Big Brother/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Pretty much all of the house guests.
  • Likewise, alternate gameplay interpretations, too in the American version.
• Ambiguously Brown: Several contestants.
• Awesome but Impractical: The strategy of winning competitions so people can't touch you. What happens when you become ineligible to compete or fall a bit short? Everyone takes aim at that target at your back, and...
• Base Breaker: During Season 8 of the U.S version, both Jen and Evel Dick were simultaneously loved and hated by the fanbase.
  • Brendon and Rachel are either loved, or seen as Creator's Pets. Indeed, Brendon's return caused quite a bit of people on the fan forums to just Rage Quit in disgust. Even people who sat through Big Brother 9 (considered the worst season) and Big Brother 12 (considered another of the worst).
  • Nikki from the UK series is either really really annoying, or actually pretty funny.
  • And from Season 13, the double eviction in which two powerful players (Daniele and Jeff) were evicted, Jeff by players he had targeted and accused of being "Floaters" who did nothing to stay in the game claiming that this is the worst season ever. Others were praising the three on their insight to take out the number one target over someone they all hated (Rachel). Others were also praising that Jeff was gone.
    • Season 13 in general was either one of the best seasons ever when Rache realized being a complete jerk won't win her the game and got what she claimed to have deserved. Or you were suspicious at how Rachel seemed to get every single twist directly or indirectly benefitting from it, shaking your head at the Flanderization of the game into a game about competitions.
• Non Sequitur Scene: During a discussion about his plan with Matt in the HOH room, Lane spontaneously declares that he needs some pop rocks. Cue him sitting in a chair in silence, the sound of the rocks being caught by his microphone, and Matt staring incredulously. And then:

Lane: Green apple's not the best flavor.

• Boring but Practical: During the first couple weeks of the American series, you want to fly under the radar and not piss anyone off since you can be evicted because you're annoying, and you don't want to win any of the competitions unless you need to (Veto). You want to avoid winning competitions because then you get marked as a threat and can be evicted. You don't want to be on the outskirts of the house because then you'll be marked as a throwaway. You also don't want to make alliances with everyone because then they won't be able to trust you and see you as a threat. As the number of potential targets dwindles, then you want to start winning competitions so that you can ensure your safety. It works, but really, it's more interesting when people start fights in the first couple weeks.
  • Not to mention, making people think they can beat you. A good part of surviving in the american version as well as more social game shows in general is making others think you're worthless, which often involves Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Broken Base: The various fanbases of the show do not agree on anything.
• Cargo Ship: Daniel/a fake coconut tree in BR S11.
• Critical Dissonance: Season 13. According to CBS, this was one of their most rated shows. If you ask the fans, especially the ones who've been watching the show since 2000, it made Season 9 look like pure gold. And that is saying something.
• Defensive Fans: Try saying you don't like Jeff&Jordan or Brendon&Rachel, or that you don't think season 13 was that good.
• Funny Moments:
  • Big brother 6 (US):

April: I swear, I didn't do that on purpose!!
(to the Confession Cam) Really, I totally did that on purpose.

• • Big Brother 9 (US):

Sharon: I feed them before I feed myself in the morning! I love my little furrr-ieeends!
Guinea Pigs (Subtitled: "Sharon should go up on the block this week!" "Yeah! She's crazy!")

• • Automated Big Brother in 2006. Pete had way too much fun playing with it (and it once "Evicted" him!), and it even broke!
  • Jeff upon receiving the Coup d'état Power: "Coo...Coop deh taht?"
  • "Flood Night" in the recent season.
  • Also from Season 12, Enzo's "space adventure".
  • Big Brother 9 (UK) also had a task involving one of those steady hand games where you have to avoid touching the wire. In this case, all the housemates had to wear body suits that were fitted to give them all a shock each time the wire was touched. Cue lots of failed attempts and screaming housemates every time they slip up.
  • Travis from Big Brother Australia 2007 had a chance to win a trip to Bolivia after winning a Friday Night Live touranment. Instead of reading "Bolivia", he read "Bolvia".
  • Jen's breakdown in Season 8 (US): "I shall now perform....eating."
  • A Jump Cut so perfect in Season 13 it almost seems scripted.

Porsche: I'm throwing the Veto competition and Keith has no idea.
Keith: I'm throwing the Veto and Porsche has no idea.

• • This footage of Marcellus and Howie at Loser's Lodge during Big Brother: All Stars.
• Heartwarming Moments: Season 2 (US) brings us Kent, who is clearly homophobic, even saying in the diary room (early on) that he thinks the homosexual lifestyle is sinful. He's also placed in the house with Bunky, who is openly gay. You'd expect these two to be at each other's throats, right? Well, those two actually became best friends in the house, Kent even let Bunky sleep in the head of household room with him!
  • The twins in 5 joining up.
• Creator's Pet: In the form of Manipulative Editing, making Shelly look like she spent the whole week sitting around whereas Rachel was the one doing all the work. See Manipulative Editing.
  • The editors pick their favourites from all the players and decide to show them off to the audience. The problem is; they assume we'll like them too, or that we'll Love to Hate them. But we just hate them - making them Creator's Pets. Given that producers in the American version have the power to slant the show and make Manipulative Editing work in their favor, their favorites become even more obvious, and sometimes even though we loved them, we begin to hate them due to overexposure.
  • Brendon and Rachel because they take up 50% of the screentime and were already highly unlikable from Season 12, then returned for Season 13 having learned almost nothing. Jeff and Jordan are coming into this due to similar overexposure.
    • Not to mention, the producers even fixed an entire season for them.
  • Jessie seems to be hated all over the Internet, yet, he has now made an appearance during four consecutive seasons. He's been used as a punishment from Pandora's Box during the last two.
• Elimination Houdini: Occasionally, a houseguest who is continuously nominated for eviction survives, or they wind up dodging the bullets.
  • Sharon and Natalie in Seasons 9 and 11 (US), Paul and Freddie/Halfwit in 2009 (UK). All of which were continuously nominated yet survived week after week.
  • Camilla from Season 6 in Australia. She was up for eviction ten out of thirteen possible times. She survived all of them and ended up taking second.
• Entitled Bastard: At least one every season, but perhaps the loudest example was Rachel. Sociopathically pushing her way through the game, throwing around insults and Disproportionate Retribution, then wonders why people hate her.
• Epic Fail: The spelling Veto in season 11, with Jeff trying to spell "technotronics" (which isn't even a word, mind you) and ending up with "tectronics". What pushes it into Epic Fail territory is that, had he have simply ditched the R, he would've had "tectonics", which is a word and would've beaten Russell's seven-letter "shotgun" handily.
• Fan Dumb: Fans of Jeff Schroeder were not pleased that Shelly had turned the tables around on him and was the driving force to his eviction. So much, they sent death threats to Shelly's family. The show's producer even said "What the hell, fans?"
• Fridge Brilliance: The head of household competitions in the American Big Brother actually have a bit of this. Strategically, you don't want to win Head of Household because it puts a target on your back as you reveal your targets and sometimes your alliance to the house; and you're often seen as "getting them out" even when all you did as Head of Household was nominate them for eviction, very easily someone can flip the votes around with you having nothing to do with it. Head of Household only votes in the event of a tie. So naturally, people try to avoid this until much later in the game, but the competitions are designed so that somebody has to win, and it's not uncommon to ahve someone win by default. A common strategy is to throw it to your own alliance members.
  • There's also some Fridge Brilliance for the final veto challenge in 12. It was actually set up like most multiple choice tests where you can eventually narrow it down to two possible choices. This was what allowed Hayden to win it, since he still had that skill of removing the blatantly-incorrect choices due to being a college student, whereas the other people in the challenge were a hotel sales manager, oil company worker, and insurance agent who had long finished school, or hadn't even gone to college.
• Game Breaker: The Coup d'état allowed the holder to take off the nominees and put up their own. The first time this was put into the game, the specter of it made people afraid to nominate their own way. The second time, it completely turned the game around.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Brazillian version manages to be one of the most popular reality shows of its country, if not the most popular.
  • It's probably the only reality show that actually works in the country. No Limite (a The Survivor knock-off) hardly managed to get three seasons in 10 years.
• Hate Dumb: Towards Shelly Moore. After she betrayed Jeff and Jordan and realized she had no chance of winning with those two in the house, she promptly dropped to the lowest rated houseguest ever. People begun making hate sites about her, and saying that her daughter should be taken away or raped and killed. Note that at the time, her daughter was eight years old. Say what you will about Moore, but wishing that on an eight year old girl (whose only "crime" was being the daughter of someone you don't like) is downright repulsive. People even started calling her employer asking for her to be fired.
  • Grodner even said "What the hell, fans?"
• Ho Yay: Ragan (gay) and Matt (straight) in US S12. They're almost always together to the point where people think they're in an alliance, and Matt even referred to Ragan as "a good showmance partner". When Matt was put on the block, Ragan began to weep uncontrollably.
  • A few contestants even thought that the "secret relationship" Annie implied existed was between Ragan and Matt and that they had been dating before entering the BB House.
  • Week 1 when the Sabatour revealed that two house guest have a connection too each other Brenden right away thought that Matt and Ragan could be gay for each other.
• Hypocritical Fandom: If someone lies, backstabs, flips, and whatever, they get derided by the fanbase, especially if they backstab a fan favorite. If someone gets far by making people think they're worthless and can beat them easily, they're called a "floater" and are told they're terrible at the game. Dr. Will did both, not winning a single competition in both his time in Big Brother and is still considered the best person to have played the game. .
  • One can also see Double Standard in this as people are much more likely to forgive players like Dr. Will and Jeff because they are Mr. Fanservice.
  • Jordan was somehow considered a great competitor despite only winning a total of three head of household competitions throughout her entire run. Only one of which she actually won without having everyone else hand it to her or deliberately throw it for her. Adam, Kalia, and Porsche manage to win over twice that amont (complete with a few vetoes for good measure) and people continuously hiss "Floater!" at them. You just know that if you swapped Jordan with Kalia or Porsche, people would be crying "Floater!" at her.
• Morality Pet: Evel Dick again, with Danielle. As you probably figured out from the above, he was not an easy guy to be around. What kept him from seeming like a total jackass is that he really did care about his daughter and wanted to get closer to her.
• Most Annoying Sound:
  • Amber's constant crying
  • Most of Rachel's temper tantrums, saying "Nobody gets between me and my man", or her constant bragging about how awesome she is.
  • Any time a houseguest eats potato chips during the feeds.

• Pandering to the Base: Season 13 of the american version, which featured the unnecessary return of six fan favorites (two of them being Creator's Pets) with obvious slantings and bailouts when things weren't going their way. The live feeds would be almost perpetually turned towards them, and the edited shows would be about 90% Brendon&Rachel or Jeff&Jordan, denying any of the new houseguests any chance at screentime.
• Periphery Demographic: People often watch many versions for Sociological purposes. ie, studying what the houseguests do. The people who watch the US and Brazilian versions for sociological purposes (ie, alliances and pairings) also overlap with the people who do so with Survivor.

• Retroactive Recognition: A bizarre example. Season 10 contestant Steven Daigle has recently gone on to a career acting in gay pornographic films.

• Scrappy Level: A couple challenges had a Special Effect Failure or two. From the American and Brazilian version, the hot dog/soda challenge. What they had to do was split the houseguests into two teams and had to climb onto the punching bag shaped like a hot dog or bottle of soda and then ride it to the other side while the teams had to operate a pulley to get it from one side to the next.^[1] The challenge encouraged teamwork, but at the same time was slanted towards taller people because you would slip and fall right on off of the punching bag.
• Seasonal Rot: Accusations of this have been made by the US fans following Season 12, which was filled with floaters and long, boring moments.
  • In the US, prior to season 12, the worst seasons were generaly agreed to be 4 and 9. 4 for its stupid twist and unlikeable cast, 9 for it's below 30 cast of eye candy (only 1 player was over 30), a bunch of hastily cast players who weren't very likable with the exception of Natalie, a beginning twist that sort of screwed Parker and Alex (And originally Sharon) because people were evicted in pairs, its winner who became a drug dealer (yes really), and Joshua. Just Joshua. The next season, a back to basics thrown together 3 months later is considered one of the best seasons for not being like 9.
  • Season 12 (along with 2 and 10) is perhaps one of the best ways to demonstrate what the US Big Brother is actually like; the producers didn't really try to slant the season that much and they didn't show off that many twists that affected the game (sans the Diamond Power of Veto, which was a small-scale coup'de'tat ^[2]) because the Saboteur twist ended early and failed big time when it was tried again beyond just annoying the houseguests. (Although it did screw over Kathy) However most people were rather...dull game players because they were booksmart and not really streetsmart. The Brigade shows a Boring but Practical strategy. There were also a couple players who, if they were in another season, probably would have controlled the house but wound up on the wrong side of a four (later three) man alliance or didn't play too long. Heck, Ragan could've controlled the game; his main shortcoming was that he spent too long hiding behind house drama and didn't start playing hard until it was too late when the alliances were tighter.
  • Season 13 was considered even worse than season 12. Combine the Brenchel-centric editing during the first few weeks, the boring people cast as sacrificial lambs for the Creator's Pet to win, and the obvious riggings. What amazing luck that the second Rachel and Jordan are in trouble and might actually go out, the Head of Household is forced to open Pandora's Box, introduces a twist that mysteriously benefits them (and only them!), the veto challenge is a carbon copy of the first head of household competition, and the next head of household competition is a rehash from the previous season (Which has been done before) but one that Rachel described as having done well at a couple days before the feeds. Wow Rachel, what AMAZING luck. A lot of people actually Rage Quit the season because it was pretty much spelled out that the producers wanted one of the "Veterans" to win. The fact that Rachel even said that the ywere promised jury says a lot.
• "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Being a competitive game, this is bound to happen. Some people are very competitive and attack people for playing the game differently than them, when people with different strategies have proven to work.
  • Brendon&Rachel and more recently Jeff&Jordan (But Jeff moreso) have shown themselves to be incredibly intolerant towards other peoples' gameplay, especially trying not to make yourself be perceived as a threat to others. Typically; what gets you further in the house is making the other houseguests think they can beat you - And winning competitions is typically a good way to make houseguests think they can't beat you. One almost wonders if they'd accuse Will and Mike "Boogie" Malin of having poor gameplay and say they are terrible players, since Will's entire strategy was making people underestimate him and target somebody else. (Boogie even lampshaded this in All Stars when he immediately dropped out of an endurance competition saying they(Janelle and Erica) had to take him, even comparing himself to Richard Hatch in the process.)

• Unpopular Popular Character: Paul Clarke in the 2001 UK series was nominated for eviction four times in a row by his housemates only to have the public vote to get rid of his fellow nominee every time.
  • It happens all the time in the Argentinian version known as "Gran Hermano", specially after the fourth one. A special mention goes to the winner of said edition, Marianella Mirra, who was shunned by most of her old house mates but received the biggest amount of votes in "Gran Hermano" history.
  • Played with (inverted?) in the current Brazillian version. The aforementioned Ariadna was the fanfavorite just for being Transsexualism, yet was the first contestant to be evicted. She may very well return, though.
  • Evel Dick from US Season 8. So much the America's Player twist bailed him out.
  • Many occurrences in the UK series. Alex Sibley, Jon Tickle, Victor, Science, Aisleyne, Rex, Freddie/Halfwit and Aaron.
• Voted Off the Island: US version only.
  • Australian version mixes this and the normal voting system. Housemates narrow the voting-off list down to the least popular group of housemates, then they get voted off out of that group. The only exception was the first three evictions of season 8, where the voting public narrowed it down to three housemates that the housemates then had to vote to evict.
• Wangst: Nikki Grahme in 2006 would throw tantrums over some of the pettiest of things.
  • From the american series, Amber would cry over just about anything. In Season 13, Rachel comes pretty close to Amber in terms of constantly throwing pity parties and crying, while Brendon would just try to calm her down. Other criers from the American series include Daniele (8), Shelia (9), April (6), Chima and Lydia (11), and Ragan (12). (Zig-zagged with Bunky, who had a reputation for crying a lot but his crying was more happy crying.)
• What an Idiot!:
  • Brendon in Season 13. The reason they were evicted in their original season is their Russel Hantz-like social game where they made enemies of just about everyone in the house and being good in competitions put targets on their backs the size of Alaska. Instead of cleaning up their act this time however, they act pretty much the same way they did last year, just allied with Jeff and Jordan this time upon finding they had common ground. After Daniele flipped on their initial alliance, Brendon told her that if he or Rachel makes it to the finals they will win, which is the exact opposite type of thinking you want to encourage—if you want someone to keep you in the house, you want them to think you aren't a threat to them and won't beat them if you make it to the end with them. See also Reality Show Genre Blindness.
  • The newbies had a golden opportunity to vote out Rachel, instead, Kalia decided to TRUST Rachel & Jeff, even though Rachel said 'to her FACE' that she'd target Danielle, followed by Lawon asking to be evicted, thinking he could beat whoever came back. "Win-nothing" Lawon, against either Dominic or Brendon, allowing the veterans to retake a majority. To be fair, Lawon asked to be voted out and there was no way for them to have known it'd be a challenge. And also to be fair, exchanging Rachel for Brendon would've been a better choice.
  • Marcellas is the earliest and most famous example of this trope. In Big Brother 3, the power of veto couldn't be used on oneself, however at the end, it became the Golden Power of Veto which could be used on yourself. Marcellas is nominated, wins the Veto, but does not use it and is then evicted. When Julie Chen interviewed him, she even bonked him on the head with a piece of paper and said "What were you thinking?"
  • Jacob in US Big Brother 9. The first competition is a "Power Couple", which makes them get the sole vote for the first eviction of the season. Instead of trying to get on the power couples' good side, Jacob doesn't and says they're all snakes. This resulted in him and his partner Sharon being the first evictees.
  • Anyone who volunteers to go up on the block and be evicted. Lawon and Dustin come to mind.
• What Measure Is a Non-Badass?: Anyone deemed "undeserving" or simply didn't play the kind of game that people didn't like them. Typically, if you wind up taken over someone or actually have someone backstab their alliance in order to take you further, then you've certainly done something right. Nicole expected this to be pulled on Dr. Will in Season 2.
  • Kalia, Shelly, and Porsche have had this. A lot of people hate them...yet they did exactly what Dr. Will did.
  • Surprisingly averted with Jordan - despite literally being carried in both seasons she's on, everyone claims that she is a better competitor for having won a luxury competition and only one head of household, to Kalia's two head of households, Porsche's one head of household and vetoes (As well as how many competitions she finished in the top three with), and Adam's two vetoes and head of household win. Amazing how this got glossed over, huh?

• Worthy Opponent: Jessie actually admitted this in season eleven. Jeff won a game changing power called Coup de tat and used it to put Jessie and Natalie on the block. Kevin had the insight to cast the deciding vote to evict Jessie as a bigger threat. Jessie even said in his interview that it was a very good move on Jeff's part and that he would vote for him if he made it to the end.
  • Brendon to Daniele. In the same season after Jeff was evicted, Rachel and Jordan said that they saw Kalia as the most deserving winner...before the show was promptly fixed

1. ↑ There were pullies on both sides when it was reduced to one
2. ↑ (the Coup'de'tat was a power that allowed a person to remove the nominees and replace them with their own nominees. When used in Season 7, the specter of it basically meant it wasn't used, and when it was used in 11, it completely flipped the game around. In contrast, the Diamond Power of Veto was just removing one nominee and replacing it with your own.