The Hunger Games and Reality TV

Dissecting the Hunger Games Series by comparing it to Reality TV

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    • Episode 1: The “Quarter Quellian” Nature of Survivor 50’s Bloodbath

      Spoilers for the entire Hunger Games series and prequels. Spoilers for Episodes 1 of Survivor 50 including first boots. Spoilers for Survivor 48 & 49. Spoilers for Australian Survivor: AU vs. the World in references.

      (Authors Note: I had originally intended to write up a quick comparison of the arc in the first four episodes to the Quarter Quells depicted in the series. However, in wanting to fully breakdown and compare the page references, strategic dynamics, and social problems, this got very long very quickly and will have to be released in parts. Apologies for the delay with syndicated programming.)

      We are now four episodes into the 50th season of Survivor, titled In the Hands of the Fans, and whether intentional or not, the references and parallels to Suzanne Collins series, the Hunger Games, are everywhere. Even more specifically, references to Catching Fire, the story of Panem’s 75th Hunger Games and third Quarter Quell, have become evident in the overall game design and alliance splits.

      Starting with Episode 1 “Epic Party,” some surface-level structural similarities have immediately begun to emerge. In Panem’s 75th Annual Hunger Games, 24 returning victors were reaped to fight to the death. For this season of Survivor, 24 returning players were asked back, some winners, but most legendary for the impact they left on the game. As many avid fans of the Hunger Games franchise know, tributes from Districts 1,2 and 4, known as Careers, have been raised their entire lives to fight and win the games.1 The Careers typically all team up in a Pack of six before the Games even begin, taking time in the training circuit to solidify their alliance.2 For the most part, however, the Career pack does not solidify until the Games have truly begun.3 Survivor 50 features a group of six iconic “old era” players, each with multiple showings under their belt, that took the main stage immediately as our “Careers.”

      Looking at the Cila tribe, Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, Cirie Fields, and Ozzy Lusth, all iconic for their showings within the first 20 seasons of the game, can be somewhat representative of a pre-game Career Pack. Over on Vatu, Colby Donaldson and Stephenie LaGrossa ring out as the most Career-like castaways on their tribe. And of course, everybody’s favorite Dragon Slayer, Benjamin “Coach” Wade, stands alone on the Kalo tribe. All “Careers” in their own right, these players have made a name for themselves bringing the best of gameplay and the performance arts to Survivor. Unlike the Hunger Games, however, these “career” style players, have only teamed up in niche groups based upon their tribe division rather than any solid pre-game alliances taking form based upon their legend status. Any pre-game alliance flourishes that have shone through so far do slightly mimic the dynamics in Catching Fire between the Careers, our primary protagonist Katniss Everdeen, and her district partner Peeta Mellark.

      The ultimate showing of Career and legend dominance immediately kicked off with Survivor’s fight for supplies. At the 26:55 mark of the first episode our elder Gen Z star, Rizo Velovic, aptly announces to us “as a super fan, I know everyone here is very dangerous. So, Survivor 50, in the Hands of the Fans is going to be more like Survivor 50, Welcome to the Bloodbath.” The term “bloodbath” can be traced back to the Roman Gladiator games and those historic games were the actual blueprint Collins used for her fictional Hunger Games.4 In the Hunger Games, a bloodbath of its own is featured right at the start of the Games. When the 24 tributes in Collins’s fictional dystopia enter the arena on their platforms, they “have sixty seconds to take in the ring of tributes all equidistant from the Cornucopia” which is “spilling over with the things that will give [them] life [there] in the arena.”5 After the sound of a gong signals the start of the Games, tributes spread out to attack, the Careers typically getting ahold of the supplies first and then pressing their physical advantage to gain a numeric one.6 Rizo, the hero of his own tribe’s “fight for supplies” on Survivor 49 did utter the aforementioned line on 50 after all 24 castaways, split into three tribes, participated in the marooning challenge before the actual “fight for supplies” began. This initial marooning challenge, the symbolic start of Survivor 50, gave the winning tribe, Vatu, fire in the form of flint and a bonfire back at their camp. And of course, we all know “fire represents your life in the game of Survivor” as Jeff Probst himself reminded us of.

      Moving into the actual “fight for supplies,” one member from each of the tribes was sent to participate in a three-way face off. Coach went forward for the Kalo tribe and Ozzy went forward for the Cila tribe. From Vatu, the winners of the marooning challenge, Quintavius “Q” Burdette, was sent forward or volunteered as the representative from his tribe. While Q was not included in the Career casting assessment laid out above, his combination of game knowledge, social skills, and physique immediately made him a “big player” on his tribe and a “threat” in the game to anyone not aligned with him. These three men, two Careers and one a legend on the rise, then went on to battle it out to be the first to bring necessary camp supplies back to their tribe.

      In this “fight,” the three men counted down a starting time, climbed to the top of a pole to knock off a bag of tools, dug up another bag, and then swam out into the ocean to collect their final bag. The tools in the bag were used to create a long pole with a hook at the end. The competitors would then use that pole to knock a key off a peg. They would do this all while behind or clinging to a bamboo wall designed to look like a cage. Once the key is knocked off the peg, this leaves the three tribe representatives a chance to battle it out and claim the key for themselves even if they weren’t the one to initially knock it off.

      Quick side note for an interesting reference mostly unrelated to the Hunger Games that’s set up here. The bamboo wall, designed to look like a cage as well as the “escape” key being fought over is a niche reference to how Reality TV and Prisons are often the two most studied places to learn about social psychology and strategy. Chrissy Hofbeck, at the 47:09 mark, reminds us that “[she] knows, its a microcosm of society and relationships of people, but truthfully [she] love[s] the strategy.” Jenna Lewis herself, the first to ever do it, really brings the reference home though when Survivor 49 winner, Savannah Louie finally reveals her winning status to her tribe. At the 34:50 mark, chronologically before Chrissy’s line about the “microcosm of society,” Jenna reminds us that “Survivor 50 is not gen pop. This is death row… You’ve got blood on your hands.” This brings us back to the prison match style bloodbath that is commencing on the beach and sets us up perfectly for Chrissy to come in and contextualize the reference we are seeing. Alright, now back to the action.

      The rest of the fight for supplies played out on 50 as described, except for one small hiccup. After what we are told is approximately a half hour, Ozzy, caught up in an “honor and integrity” battle with Coach, suggested that whoever successfully knocked the key off the peg would just keep it. This “deal” that Ozzy made, though, was directly verbalized to and only acknowledged by Q. So, as you might imagine, when Ozzy finally knocked the key off the peg, Coach promptly stole it from him, insisting that since he did not agree to Ozzy’s proposal, his own code of honor and integrity remained intact. This initial bloodbath culminated in Coach announcing that he had “slay[ed] the dragon that is Ozzy,” getting the first pick at supplies and symbolically taking back the biggest advantage for his tribe.

      While we’ve seen how the bloodbath plays out in a “regular” Hunger Games during Katniss Everdeen’s time in the arena in the 74th Games, we also have an eerily similar bloodbath depiction during the 75th Hunger Games. In Catching Fire, the second book in Collins’ original trilogy, Katniss is raised up into the arena on a metal plate and immediately notices that she is surrounded by saltwater.7 As Katniss begins to assess the arena in the minute she is given before “the gong” sounds, she sees that the Cornucopia, the object of the bloodbath “appears to be sitting on a circular island” but has “thin strips of land radiating from the circle” corresponding to “twelve spokes, each with two tributes balanced on metal plates between them,” which will force her to swim out to reach the supplies.8 For this Quarter Quell, Katniss wasn’t “let[ting] the thought of adversaries slow [her] down” she was now playing and “thinking like a Career.”9 The supplies available at the Cornucopia for the 75th Games were piled in a tall stack rather than being strewn around  like the 74th Games.10 Within minutes, Katniss and her quickly forged ally, Finnick O’Dair from District 4 – a Career, took control of the initial fight at the Cornucopia.11 After noting there was ‘nothing but weapons’12 available amongst the supplies, Katniss and Finnick successfully fight off the “prior alliance” formed by the “four Classic Careers” from Districts 1 and 2, leaving the rest of the supplies to go assist their district partners from their isolated metal platforms.13

      While notably different from Survivor 50’s “fight for supplies,” the landscape and swimming requirement of the bloodbath in the 75th Hunger Games bears an uncanny similarity to it. As soon as Katniss and her alliance of four, Finnick, Peeta, and Finnick’s elderly District partner, Mags, leave the “beach” where the bloodbath commenced, Katniss recognizes the climate as a Jungle, something she had only seen on television before.14 Notably, Survivor has been filmed in Fiji since at least the beginning of the “new era” which exists in a warm sub-tropical environment aka the jungle. Even more comparable is that even with Katniss and Finnick’s initial “advantage” over the supplies, the “classic Career” tributes were still able to use their numeric advantage to assert territorial control over the Cornucopia15. Similarly, in Survivor 50, once Coach won the initial “fight for supplies,” Q and Ozzy were sent to Exile Island and forced to sell one another their vote to take camp supplies back to their tribes. Ozzy, our “Career” castaway that most closely resembles Finnick O’Dair, chooses to sell Q the camp supplies in exchange for Q’s vote. This means Ozzy returns to camp empty handed but has an extra vote to play at a later tribal council while Q returns to his camp with supplies but loses his vote until after his first tribal council. Unlike Finnick, Ozzy did not have a close ally to assist him as well as Katniss did Finnick in their “fight for supplies,” although Q did do his best. As the Cila tribe dynamics played out upon Ozzy’s return, he was able to immediately gain himself workable allies and show the audience he has adapted to a more strategic style of gameplay. All before Survivor 50’s gong was symbolically rung at the first tribal, Ozzy had managed to bank an extra vote and immediately align himself with the strategic mastermind that is Cirie Fields, the other most prominent Career on his tribe.

      Now to fully understand how this “fight for supplies” or bloodbath will continue to factor into the Quarter Quellian storytelling baked into Survivor 50’s first few episodes, we need to look at the “disaster tribe” critique that has become more prominent in recent years. As Survivor’s audience has increasingly noted since Survivor 41, the beginning of what is known as the “new era,” tribes that start out with fewer supplies tend to continue on a downward trajectory until a swap or merge portion of the game.16 Both Survivor 48 and 49, the immediate predecessors of Survivor 50, featured one of these “disaster tribes.”  Vula and Kele of 48 and 49 were practically decimated in the first few rounds of the game after repeatedly losing out in the immunity/reward challenges. In Survivor 48, the Vula tribe repeatedly lost challenges and voted out three members before the first swap. One of these vote outs, Justin Pioppi, became historic for being the result of multiple new era game mechanics converging at once to essentially “twist screw” Justin out of the game. Mary Zheng was the only castaway from the original Vula tribe to officially “make the merge” after fan favorite Saoiounia “Sai” Hughley and Cedrek McFadden were successive boots in the “earn the merge” twist. While Cedrek was a member of the jury that crowned the winner of Survivor 48, he still never officially “made the merge” like the rest of the castaways on the jury. Interestingly, Cedrek was also the only member of the jury to cast a vote for losing finalist and Survivor 50 castaway Joe Hunter. While Survivor 48 has been lauded by fans as “boring” in the merge portion of the game, I would argue that it’s a chronically under edited classic season made more controversial by the dramatic addition of twists.

      Looking at Survivor 49, the disaster tribe dynamics that took over Kele were a bit more complicated than 48. Similarly to Vula, the Kele tribe was immediately run down by poor challenge performance and a lack of camp supplies. After their first two vote outs, the most insulated player on the tribe, Jake Latimer, was bitten by a sea krait and medevaced from the game. The Kele tribe lost the next immunity challenge after Jake’s sea krait encounter and voted off a fourth member, leaving only Sophi “Soph” Balerdi and Alex Moore. While both Sophi17 and Alex did end up making the merge, Alex sat on the jury while Sophi sat in the final three chairs on finale night. While most fans suspected Savannah Louie or Rizo Velovic to win 49 due to their casting slots on 50 leaking early in the season, some were shocked to see how Alex voted in the end. After Rizo lost to Savannah in the final four fire making challenge, decided by Sophi, Alex one of Sophi’s “day ones” cast his jury vote for Savannah to win the season. While Savannah’s competition prowess and massive comeback throughout the season were likely the biggest factors in Alex’s choice to vote for her some have wondered if there is more to the story. It has been confirmed that there was in fact pre-gaming that occurred on Survivor 49 that led to two contestants being removed before the game began.18 Alleged statements made after the finale speak to a potentially larger pregaming scandal that could have impacted the Kele tribe’s overall morale and therefore performance.19 Regardless of interpersonal dynamics, alleged pre-gaming, or even new game mechanics it’s clear that the lack of supplies and demoralization castaways experience on a “disaster tribe” cause a pretty massive setback. Even if a “disaster tribe” castaway manages to continuously survive a tribal vote, the lack of food or human necessity contributes to a “disaster tribe” castaway’s ability to perform well physically once swapped or merged. Similarly, tributes in the Hunger Games that are unable to succeed or gain an advantage in the initial bloodbath or fight for supplies at the Cornucopia continue to face a much more difficult path to victory.

      Survivor 50’s Cila tribe, the one Ozzy showed up to empty handed after his role in the bloodbath, quickly began to display the “disaster tribe” markers laid out above. While Cila was able to make fire thanks to Dr. Christian Hubicki’s quick wit and usefulness with eyeglasses, they still lacked other necessary resources to establish tribe moral. During the first immunity/reward challenge, Cila took a pretty staggering loss forcing them to tribal council. In the time before Cila officially makes it to tribal, we see Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, the only representative from Survivor’s first season, immediately get to work, attempting to form a majority to vote out her fellow Career style castaway Cirie Fields. Because Cirie is Cirie, she immediately caught wind of Jenna’s plans and got to work on her own plan. Locking in fellow Career castaway Ozzy as her number one and then forming a four-person alliance with Christian, Rick Devens, and Emily Flippen, Cirie was able to strategically place herself in the majority and turn the tides on the move Jenna was planning. While Cila and its tribe members will come to reflect the complicated alliance dynamics Katniss deals with during the 75th Games in Catching Fire, the first vote out from their tribe is far more comparable to how the bloodbath starts and ends in a typical Hunger Games.

      Heading into the first tribal council of Survivor 50, at the 01:29:44 mark, newscaster Rick Devens levels with the audience and lets us know that “they’re getting rid of someone huge” and then presents us with the options: Jenna, “the season one representative,” Ozzy “a challenge beast,” and then Cirie the “fifth time player.”20 Where Jenna, Cirie, and Ozzy should be natural allies due to their “old-timer” or Career status, we see that, for whatever reason, Jenna was unable to trust her fellow “Pack.” Once all of the Cila tribe was assembled at tribal council our host, Jeff Probst, hit them with his usual questioning. However, when he got to Jenna Lewis, he asked her to take him back to her very first tribal council from Survivor’s first season.

      Jenna starts out by telling us she remembers “banging a gong” to enter her very first tribal council. At first they “took it kind of lightly” but it became “serious” to Jenna and her season one tribe after they had to return to camp with one fewer person. Like the fictional Hunger Games, the game only truly begins once the sound of the gong rings out and the bloodbath commences. While we already watched Survivor’s “fight for supplies” portion of the bloodbath, we can see Jenna’s reference to banging a gong as the start of the part of the bloodbath where tributes are literally killed and their bodies removed from the Games. Obviously, in Survivor nobody actually dies, they are just voted off and sent home. As the Cila tribe went to vote, we see Cirie write Jenna’s name down and tell us “you decided to come for me when I had zero intentions of sending for you, and I respectfully hope it comes back to bite you.” And come back to bite Jenna it did. In a 7-1 vote, Jenna Lewis, one of our “Careers” and season one representative was the very first voted off the island in Survivor 50. As mentioned earlier Cirie, Jenna, and Ozzy should have worked together, but just like the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, we see that not all Careers get along.

      While the first round of the game ends here, the first episode continues, extending the “casualties” of the initial bloodbath that the first exit has come to represent. Kyle Fraser, the winner of Survivor 48, had to be medevaced after snapping his achilles tendon during the first immunity challenge. Clearly the “top dog” or “heart” of his Vatu tribe, Kyle’s loss rocked the tribe’s dynamic. On his way out, Kyle tells his tribe that he “hopes one of you guys [Vatu] takes this freakin’ thing” and asks “please one of y’all win” while boarding the boat that would take him off the island. Slight shades of a Capitol hovercraft removing a bloodbath body after the initial round of fighting, just to bring us back to the Hunger Games. Q, who had been their tribe’s representative in the “fight for supplies” and a quick ally to Kyle upon his return from Exile, seemed the most shaken up by his exit.

      We end this episode with Q telling us he wants to honor Kyle’s request for one of their tribe to win the game. While Kyle’s medevac, aside from being the result of “the initial bloodbath” doesn’t have any direct comparison to any of the Hunger Games or Quarter Quell’s we have seen, aside from his boat exit, it can be most likened to the death of a tribute in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the story Panem’s 10th Hunger Games. In Ballad one of the tributes meets their fate before even entering the arena. The Capitol Zoo, where tributes for the 10th Games were forced to live prior to the start of the Games,21 became a place where mentors could meet up with their tributes to discuss strategy.22 The girl tribute from District 10 was killed by Peacekeepers after lashing out and killing her Capitol mentor, Aarachne Crane, who had been taunting her with food.23 While Kyle cannot be held responsible for his injury, his medevac before his tribe really got to play, can be most closely representative of this interaction. It is worth noting that throughout Ballad, we see multiple tributes succumb to illness or injury limiting their participation in the Games. This happens again in Sunrise, however that incidence is more comparable to being a cast alternate. That being said, what both the death of District 10’s tribute and Kyle’s medevac shows us though, is that personal injury escalates the highly controversial entertainment factor used to bring in viewers.

      This brings us to the end of the first episode of Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans. Between the “fight for supplies” becoming the bloodbath, Jenna, a Career, being the first voted out, and Kyle’s devastating medevac, I think we can officially say the Hunger Games and Quarter Quell comparisons are on the nose. While I have no idea if any of these references are intentional or accidental, I do believe a cross promotional marketing framework has been applied by Survivor’s team. It would only make sense that in gearing up for the November release of the movie adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping, the story of Panem’s 50th Quarter Quell, they would attempt to lean in and capture a younger audience. As we head into episode 2, titled “Therapy Carousel” more of the Quarter Quellian storytelling and alliance dynamics begin to take hold on the Cila tribe and Dr. Christian Hubicki begins to emerge as our Peeta Mellark.

      1. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 94. Full quote: “The exceptions are the kids from the wealthier districts, the volunteers, the ones who have been fed and trained throughout their lives for this moment. The tributes from 1,2, and 4 traditionally have this look about them. It’s technically against the rules to train tributes before they reach the Capitol but it happens every year. In District 12, we call them Career Tributes, or just the Careers. And like as not, the winner will be one of them.” ↩︎
      2. Ibid., 157. Katniss tells us, “Usually all of the Careers make it through the first day” and that “Five Career Tributes” are left when the Capitol shows the death toll at night. ↩︎
      3. Ibid., 159. “they’re fighting in a pack… Often alliances are formed in the early stages of the Games. The strong band together to hunt down the weak then, when the tension becomes too great, begin to turn on one another. I don’t have to wonder too hard who has made this alliance. It’ll be the remaining Career Tributes from Districts 1,2, and 4.” ↩︎
      4. Collins, Suzanne. “Q&A with Suzanne, Collins” Interview by Scholastic Inc. Scholastic, Inc., 2010. Accessed Jan 18, 2025. ↩︎
      5. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 148. ↩︎
      6. Ibid., 150-152. Generalized summary of what Katniss sees during her first bloodbath in the arena during the 74th Annual Hunger Games. ↩︎
      7. Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. (Scholastic, Inc., 2009). 296. ↩︎
      8. Ibid., 300. ↩︎
      9. Ibid., 301. ↩︎
      10. Ibid. ↩︎
      11. Ibid., 303-304. ↩︎
      12. Ibid., 304. ↩︎
      13. Ibid., 305. In referring to Brutus, Enobaria, Cashmere, and Gloss, Katniss tells us, “These four classic Careers will no doubt have a prior alliance.” She then says she’d “be willing to take them on with Finnick” if it weren’t for Peeta “still stranded on his metal plate.” ↩︎
      14. Ibid., 308. “Jungle. The foreign almost obsolete word comes to mind. Something I heard from another Hunger Games or learned from my father.” ↩︎
      15. Ibid., 305-306. “…no one seems interested in pursuing us. Sure enough, Gloss, Cashmere, Enobaria, and Brutus have gathered, their pack formed already, picking over weapons… most of the tributes are still trapped on their plates.” ↩︎
      16. For those unaware of the general “flow” of a Survivor season in the “new-era,” three tribes of six start the game and eventually merge into one tribe when there are around 11 players left. At least once before the merge occurs, a tribe swap happens, switching around the makeup of each tribe. ↩︎
      17. During Survivor 49, there were two women with the name Sophie/Sophi. At one point in the game, Sophi Balerdi started to go by “Soph,” but I have decided to refer to her here by her given/chosen name. ↩︎
      18. Ross, Dalton. “Jeff Probst says players cut from Survivor 49 were disrespecting the rules: ‘An even more blatant level.’” Entertainment Weekly. Updated September 25, 2025. https://ew.com/jeff-probst-players-cut-survivor-49-disrespecting-rules-11816250 ↩︎
      19. Cheema, Elizabeth. “Survivor 49 Pregaming Controversy Explained.” Reality Tea. January 9, 2026. https://www.realitytea.com/2026/01/09/survivor-49-pregaming-controversy-explained/ ↩︎
      20. Cirie has actually played Survivor six times. Spoiler: this includes her fourth place finish in Australian Survivor: AU vs the World. ↩︎
      21.  Collins, Suzanne. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. (Scholastic, Inc., 2020), 46-47. Coriolanus Snow, the mentor for the District Twelve female tribute travels with all the tributes from their train to the zoo. When they are dumped Coriolanus notes that “he was in the monkey house at the zoo.” ↩︎
      22. Ibid., 48-124. After Coriolanus’s first “trip” to the zoo, he continues going back. Additional Capitol students/mentors also join in up until Chapter 9. After a series of unfortunate events culminates in the rebels bombing the arena, mentors, tributes, and even Capitol citizens were essentially put on lockdown until the actual start of the games. ↩︎
      23. Ibid., 98-100. ↩︎

    • Was Big Brother 6 the Blueprint for The 74th Hunger Games?

      Full Spoiler Warning for the first Hunger Games book and movie. Full spoilers for Catching Fire book and movie. Full spoilers for Season 6 of Big Brother. Spoilers for Season 10 of Big Brother.

      The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, was published in September of 2008. For those not indoctrinated to the world of competitive reality television, September usually signals the end of a Big Brother season and the beginning of a Survivor season. In press for the book, she cited reality television as an inspiration and there were even articles that touted it as a book for teens into Survivor1. While Collins has never confirmed which show she was directly inspired by, she was definitely inspired by the reality genre as a whole. I’ve made the case previously that I believe the show the fictional Hunger Games most closely resembles is Big Brother, so lets look back at its early seasons to see what other influences we can find.

      In 2005, 3 years prior to the release of the first novel, CBS’s competitive reality television program Big Brother aired its 6th season. In Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother, Taran Armstrong tells us “that the twist of the season [six] was that the cast was made up of secret partnerships” and that each pair had initially thought they were the only ones who knew each other before entering the Big Brother house.2 On top of the “built-in” partner structure, the show announced that if a duo made it to the end together, they would win an additional sum of money to add to the $500,000 prize offered to the winner. As Armstrong tells us, the twist “didn’t make too much of an impact in the overall direction of the season,”3 but I can’t help but wonder what may have happened if the additional sum of money for sticking together had been announced later in the season rather than at the beginning.

      It seems like Suzanne Collins was doing just that in her first book of The Hunger Games trilogy. Just like Big Brother 6, the “cast” for Collins’ fictional Hunger Games, made up of “tributes,” enter into the arena knowing one person previously, their district partner. In Collins’ post-apocalyptic dystopia each of the 24 tributes must fight to the death to crown one sole victor. This means that district partners, while potentially able to have a “pre-game” alliance, will still be forced to kill or let one another die to win the Games. However, the 74th Hunger Games, depicted in Collins’s first novel of the trilogy, featured a change of rules, a twist if you will.

      Added in after a decent amount of time had gone by, the Gamemakers, or producers, had Claudius Templesmith, the iconic announcer of the Games announce a new rule to the remaining tributes. Two tributes can win the games together, so long as it is with their district partner. Our primary protagonist and narrator, Katniss Everdeen, who came into the Games with her district partner, Peeta Mellark, had previously decided not to team up (or align herself) with him in the arena once the Games truly began. But with the introduction of this new rule and the death of Katniss’s previous ally, District 11’s female tribute Rue, the two tributes from District 12 find their way together and end up becoming dual victors of Panem’s 74th Annual Hunger Games, the first in history.

      Of course there were reasons for the twists in both the 74th Hunger Games and Big Brother 6. As Armstrong tells us in Behind the Mirror, the twists introduced into the game of Big Brother served as a way to escalate the controversial entertainment factor that had arisen out of the reality tv genre in the early 2000s.4 In The Hunger Games, Katniss hints to us that the “star-crossed lovers” storyline being portrayed between her and Peeta, triggered the rule-change for her Games. While book readers don’t see Katniss and Peeta’s faux love story originate in the arena we do see it built by the use of media tactics from their mentors and stylists before the Games even begin. Peeta himself, though, is the one that really sells it to the audience of the Games when he truthfully pronounces his years long crush for Katniss just before the Games in his televised interview. Unaware of how radical it would be, Peeta immediately adapted his strategy in the Games to benefit Katniss, his district partner.

      So why did the Gamemakers wait until the show was underway to introduce the twist? Well, that’s where we have to look to the film adaptations to understand. District 11, where Katniss’s young ally was from, rebelled after being forced to watch Rue die at the hands of a Career tribute. After immediately seeking revenge by killing the Career tribute, Katniss, in defiance of everything the Hunger Games stood for, sang Rue and dying song and commemorated her burial grounds. The injustice of Rue’s death and the defiance Katniss showed gave the people of District 11 hope and they rebelled. But it also presented another problem, the Capitol audience. The death of a young child and whisper of rebellion over it could be just enough to break the cognitive dissonance the Capitol viewers are experiencing over the death of children.

      You see, because Katniss immediately killed Marvel, the Career tribute that killed Rue, the audience lost the entertainment factor in Rue’s death. In that moment, Katniss’s grief for Rue became the entertainment. Allowing the Capitol citizens to see the human moments that exist between the tributes calls out the dehumanization of the District population that is manifested in the Games. Since Katniss was able to immediately enact her revenge, there was no plot progression gained from Rue’s death, what the Capitol would hope to achieve. It was too controversial and not long-lasting enough to be considered entertaining. By allowing the Capitol citizens to see the tributes as humans rather than “filthy savages” as the Capitol paints them to be, they may just throw their hands up and revolt against the Capitol themselves. So, enter the rule-change, two partners from the same District can win together.

      By announcing this rule-change, the Capitol was able to redirect the narrative of the Games and introduce a new plot line to their audience. Katniss had been humanized to the audience, she couldn’t just die now, that would ruin the entertainment caused by her controversy. By this point in the Games Katniss had already decimated what strength the Pack (or alliance) of Career tributes had left by blowing up their supplies. While I’m sure the Capitol would have loved to see Katniss moved to blood-thirsty revenge, she’d already killed Marvel and weakened her last remaining competition, not to mention Katniss didn’t actually want to hunt down and kill the other tributes. So they gave her a “showmance” instead of just outright killing her. By focusing in on the blooming love-story between the two tributes, the Capitol was able to make Katniss’s humanism entertainment once again.

      As Katniss continues through the Games, further attempts to dehumanize her shine through, but none worse than the end of the Games. After the final tribute left in the Games, a Career named Cato from District 1, was sacrificially killed by Katniss, Claudius Templesmith once again came over a speaker in the arena. This time it was to announce that the previous rule-change that allowed for both Katniss and Peeta to win had been reversed. This would force Katniss or Peeta to kill one another. The two star-crossed lovers from District 12 the audience had followed through the entire Game forced to now turn on one another. Rather than accept this fate, Katniss once again turns to her humanistic and radical tendencies and proposes that both her and Peeta kill themselves rather than let the Capitol crown a victor, the ultimate act of resistance. Unaware of how radical this was, the Capitol called off the rule reversal right as Katniss and Peeta together began to consume poisonous berries they had found in the arena. The Capitol needed a victor and could not let both Peeta and Katniss die, so they called off the reversal and crowned them both victors. How much of this rebellion the Capitol audience saw is called into question by Katniss herself while in the arena and after the Games as she watches the highlights. The prequel novel Sunrise on the Reaping, shows how the Capitol often “chops and screws” live footage from the Games to fit their own narrative, but I suppose that’s more of a modern 2020s indictment on reality television than a critique of 2008.

      Speaking of the 2000s, how did that twist turn out back in season 6 of Big Brother? Well as Armstrong told us, it didn’t have a notable impact on the game, but it did provide some highly controversial and entertaining moments. Outlined in Behind the Mirror, Kaysar Ridha, a young, handsome, and intelligent man made his debut to reality television as Big Brother’s first Muslim and Iraqi contestant. While the season didn’t go well for Kaysar – he was evicted not only once, but twice after another twist was introduced to bring him back into the game via America’s vote – he quickly became a fan favorite by playing the game in a deeply human way. Caught up between his Sovereign Six alliance and fellow Houseguest, Cappy’s friendship alliance, Kaysar eventually took a stand and nominated Cappy alongside his partner from the outside, Maggie. Cappy went home that week, but not long after, Kaysar met his fate in the game. This was 2005 and as the only Muslim and Iraqi contestant the game had seen, Kaysar faced Islamophobia and xenophobia, whether explicitly stated or not. Watching Kaysar overcome the strategic difficulties and hatred he received in the game without resorting to the same tricks as the “Friendship” alliance made his ability to humanize himself entertaining to fans. In the end, Maggie, Cappy’s partner, went on to win the season. A good game player, Maggie herself had been at the heart of the most entertaining moment of that season. “No, I sealed your partner’s fate,” Kaysar told Maggie after nominating her next to Cappy.5 A line that has been echoed, edited, and mythologized across the fandom rings out as the most memorable from a season designed to foster controversy.

      While Kaysar did not win that season, just two seasons later in the summer of 2008 legend Dan Gheesling burst onto our screens, iconizing what it is to play Big Brother. That same year Suzanne’s first book in the trilogy, the story of the 74th Hunger Games, would debut introducing the world to Katniss Everdeen. Katniss, who in the second novel of the trilogy, Catching Fire, would be thrust back into the arena for the 75th annual Hunger Games and go on to break the arena and end the Games. While I’m not sure any of these game players were direct inspirations for the character Katniss, representations of their depictions throughout Collins’s series help us see a greater critique of the format Suzanne was telling us about almost 20 years ago.

      Twists, or rule-changes in the Hunger Games, as we have shown serve to escalate the highly controversial entertainment factor expressed in the reality television medium. While these twists can seem to dehumanize their contestants at times and kill the entertainment in the game, there may just be a mythic legend waiting in the wings. Like Katniss Everdeen, legends of Big Brother like Dan Gheesling and Taylor Hale have shown the strategic and human ways television contestant’s have overcome producers attempts to focus on highly controversial entertainment leading to their dehumanization. While Taylor’s story, not covered here6, is more of an indictment on the modern state of Big Brother, Suzanne’s critique of the genre holds firm. The human moments, as they happen, not meddled with, are what the fans at the heart of these shows want to see, not the produced, exaggerated, and controversial narrative sold by the edit. However, the controversy will always sell.

      1. Springen, Karen. “A Book for Teens Shows a ‘Survivor’-Like World.” Newsweek. September 04, 2008. Updated March 23, 2010. ↩︎
      2. Armstrong, Taran. Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother. (Sourcebooks, 2025), 114. ↩︎
      3. Ibid. ↩︎
      4. Ibid, 78-97. Condensed summary of analysis in Chapter 6 Twisted. ↩︎
      5. Ibid, 56-142. Story of events summarized from chapters 4-7. ↩︎
      6. If you’re reading this and do not know the story of Taylor Hale’s time on Big Brother, please check out Taran Armstrong’s book cited above. His analysis of how the game has been broken by twists is much more thoughtful and nuanced than I can describe here as it pertains to the original Hunger Games trilogy. I plan to discuss more of the analysis for Taylor’s season when discussing prequel novel Sunrise on the Reaping. ↩︎

    • Do We Know What TV Show Inspired the Hunger Games? Here’s my guess…

      Following the March 2025 release of Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel novel to Suzanne Collins’ acclaimed series, The Hunger Games, fans were quick to call out parallels the trilogy bore to some of its reality television-based influences. Rebecca Perlmutter, for Swoon.com, released an article in May of that year comparing the relationship between Katniss and Peeta, the star-crossed lovers at the emotional center of Collins’ books, with “Boston” Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich (now Mariano), the Survivor “it-couple” of the early 2000s. Even with many comparisons evident, as Perlmutter put it, “there has been no real confirmation that the reality competition that inspired The Hunger Games was Survivor.”[1] However, with the expected 2026 release of Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans as well as the film adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping, the story of Panem’s 50th Hunger Games, it’s hard not to draw comparisons, at least in premise, between the two franchises once again.

      The origin story for the Hunger Games has been repeated by Collins in multiple interviews. As she told the Scholastic Journal, she lay awake one night flipping the channels between competitive reality television and actual war coverage when the lines started to blur and the rest is history[2]. But now, as avid fans of both the series and competitive reality television alike ruminate over the connections, I can’t help but wonder which competitive reality show had she been watching that fateful night back in the early 2000s? If not Survivor, what other competitive reality shows may Collins have found inspiration in?

      Regardless of which show specifically was airing that night, the allusions to competitive reality television shows are evident throughout Collins’s series. She combines elements seen in many popular American game shows to explore the ways in which media can desensitize its audience to the world around us. By comparing the series to its numerous reality television influences and different elements within the genre, we can begin to maybe answer the question of which show Collins was watching all those years ago. As an avid fan of Survivor’s sister show, CBS’s hit competitive reality, Big Brother, it’s easy for me to imagine the 24/7 voyeuristic program as the one Collins may have landed on while letting the lines begin to blur between reality and fiction.  

      Released in November 2025, Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother, by Taran Armstrong, deep dives into the creation and cultural development of CBS’s version of the program. Armstrong makes the case that Big Brother is a mini reflection of our American society and the problems raised or spotlighted throughout its 25-year history are problems we have with reality itself[3]. In order to do this, Armstrong dives into different aspects of the shows production and the community the audience has built around it. Suzanne Collins characterizes both the production and the audience of her fictional Hunger Games similarly to that of Big Brother.

      The overall premise of Big Brother is simply to avoid eviction or win power week after week over the course of three or more months all while being broadcast live and 24/7 for all of America to witness. Detailed in Armstrong’s book, Big Brother was created in the Netherlands by producers Jon De Mol and Paul Römer and adapted for American TV audiences in the summer of 2000. Over its 25 year and counting run, the TV show has created a hyper-realistic arena wherein up to 17 Houseguests attempt to survive eviction each week with the goal of winning $750,000, previously $500,000 until the show’s 23rd season in 2021[4]. In Collins’ fictional dystopia, the Hunger Games, also the name of the trilogy, is a televised event in which 24 tributes, one male and one female, from each of Panem’s 12 districts fight to the death to crown one sole victor. The “Games” [5], as they are shortened to in the book, are playing out in real-time while simultaneously being broadcast live for the entire nation of Panem.

      On the surface, I’m sure you can already see similarities in the structure, but let’s take a closer look. The goal for Big Brother’s Houseguests is to be the sole remaining Houseguest and crowned the winner. For tributes in the Hunger Games the goal is to be the sole remaining tribute and crowned the victor. To achieve the goal in Big Brother, Houseguests must avoid the nomination block. In the event they are nominated, Houseguests must survive an eviction vote where the other Houseguests choose which of the two or sometimes three Houseguests nominated to vote out. In the Hunger Games, tributes are literally trying to survive a theoretical chopping block. This theoretical chopping block, or nomination block if you will, takes form in the Hunger Games via combat amongst tributes or other arena-based elements introduced by the Capitol’s Gamemakers (or producers to really drive home the comparison). Once a tribute is faced with combat or another one of these elements, they either live or die. Surviving the arena for another day after engaging in combat forces a tribute to reckon with a rockier path to achieving the final goal of winning. Similarly, if a Houseguest does manage to survive an eviction vote, they tend to have a rocky journey to winning the game, unless they’re Dan Gheesling but that’s a point of comparison for another time.

      Tributes, the theoretical cast of the Hunger Games, are structured similarly to the various casts of Big Brother. While the cast of Big Brother, at times, features 17 total Houseguests there is typically an even number, and in recent years that has been capped at 16. Like Collins’ Hunger Games, the genders of the Big Brother Houseguests, tend to be evenly split, eight women and eight men. Regional diversity is another structural concept applied to casting that is similarly portrayed in both Big Brother and the Hunger Games. While Big Brother can’t cast one man and one woman from each of the 50 United States, each season does aim to feature Houseguests from various American geographical regions. The Hunger Games includes the concept of regional diversity by reaping tributes from each district, which are described as distinct industrial regions within the broader nation of Panem. As Big Brother is produced in Los Angeles, we can consider that the regional center for Big Brother’s production. Comparatively, the Capitol is the regional center for the production of the Hunger Games. In curating a cast that is regionally diverse, Big Brother includes contestants from California and the Los Angeles region, whereas the Capitol does not allow for their children to be reaped. However, within Panem, District 1 is described to make luxury items for and to be geographically near the Capitol.[6] Tributes from District 1 can, to a lesser degree, reflect the Capitol demographic based in Panem’s regional center.

      The primary audience for the fictional Hunger Games are the citizens of the Capitol, Panem’s regional center and the heart of its power. In Collins’ trilogy she “send[s] [her] tributes into an updated version of the Roman Gladiator games” drawing upon the Greek Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.[7] It’s hard not to make comparisons between the pomp and circumstances of the Roman Games and competitive reality television. As Collins put it, “the audiences for both the Roman games and reality TV are almost characters in themselves,” and can even “play a role in your elimination.”[8] In, Behind the Mirror, Armstrong uses a similar analogy to analyze Big Brother’s audience. While describing aforementioned legendary contestant Dan Gheesling and his mostly “clean and positive” antics in comparison to previous contestants, Armstrong describes this as “resonat[ing] with an audience usually thirsty for blood and drama as if they’re the screaming attendees of the Colosseum that is modern-day reality television.”[9] While I’m sure we can analyze the cultural similarities between the audiences for Roman gladiator games and competitive reality television, the point that both Collins and Armstrong have hit on here is how audiences find ways to involve themselves in the game being played one way or another.

      The broadcasting of both Big Brother and the fictional Hunger Games occurs 24/7 and live. Cultural eco-systems have been built around both Big Brother and the Hunger Games, for audiences to participate in the live 24/7 broadcasting of the programs. Big Brother’s primary product is the edited and produced episodes that air on CBS’s syndicated programming around three times a week. The primary attraction of Big Brother, however, is the live feed(s) broadcast on the internet. Similarly, the Hunger Games, we learn, are being broadcast seemingly live and 24/7 for most of the country to see, specifically the Capitol. Condensed replay style broadcasts are shown to be aired in Panem as well, primarily through the descriptions of our narrator and protagonist, Katniss Everdeen. In chapter six Katniss takes us through the aftermath of the Opening Ceremonies and mentions watching a replay of them, which were also broadcast live as they were happening[10]. We are also told of the replays earlier in the book during District 12’s reaping. Katniss tells us she must not appear weak, so she isn’t marked as “an easy target” for the other tributes to take out[11], an early example of how the audience will affect the game to come.

      The Capitol audience depicted in The Hunger Games plays a very large role in tribute success. As described by Katniss, Capitol citizens will sponsor tributes in the arena, paying money to their mentors to send supplies directly to the tribute of their choosing within the arena. Big Brother has featured a variety of instances in which the audience directly impacts the outcome of an individual contestant’s game. On Season 18 of the program, the sponsor style gifting to tributes was practically recreated when fans voted on a Houseguest to send a care package to. During the Hunger Games, when tributes are sent items, they enter the arena on a parachute device, floating directly to the contestant it was meant for[12]. During Season 18, fan favorite and return player, Nicole Franzel, received “America’s Care Package,” which was floated into the backyard of the Big Brother house by a parachute[13]. The visuals really sell the point, but nonetheless we see here how Big Brother has featured elements of audience participation nearly identical to that in The Hunger Games.

      While fictional, it may seem macabre to compare the death of teenagers to the adults who have participated in Big Brother or other reality television programs. As mentioned earlier, one of the core themes explored in Collins’s work is how media desensitizes its audiences to real-world issues around them. Desensitization to war is the core issue Collins is portraying; reality TV is the medium she is using to explore how that manifests in a fictional society. While I do think reality television has its own ways of desensitizing us to real-world issues, I do not want to seem as if I am ignoring the issues at the heart of Collins’ work. There’s also certainly a meta-commentary on the desensitization that is manifested here with abrupt transitions in discussing violence and death to a somewhat silly reality television show.

      I know I haven’t really made the case that Big Brother was the show Suzanne Collins was watching all those years ago. If we’re being honest much of the series is largely reflected in Survivor, which was the marketing basis for the books. However, I do think the programming of Collins fictional Hunger Games most closely resembles CBS’s Big Brother. Hopefully by exploring only a few of the similarities laid out above we can start to piece together other comparisons seen between The Hunger Games and not only Big Brother, but Survivor and so many other programs across the reality genre. Why else would Suzanne tell her audience it was the inspiration if not to inspire us to pick it all apart?

      [1] Perlmutter, Rebecca “Did Boston Rob & Amber’s Epic ‘Survivor’ Romance Inspire ‘The Hunger Games?’ Swoon, May 21, 2025. https://www.swooon.com/1193405/survivor-boston-rob-amber-romance-the-hunger-games-inspiration/

      [2] Collins, Suzanne. “Q&A with Suzanne, Collins” Interview by Scholastic Inc. Scholastic, Inc., 2010. Accessed Jan 18, 2025.

      [3] Taran Armstrong, Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother (Sourcebooks, 2025)

      [4] Big Brother, season 23 episode 1, aired July 7, 2021, on CBS, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/Lz8gWBWdDN83XFX9Xm_A7d0tT_iBPPqp/?searchReferral=desktop-web&source=google-organic&ftag=PPM-23-10bfh8c

      [5] Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 23. This shortened version is first introduced by Effie Trinket while proclaiming “’That’s the spirit of the Games!’” after Katniss volunteers as tribute.

      [6] Ibid, 69.

      [7] Suzanne Collins, “Q&A with Suzanne, Collins” Interview by Scholastic Inc. Scholastic, Inc., 2010. Accessed Jan 18, 2025. https://www.scholastic.com/content/dam/newsroom/press-kit/hunger-games/Suzanne%20Collins%20QA%20no%20contact.pdf

      [8] Ibid.

      [9] Taran Armstrong, Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother (Sourcebooks, 2025), 184.

      [10] Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 78.

      [11] Ibid, 23.

      [12] Ibid, 188. The first time Katniss receives a sponsor gift it is sitting on her sleeping bag with a “silver parachute” attached.

      [13] Big Brother, season 18, episode 25, aired August 14, 2016 on CBS, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/F6DC1A2F-705F-9F46-C970-8A454E800C10/