season 15), or both (Brent & Caite, Season 16). They also have a weird tendency to finish 3rd. The only beauty queen/boyfriend pair to avoid this fate were Colin & Christie (Season 5), who were dangerously competent.
    • Similar to the beauty queen teams and sometimes overlapping with them, there's teams where a domineering-but-not-abusive-probably alpha male tends to take out his frustration on his notably less aggressive girlfriend/wife. This includes Jonathan & Victoria (6), Lake & Michelle (9), Rob & Kim (10), Eric & Danielle (11), Lance & Keri (15), and Joe & Heidi (16), among others. Played with in an odd way in Season 17, as the men in three teams (Nick, Thomas, and Chad) took turns being the Jerkass, where one or two would abuse his girlfriend on any given leg, while the other(s) would look like he was starting to mend his ways.
      • Inverted with Ken & Tina (13), where Tina was the domineering one and Ken was the nice guy.
      • Then there are "fighting couples," in which the girl can give as much nastiness as she takes from the guy. The women in these couples tend to be whinier as well.
    • Following Season 1, the producers attempted to recapture the immense popularity of Kevin & Drew by casting at least one "male friends" team obviously chosen primarily for their sense of humor for several seasons thereafter. The most blatant Expy of them were Season 3's Ken & Gerard who were fairly successful. Season 2's Oswald & Danny (aka Team Cha-Cha-Cha) and Season 4's Jon & Al (aka The Clowns) were even more successful, although the former team might actually have upstaged the actual intended Expy team Gary & Dave (who just came across as "trying too hard to be funny" to many viewers). These teams also had a knack for finishing in fourth place (leading some fans to say that "Fan Favorites Finish Fourth"), with the exception of Ken & Gerard (and even then, they beat it by only one ranking place, and because Derek & Drew suffered a Shocking Elimination). The producers seemed to stop trying to follow this trend after Season 4, however, shifting the focus to couples teams.
      • Then after the immense popularity BJ & Tyler garnered on Season 9, every season thereafter the producers have tried to recreate that success with other quirky, lovable, usually male teams. These teams tend to have a marketable gimmick, and stick out like sore thumbs from the rest of the cast. The editing tends to focus entirely on the team’s personality, ignoring the technical aspects of the race and their interpersonal relationship (that is, unless the relationship is part of their gimmick). So far, Andy & Tommy (19) have been the most blatant Expy (though they were more of a Base Breaker, and many preferred fellow Season 19 team Bill & Cathi). Kynt & Vyxsin (12) and Jet & Cord (16) each achieved their own massive popularity, as well as Flight Time & Big Easy (15) and Mark & Bopper (20) to a lesser extent, while others have been less successful and overshadowed by other teams. Erwin & Godwin (10) were upstaged by David & Mary and Dustin & Kandice, Mark & Bill (13) by Dan & Andrew, and Michael & Kevin (17) by Brook & Claire, while Mel & Mike were simply overshadowed by the insane competitiveness of Season 14's Top 4 teams.
    • If Season 19's cast looked familiar at first glance, that's probably because it was nearly identical to Season 7's cast. It had the same gender breakdown (2 Female teams, 3 Male, and 6 Male/Female), with 6 couples (the gay couple, the old couple, the black married couple, the couple who met on Survivor All-Stars, the couple in their 30s, and the couple in their 20s), one parent/child team, and a sibling team who looked (if not were) identical.
      • It went so far that the breakdown of the final three was the same; with a dating couple, an engaged couple, and a black married couple. The final placings differed, however.
  • Fan Dumb: This can apply to certain fans of several fan favorite teams, but most specifically to Jet & Cord (16 & 18) fans. Said fans vilified Dan & Jordan for cutting in front of Jet & Cord at the airport in Season 16's final leg, even though it was Dan & Jordan taking the initiative to move up to first class, not the cutting, that gave the brothers their big advantage. Then, upon the Cowboys' elimination from Unfinished Business, their fans cried cheater again, this time against all the other teams for sharing answers on a Roadblock, something that's never been against the rules, and many threatened never to watch the show again just because the Cowboys were "cheated" out of winning again. Not only that, but the fallout of this incident may have caused Flight Time & Big Easy to fall from "fan favorites with a small group of detractors" to full on Base Breakers.
  • Fetish Fuel: In Season 11, one Detour had the teams use a large bamboo pole to flatten dough while making a bundle of noodles. Kandice decided the best way to do the task was to straddle the pole and bounce up and down on it.
  • Fridge Logic: This gem of a comment came from Mirna on All-Stars:

"The Yield wasn't really necessary. Why would you ever Yield a team in the beginning of a leg knowing that they're not that far behind and they can catch-up and pass you at any moment? It didn't make logical sense to me."

  • Game Breaker: For a large portion of the series (mainly Seasons 3-9) allowing the teams to beg for money destroyed the whole "money management" part of the game, as begging easily garnered more money than whatever the teams were given at the beginning of the leg.
    • The U-Turn, which replaced the Yield, from Seasons 12-16. It forced the team hit by it to go back and complete the other side of a Detour, and all but ensured they would finish last, especially if the they were already in last place to begin with. It didn't help that during these seasons the U-Turn was always placed on an elimination leg. The Double U-Turn was introduced in Season 17 to alleviate this, and it immediately became much less of a Game Breaker.
  • Genius Bonus: One recurring element of the race is putting racers in silly costumes based on the foreign country they're visiting. In Season 19, one such set of costumes was the detectives from Tintin - characters who regularly attempt to blend in foreign countries using costumes that turn out ridiculous and conspicuous.
  • Ho Yay: Debbie & Bianca, Season 7.
    • Intentionally invoked by Eric & Jeremy and BJ & Tyler from Season 9. The half naked pictures of them "frolicking" together that leaked onto the internet attest to that.
    • Tyler & James (Season 10), who did not so much sit next to each other as on top of each other during post-leg interviews.
    • Nat & Kat, Season 17.
  • Internet Backdraft: Jet & Cord fans still hadn't dropped the whole "Dan & Jordan cutting in line" complaining a year later when the Cowboys returned for Unfinished Business.
  • Love to Hate / Creator's Pet: Due to the Broken Base nature of the fandom, most of the Designated Villain teams will simultaneously fall under both of these categories (with the "This Is A Race" fans seeing them as Love To Hate, and "Call It Karma" fans seeing them as Creator's Pets):
    • Bill & Joe (1) broke every unwritten rule set up by the other teams on the first season and did everything they could to win, even going so far as to try to prevent three teams from making their flight by blocking security. At the same time, they established the basis for what would become the Race's Metagame, and were by far the most memorable team from Season 1.
    • Wil (2) spent the majority of the Race arguing with his separated wife Tara and irritating everyone else he came into contact with. He was also the single biggest driving force behind that season, even over fan favorites Danny & Oswald, and actually became something of a Jerkass Woobie when it became clear that Tara was no better than him (and even *worse* in some aspects).
    • Flo (3) was the worst partner imaginable, both slowing down Zach because she was a bad racer, and actively finding ways to screw him over, but she was inherently quotable, and still holds the record for most episode quotes in a season.
    • Colin (5) was a Jerkass with a short temper that irritated the other teams and almost landed him in jail, but he also redefined how teams ran the Race, and provided the series with it's single most memorable line.
    • Rob (7) had an ego you dearly wanted to see punctured, and yet had to also grudgingly admire him for walking the walk and being just as good a Racer as he made himself out to be. His Evil Gloating and Nothing Can Stop Us Now boasts also made the two crucial times he got asskicked by karma extremely satisfying to watch.
    • Linda Weaver (8) initially garnered a lot of sympathy from viewers for her back story of having lost her husband in a race car accident, but that sympathy evaporated when she (and the rest of her family) became a Holier Than Thou hypocrite who harped on other teams' supposed deficiencies and sinfulness, and alienated them to the point where they declared an Enemy Mine against her family. All of this made her as entertaining to watch as similar Holier Than Thou wives showcased on Wife Swap.
    • Mirna (11) was already kind of annoying in Season 5, but her prissiness and self-righteousness came into full bloom during the All-Star season. At the same time, she decided to start a feud with the increasingly popular Dustin & Kandice, hypocritically harping on all their supposed deficiencies. However, she also became almost as quotable as Flo in the process.
    • Jennifer (12) was one of the poorest sports in the history of the race, constantly sabotaging her game by yelling and arguing with her partner Nathan and treating other teams getting ahead or catching up as a personal offense, yet that made it ever so satisfying to see her foiled time and time again at her first place ambitions and the way she clashed with the other teams, particularly since this season's teams were friendly with each other for the most part.
    • Jaime (14) constantly yelled at her teammate Cara and any cab drivers that didn't speak English, but there was something about her freak-outs that separated her from the "Ugh, here's another Ugly American tirade coming" likes of Kendra and placed her into "Ooh, let's see just how badly she reacts to this!" territory instead.
    • Brandy (16) spent almost her whole time on the race arguing, complaining, screeching, harping on her teammate (Carol) and generally looking like she might have enjoyed maybe ten minutes of the entire race as a whole. She and Carol also got more airtime and more press than anyone else from Season 16 outside of Jet & Cord, and viewership dropped by a million after they were eliminated.
    • Art & JJ (20) were a throwback to the arrogant, dominant villains who were so prevalent in the show prior to All-Stars, like Colin (5) and Rob (7 & 11), and in between their bullying of other teams and their failed attempt to turn everyone against Nary & Jamie, they were just as entertaining to watch as well.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Rob on Season 7. Over the course of the race, he chewed out another team for calling him a liar right after he lied directly to their faces, stole that same team's taxi in the next leg, only to have them apologize to him for calling him a liar, paid off a bus driver to delay other teams by not opening the bus's second set of doors without using his own money, got teams to quit a Roadblock (involving eating four pounds of meat) and take a penalty after he himself quit it so that he would not be eliminated, managed to weasel his way onto a flight that was already closed, passed right by another team who had flipped their Jeep on the side of the road without even slowing down to see if they were okay, used his Survivor fame to get numerous locals to help him and hinder the other teams, and had everyone else chasing their own tails for the entire season.
  • The Masochism Tango: In Season 9, Lake & Michelle (mostly Lake) swap insults, rants, and epithets for nearly the entirety of every episode after the first. When finally eliminated from the Race, they declare their love for each other in such a way that you begin to wonder what chunk of their lives was left on the cutting room floor.
    • Jonathan & Victoria from Season 6 were possibly an even better (worse?) example.
    • And Tara & Wil from Season 2 were the Ur Example for "dysfunctional couples" on the series. They had already separated by the time of the Race, but their behavior towards each other made many viewers wonder how they ever came to be married in the first place. Television Without Pity recapper Miss Alli was also baffled by how Wil showed signs of genuinely being in love with Tara in spite of arguing with her 90% of the time, commenting, "This is so weird. If he likes her this much, then why is he so mean to her?"
  • Memetic Outfit: Linda & Karen's "Bowling Moms" shirts from Season 5, which are probably the single most recognizable pieces of clothing in race history, to the point where they were recreated by BJ & Tyler for Season 9.
  • Most Annoying Sound: There's always at least one team who starts yelling at each other when they get stressed out. Of course, if they last until the final few legs, when the Race is at its most stressful...
    • "Charla!" (Though really, any time Mirna opened her mouth could count.)
    • There tends to be at least one young couple in each race who like to call each other "Babe" or "Baby" to an annoying amount. Some of them really start ramping it up as the race gets further along, in basically a passive-aggressive way when they get annoyed at each other (My Ox Is Broken really brings this home).
    • Rachel Reilly's near weekly break-downs or Brendon's scream became this. Granted, they weren't nearly as bad as they were on Big Brother...but they were so commonplace, you quickly begun to think she was an Expy of Flo. How bad was their Wangst? If you cut out every example of Wangst or only watched the episodes where they didn't wangst...you would have only one episode.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The triumphant fanfare that plays in the "Previously On..." segments and during moments of success, nicknamed the Horns of Perseverance by fans.
  • Nausea Fuel: One Season 6 Roadblock had teams eating a spicy Hungarian soup. Freddy not only threw up, but some of it got in his bowl, forcing him to eat it again unless he wanted a four hour penalty.
  • Never Live It Down: Jonathan shoving his wife in Season 6.
    • Also from Season 6, eventual winner Kendra talking about the way people in Africa keep "breeding and breeding," which moved her and Freddy from a bland, inoffensive team to one of the most hated in record time. She was quickly stuck with the nickname "KKKendra."
    • In an interview, Claire (Season 17) said that no matter what she does for the rest of her life, she expects to always be remembered as the woman who got hit in the face with a watermelon.
  • Not as You Know Them: On Season 1, Kevin & Drew were a couple of goofy, good-natured guys who became fan favorites as a result. As the series's first fan favorites, they were naturally invited back for All-Stars, where they transformed into a pair of grumpy old men, who were woefully unprepared for the rigors of the modern Race, and spent their entire two legs complaining about everything.
    • Something similar happened to Kent & Vyxsin. They were a very popular team in Season 12, due to their wardrobe, their relationship, and their general quirk of being a pair of Perky Goths, but by Unfinished Business they had turned from "quirky and loveable pair of goths" to "just another fighting dating couple" (which was exacerbated Kent's injury in leg 5), grated on the nerves of many viewers, and the majority of fans were happy to see them fall short of making the Final 4.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name and Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Applied to some of the teams either by the fans, or by other racers and the fans adopt them. Examples of portmanteau names are Momily (Nancy & Emily, the mother/daughter team from season 1), Heave (Heather & Eve from season 3), and Dandrew (Dan & Andrew from season 13). Idiosyncratic nicknames include Team Guido (Bill & Joe from Season 1, self-named after their pet dog), Team Cha Cha Cha (Oswald & Danny from Season 2), the Double-Ds or the Pinks (Dani & Danielle from Season 9; the latter name for their wardrobe, and the former given by another team as a play on their names (but with a dose of If You Know What I Mean)), and Team Glee (Jonathan and Connor from Season 17, as collegiate a capella singers).
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The fanbase themselves did this with Season 3 winner Zach. Initially he was dumped in with Flo as the worst team to ever win the Race, but as time went on and more races were run, fans started to realize that he was a pretty good racer who just happened to be saddled with the worst handicap possible. Though Flo is still pretty much hated, Zach now gets quite a bit of respect from the fans.
    • Dustin & Kandice, who went from being the most hated team at the midpoint of Season 10 to being the fan favorite on All-Stars when the editors started showing their "evil acts" were actually them caring more about running the race than socializing with the other teams.
    • Ronald became Season 12's most hated team member after Episode 2 showed him acting like a complete Jerkass toward his daughter Christina, constantly heckling her in front of other teams, and even telling her that she needed to lose weight. He continued to berate Christina later on at times, but eventually pulled himself together enough to regain the respect of a significant portion of the fanbase.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Eric & Danielle being included on All-Stars, even though their relationship was nothing more than casual flirting on Season 9, and Danielle (& Dani) lasted all of four legs. This was an obvious attempt for Race producers to create their own Rob & Amber, as Eric & Danielle were offered the spot in replacement of Season 3's Flo and Drew (as Flo turned them down). Instead of a Super Couple, they got an unpopular bickering couple that won the race over several more popular teams, and broke up right after the race was over.
    • Leg 8 of Season 17 got sidetracked by Chad deciding to propose to Stephanie in the middle of the leg. The entire leg then became devoted to them and their relationship. However, all that airtime did keep them from getting A Death in the Limelight episode on the next leg.
  • The Scrappy: Most teams -- even unlikable, annoying, or incompetent ones -- still contribute something. However, every once in a while some team comes along that just completely annoys the hell out of everyone with no redeeming qualities.
    • Gary & Dave, Season 2. They were cast as a supposedly funny friends team, in the same vein as Kevin & Drew (1 & 11). However, their humor came off as ugly and irritating, had a tendency to start arguments with other teams (both real and fake... and somehow the fake ones were more annoying), and Gary would never shut up, much to the chagrin of every other racer.
    • Kelly & Jon, Season 4, especially when they started mocking Millie & Chuck for no apparent reason.
    • Marshall & Lance, Season 5. They did nothing but complain during the entire race.
    • Jonathan, Season 6. Maybe the most hated racer ever. The man verbally abused his wife for most of the race, and shoved her at one point. Not even Phil wanted to see him back on All-Stars.
    • Also in Season 6 was Kendra. Her boyfriend Freddy was not too bad, but she complained about every single place they went and whined about Sri Lanka smelling.
    • Rob & Kim, Season 10. Their passive-aggressive usage of the word, "babe" (see Most Annoying Sound), and their inability to do anything without yelling at each other was bad enough, but then they had to go be the most hated team in what is generally considered one of the most hated Final 3's in Race history.
    • Eric & Danielle, Season 11. Not only had they not raced together in Season 9, but they had been dating less than a year when they were foisted upon the fans as a Romantic Plot Tumor for All-Stars. They were even chosen from Season 9 over BJ & Tyler, who at that point were probably the most popular team to ever run the race. They became that season's fighting couple, somehow won over the far more popular Dustin & Kandice... and Danny & Oswald, and Charla & Mirna, and Uchenna & Joyce (pretty much every team except Rob & Amber). Then, to cap it all off, they promptly broke up after the season was over.
    • Dan & Sam, Season 15. They could not stop fighting, ever.
    • Brent & Caite, Season 16. "Shut Up!!" "You Shut Up!!!" "I hate those mean lesbians." Repeat ad nauseaum. It's quite telling that most of their storyline revolved around Carol & Brandy, and how much Caite hated them.
    • Laurence, Season 19. First he tore his son apart for struggling on the spirit house reassembling Roadblock when he was the one who refused to let Zac take notes in the first place. Then, in the next episode, he relentlessly mocked Sandy (a nurse practitioner) for not being able to sew.
  • Scrub: There are teams who complain about others not playing the game "right", though this was much more common on the early seasons.
    • Both Joe & Bill (1) and Blake & Paige (2) got a lot of flack for not "playing fair" and following the unwritten rules set down by the others, though most of the things they got complaints about are considered common practice now, and they were not so much "cheating" as they were "making every effort to win the Race".
    • Kevin & Drew were pretty scrubby on Season 1, but they became the Race's ultimate scrubs on Season 11 when, after being eliminated on leg 2, they forced the production crew to stop the race for six hours, forcing the other teams to stand out in the heat and waste half of their Pit Stop while the crew reviewed the tapes to make sure none of the other teams had gone even 1 kph over the speed limit. This was because Drew didn't realize that halfway through the driving trip the speed limit increased by 10 km/h, despite having both a road sign and the clue to tell him so. His staying well below the speed limit wreaked havoc on other teams' driving through that stretch, to the point where Mirna yelled at him that he drove like a girl.
    • Competing for that title is Jennifer of Nathan & Jennifer (12), who complained that Azaria & Hendekea, who won three of the four legs at that point, should let someone else have a turn at being first.
  • Seasonal Rot: The Family Edition. Having children on the Race, as well as having teams of 4 (as the show already requires a huge travel budget with teams of 2), restricted international travel, meaning the entirety of the race ended up taking place in North and Central America. The challenges had to be watered down for the families, and viewers watched as families turning seemingly dysfunctional while being challenged to such difficult tasks as pitching a tent in exotic Pennsylvania. Some people actually think it wasn't that bad; just better on paper than it was in practice.
    • Season 4 had a cast full of unlikable teams (Jon & Al being the exception, possibly Tian as well) who resorted to bickering and ugliness whenever anything didn't go their way. There was far too much fighting over what was "fair" and who had what place in line, with team playing cutthroat one second, then complaining about other teams doing the same the next. Then Jon & Al had to go and get eliminated in 4th, leaving the fans no one to root for in the finale.
    • Season 6 is viewed in this light by some fans, as almost all the likeable teams were eliminated early on and by the latter half of the race, Kris & Jon were the only likeable team left with the rest of the teams being whiny, annoying, and constantly bickering. And then Kris & Jon lose the million to the most hated team of the lot. The season also had the bad luck to be sandwiched between two seasons that are widely considered among the series' best.
    • Season 15 had a whiny, mediocre cast full of pseudo-celebrities running on a subpar course. It did not help either that three teams essentially quit the race when they came up against something "too difficult" (which included, of all things, going down a waterslide and unscrambling the name "Franz"). The season started off fine, but took two noticeable dips, first when fan favorites Zev & Justin lost a passport, then again when Maria & Tiffany quit the race, essentially removing the only two teams who were keeping the season afloat.
  • Sequel Difficulty Drop/Spike: The courses have gotten gradually tougher as the producers have gotten better and better at making courses, however some do stick out from the norm as being particularly tough or easy:
    • The tasks on Season 5 were not particularly harder than what came before, but a few permanent additions upped the overall difficulty of the series from that point out. The addition of penalties for teams saved by a non-elimination leg made it even more costly to finish last at any point, and the subtraction of the Fast Forward took away each team's one free pass per season.
    • Season 6 was the hardest of the single digit seasons, with a number of tough challenges, including the infamous Hay Bale Roadblock (in which the odds of finding a clue were Seven percent. 20/270), the Spicy Soup challenge (which caused nearly every racer to throw up, one even in their bowl), and the row of locks racers were forced to try and unlock on the penultimate leg (which caused one team to quit and take a penalty, and almost did it to another team as well). Plus, with an overabundance of equalizers, it was nearly impossible for a team to get an advantage through their travel knowledge. It also introduced limits on Roadblocks for each team member, making it harder for a strong racer to carry a much weaker teammate through the season.
    • Season 8 was just a giant loop around North America, and included challenges that could easily be completed by a child early on, though the difficulty did ramp up later on.
    • Season 10 was, by far, the hardest course they put together at that point, setting a new standard for course difficulty that would not be topped until Unfinished Business. Teams faced challenges on the first few legs that were not usually faced until midway through the season. This was also the first season teams were sent west to Asia to start the race, where communication with locals is generally the hardest, instead of east (Europe) or south (South America), and the first where there were rules against begging for money, taking away what had been a major Game Breaker for the last seven seasons.
    • Season 11 had almost no tough physical challenges, and the mental challenges would have been easy for first time racers, let alone All-Stars. It was the biggest complaint fans had about the first All-Star season.
    • Season 15 again had the fans complaining about how easy the course was (even with them bringing back the Hay Bale Roadblock).
    • Season 18 not only featured an increase in the difficulty of the tasks that was missing in the first All-Star season, but they took out any learning curve, hitting the teams with difficult tasks right from the start, issued an automatic U-Turn for the team who finished last on the first task, created combination tasks (by taking what would normally be two separate tasks and making the teams do them either simultaneously, or as part of the same Roadblock), replaced two non-elimination legs with back-to-back Super Legs, and had no (shown) Fast Forward. This season also began the trend of hitting each team member with their own Roadblock in the final leg (or at least forcing teammates to trade off tasks, in the case of Season 19).
    • Season 19, not so much with the challenges, but the clues, as they seemed to have been specifically designed to exploit teams who forget to Read The Freaking Clue, changed small things to throw off expectations of teams who knew the metagame, and exploited teams' tendencies to miss obvious things.
  • Signature Scene: Claire taking a watermelon to the face from the Season 17 premiere seems to be this for the series overall, but most seasons have their own such scene within the fanbase. Such as:
  • "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: It doesn't happen in the Race as much as in some other shows, though there are a few. Specifically, Colin from Season 5 and Rob from Season 7 are the best examples, as well as the Top 4 teams in Season 14.
    • For example, Colin & Christie constantly complained in the final two episodes of Season 5 that Chip & Kim had "played unfairly" by Yielding them, and insisted that karma would get them in the end, when: 1) the Yield was a perfectly fair (if new) part of the game rules, and 2) every team left at that point agreed to Yield Colin & Christie if they got the chance, as the couple had been so dominant up to that point, that it was the only way any of them thought they might win the race.
    • One of the few complaints about Season 18 was that the final four teams were all far to nice and willing to help each other, and there was not as much of a sense of urgency and competition as in some other seasons. It got to the point where people were calling for rules to be made against teams helping each other complete tasks. That's right, the fans were the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys.
    • Art & JJ (20) decried other teams for "not deserving to be on the Race with them," pointed out that they were fine finishing second to a Fast Forward because it meant they had really won the leg, called out other teams for copying them simply because they went to the same travel agency, and then criticized Rachel & Dave for choosing to break a deal and not U-Turn Brendon & Rachel on a leg that they essentially saw as a Foregone Conclusion.
    • It's been pointed out by Jordan on Big Brother that people are generally a lot more friendly on The Amazing Race than other social game shows. One of the most important things on The Amazing Race isn't so much getting people to like you as it is being able to work with your partners.
  • Tethercat Principle: There's something of a running joke among fans that Bill & Joe (1) are still stuck in Alaska, and David & Jeff (4) in Hawaii, because they never reached the finish lines of their respective seasons.
  • That One Task: Some of the challenges can be flat out sadistic. Examples include:
    • The Hay Bale Roadblock (Season 6). Showing an example of a Random Number God, there were 270 hay bales, and only 20 of them had clues. If you do the math, you'll find that you have around a seven percent chance of finding a clue in that one. Not to mention unrolling the bales was a task in itself, as they stood almost as tall as the racers. And that wasn't the worst challenge of the season in terms of luck. The penultimate leg's Roadblock required racers to unlock one of 3000 locks.
    • Any eating task, though special note goes to Seasons 5-7, which included two pounds of caviar, an ostrich egg, a bowl of spicy Hungarian soup, and four pounds of meat.
    • In Season 17, it was pretty much nails on both sides and picking which one would hurt the least - Either take parakeets to a boat which you had to correctly identify by locating a series of numbers on the hull (made even worse with how the teams had to do this at night), or ride on a tram and look for three signs that were well hidden if you didn't know what you were looking for; and if you didn't get them then you had to ride the tram again and again until you got them. To make matters worse, this came after a roadblock combining two of the most hated kinds of tasks into a needle-in-a-haystack eating challenge.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The Black Family, Season 8.
    • Charla & Mirna (5 & 11), despite constantly trumpeting about how no one gave Charla any respect because of her size, constantly played up her dwarfism in order to get favorable treatment at airports and from locals.
    • Nearly every season has had at least one gay male racer (ranging from Camp Gay to Invisible to Gaydar), but the show didn't feature an out lesbian until Season 10, and both lesbian couples they've cast have been over the age of 40. This is probably done in an attempt to avoid Girl-On-Girl Is Hot, which has its own set of Unfortunate Implications.
    • Caite's obsession with being the last woman remaining on Season 16, and her constant trumpeting of that fact. It only got worse when Phil brought it up in the finale.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Dustin & Kandice were originally cut as the "villains" of Season 10, but a combination of the other teams being either preachy and self-righteous or outright stupid, and the fans being happy to finally see a competent female team who weren't just competing, but were the favorites to win, caused them to jump in popularity, especially after they beat out the Fast Forward in leg 8. Their elimination, which was supposed to lead to much rejoicing from the fanbase, instead led to the most hated Final 3 in Race history.
    • Joe & Bill can come off as this to fans who only watched the early seasons after some of the later ones, as the "villainous acts" other teams hated them for are now common use strategies. Also, because post-race interviews indicate they didn't want to be portrayed as villains because of the impression it would leave on gay people. They manage to be one of the few teams who actually sound genuine about claiming to be screwed by the editing.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Weaver Family (8) started out this way, until the whole sympathy angle was dumped, and they were turned into outright Love to Hate villains.
  • Unpopular Popular Team: Dustin & Kandice were the most popular team on both Seasons 10 and 11 despite being hated by most of the other teams to the point where, in both seasons, others were plotting their elimination. It did not help that the only two friends they made (Peter & Sarah, Teri & Ian) both finished 7th.
  • Villain Decay: Happened to Joe & Bill on All-Stars, when they were overshadowed by Rob & Amber. Then again, everything "villainous" they did on Season 1 that the other teams complained about is now considered standard practice (except for trying to block the other teams from getting on their plane, which they would probably get penalized for now). Things like being secretive, piggybacking on flight booking, extracting information (or just outright spying), and tailing other teams is considered such an integral part of the game, that modern teams that don't do them are considered underprepared by the fans.
    • On Unfinished Business, Jaime was very subdued compared to her appearance on Season 14, but that, combined with Cara being distracted by her upcoming bar exam, meant that the cheerleaders were not the same threat they had been on Season 14, when they had been running even with Margie & Luke and Tammy & Victor, nor were they still a Love to Hate team.
  • Wangst: There was nothing Flo (3) couldn't manage to complain about and blow out of proportion. She even almost quit the Race on the penultimate leg, when it was already down to the final three teams.
    • Rachel (Season 20). She somehow manages to cry in every single episode.
  • What an Idiot!: Happens at least once every episode, especially when Killer Fatigue sets in for the teams. Just see Season 1, Episode 9 (or go to the trope subpage) for the most shining examples of this.
  • The Woobie: Zach, Season 3. He came on the race with his friend Flo to see if they wanted to be more than friends, but instead she spent the entire race flirting with another racer and verbally abusing him.
    • Flo herself has some fans who see her as this, claiming that her periodic nervous breakdowns throughout the show are equal parts hilarious and endearing.
    • Claire (Season 17) hit herself in the face with a watermelon, was stranded dangling from a bridge when she had trouble using an ascender, spent hours eating through a Chinese buffet looking for a piece of fake food, and through it all was partnered with Brook, who moved at a pace far beyond that of a normal human, and kept up a constant chant of, "Come on, Claire!" whenever Claire started lagging.
    • Jerkass Woobie variant: Wil (Season 2) spent most of the Race arguing with his separated wife Tara and ticking off everyone else who came into contact with him. However, Tara harangued and pushed him around to a degree surpassing his, flirted with another Racer in front of him (it's understandable that she would want to hang out with people other than Wil, but it's worth keeping in mind that she was still technically married to Wil and seemed to think that any complaints from him about it were not worth listening to, not even the gameplay-related ones that did turn out to be justified, as her insisting on dragging Chris & Alex into the Final 3 cost them the race), and had maybe one or two moments of showing something other than irritation or disgust regarding him even during the occasional moments where he seemed to be genuinely trying to reconcile with or impress her. All of which led many fans to comment that as much as they hated Wil, they also felt sorry for him due to the way Tara treated him.
      • Tara has stated in interviews that, during the Race, Wil treated her better than when they were a couple, while she'd been treating him worse. Given all the onscreen evidence of friction between the two of them, that's a sorry statement indeed.
    • Linda (Season 14), especially when she got lost during the Roadblock on leg 2 and wandered way off course, you just wanted to give her a hug when she started crying.
    • Vicki (Season 17), though mainly during their penultimate leg, where Nick was at his nastiest towards her and decided to take a nap at the Detour while Vicki (who had pretty much done all the hard work during that leg) continued to try until Nick convinced her to quit too.

Foreign Versions

  • Base Breaker: Marc & Rovilson (Asia Season 2) are possibly the biggest examples of this in any foreign version. They were similar to BJ & Tyler (US Season 9) in that they were either fun and lovable or annoying and needed to stop mugging for the camera. On top of that, with a total of eight first place finishes including seven consecutive wins, some people also began to dislike them for making the season so predictable. Their third place finish was either a depressing end to one of the best teams or a satisfying finale in which one of the most annoying teams got what they deserved.
  • Designated Villains: Played with and conversed: Jess & Lani became this near the end of Asia Season 4 not by Manipulative Editing (the team had remained relatively Out of Focus and obscure until they started leading the pack, not even a single hint that they were "villainous"), but due to fingers pointed by the remaining teams; they theorised that since that they were the only serious racers left, and the only other "villain" team Dimple & Suinana had been eliminated two legs earlier, the rest of the Final 4 needed someone to take out their aggression on.
    • In Australia 2, it's Paul & Steve, though it's Paul more than Steve who is earning the Designated Villain tag by trash-talking the other teams (sometimes within earshot of the teams) and deliberately colliding with Dane to keep him from grabbing a pig during the first detour. He outright states in episode 2 that he prefers to let Steve talk to the other teams because Steve is more likable while he's the self-designated 'mastermind'.
  • Elimination Houdini: Terri & Henry, Asia Season 2. They were consistently second-to-last place on several legs. Also, they were spared by two consecutive non-elimination legs despite the huge time deficit between the other racers.
    • Tania & Ida, Asia Season 3. They were also spared by two consecutive non-elimination legs. The only difference is that they were able get through the final three.
    • Natasha and Hussein, Asia Season 4. They made several critical mistakes throughout the race such as going to the wrong boat on the first leg, they failed the roadblocks twice in Malaysia and Australia and were forced to take the 4 hour penalties. Despite of that, they were spared due to the other racer's misfortunes and found out that the race in Australia was a double-length leg.
    • Mo & Mos (Australia 1) came last on the first non-elimination leg, were saved from almost certain elimination thanks to Anne-Marie & Tracy quitting the same Roadblock they did, and survived the first leg in South Africa only thanks to karma coming back to bite Richard & Joey in the ass for being unbearable to every other team. They finally were eliminated on leg 5 even though fate seemed to give them every chance to survive, first when they got lucky with an Intersection (allowing them to catch up to Sam & Renae), then again when Chris & Anastasia lost their car keys (and even when, by a small miracle, they found the key, they were unable to open with without Sam & Renae's help).
      • After Mo & Mos were gone, Matt & Tom slipped into the roll. First, on leg 6, Matt burned through all his arrows on the Rodablock, and only Jeff's charity kept him from having to take a four-hour penalty. They then came in last at the midpoint of the Super Leg, then were the last to check in again at the next Pit Stop, only to be saved by Chris & Anastasia's penalty.
    • Lucy & Emilia (Australia 2) could be becoming Houdinis already. In the first leg, they checked in last at the pit stop, only to be saved by Ross & Taryn using their Salvage Pass on them to keep them in the race. They reached the pit stop last again in the next leg, but survived because of Adam & Dane's penalty.
  • Expy: Matt & Tom from Australia Season 1 bear a striking resemblance to Jet & Cord (US Seasons 15 & 18). From them being farmers, to their "hickish" accents, black and white cowboy hats, and the other teams often referring to them as "cowboys", it's hard to believe this casting was not deliberate.
  • Fan Dumb: Following Rovilson & Marc's loss to Adrian & Collin in Asia Season 2, some fans cried that the producers rigged the finale so that a team with a deaf person could win in their home country, nevermind the fact that Adrian & Collin had the hardest time with taxis the leg and that Rovilson & Marc had a sizable lead on everyone going into the final memory task. There were also some people who were convinced that the producers were racist against Filipinos.
    • In Israel Season 2, fans were upset that Bar & Inna won. The final task had teams travel from one building to another on a tightrope, using only each other as support. Fans stated that Bar & Inna, who arrived to the task last, had a stiffer cable than the other two teams, thus making the cable easier to walk across, nevermind the fact that Bar & Inna, being models, obviously weigh less than two middle aged brothers. It was also argued that it was rigged so a male team wouldn't win again, even though the fan favorite team was a married couple. If rigging was involved, you would think that they'd have the fan favorite team win.
  • The Scrappy: Terri, Asia Season 2. Constantly nagging at her husband whatever blunder they have come across. She does that so much that her husband would often break down in tears.
    • Natalie Glebova, Asia Season 3. Yes, the same woman from Miss Universe 2005. She pretty much complained about every detail that was outside her comfort zone, claiming that being dirty was the lowest form of existence and that sleeping at the airport had got to be the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Did she expect that the Amazing Race would be like the Miss Universe Pageant?
  • That One Task: Asia Season 1, Episode 3 had a Roadblock where one team member had to dig deep in sand to search for a mini surfboard. This proved so difficult that it took two hours for the first surfboard to be found, at least an hour and half more for two more surfboards to be found, well into the night for one especially unlucky racer to find her surfboard, and five out of nine teams gave up on the Roadblock entirely and went for the 4-hour penalty. (Although it wasn't helped by most team members somehow not thinking to use or ask for shovels until much later on.)
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