Much has changed on Survivor since its debut in 2000, especially within the first few seasons of the show.
General
- The contestants in the first few seasons took things very personal - Richard Hatch and Kelly Wigglesworth were painted as villains for, respectively, forming an alliance/using strategy and winning a string of challenges to save herself after being seen as useless by her tribe.
- Some of the earlier seasons, mainly the first 3, can be a little hard to watch nowadays because many people had played the strategy game so well that some of the early players seem like utter fools in comparison, especially people who outright refuse to flip on their alliances despite being on the bottom.
- The challenges were far less elaborate in the earlier seasons than they were in the seasons within The New '10s. Notably there are almost no physical challenges with puzzles at the end, a staple of later Survivor.
- Nearly every challenge features non-stop play-by-play narration by Jeff Probst. In the early seasons, this was edited out, and all we heard from Jeff during challenges was occasional words of encouragement to the players.
- The shooting style changed greatly from the first two seasons. The production crew seemed particularly apt in Borneo and Australia to focus on "slice-of-life" scenes instead of predominantly focusing on the strategy or tribe politics. In addition, scenes shot during natural disasters and accidents (see Michael Skupin's burn wounds or the camp flooding in Australia) seem much more unfocused and panicked, with included interviews by the medical staff.
- There was no tribal switch, Exile Island or Hidden Immunity Idols in the early games, meaning they were played slower and more methodically, where survivors didn't have the luxury of finding a "free pass" to the next round.
- Past votes used to be the tiebreaker in The Australian Outback and Africa, drastically changing how the game was played.
Idols
- In Guatemala, the first Hidden Immunity idol could only be played before votes were cast, making it more of a second immunity necklace than an idol.
- In Panama and Cook Islands the idol's power was greatly increased, being able to be played after the votes were read. Since the idol could be transferred to other players, there was no way to actually play around an idol, resulting in the idol holders for both seasons making it to the final three each.
- In Fiji they got the design closer to normal but there were some oddities. For whatever reason it did not appear that players could play idols on one another, as evidenced by a couple players sneakily transferring the idols to one another before tribal council. Gabon featured the first time someone relinquished an idol to another contestant live at tribal council to play for themselves. Later on, Redemption Island was the first time someone physically handed an idol to Jeff while announcing that they were using it on someone else.
Survivor: Borneo
- The cast of Borneo made numerous mentions of the fact that they were playing a game, and discussed how their actions would be judged by the "audience" watching at home (noted in Colleen's "We are on a game show!" quote). This was rarely, if ever, brought up again in later seasons.
- Contestants in early Borneo were voted off for making alliances instead of voting emotionally - you'd be hard-pressed to find an instance in the later seasons where the contestants didn't forge alliances in the first few days of the game.
- Matches were used as rewards, the only time matches were used again was Cook Islands when Sundra and Becky hilariously failed to make fire with flint for 90 minutes and Jeff didn't want them to be there all night.
- Jeff Probst didn't have the show's terminology down correctly, and would often mix up the names of the various challenges and ceremonies. The contestants were also confused about the name of the different gameplay elements (for instance, B.B. referred to the Immunity Challenge as the "Indemnity Challenge"), and sometimes made no effort to complete the challenge (like Rudy's infamous "I don't know" responses during one memory challenge).
- Several of the challenges were based off popular works like the then-recently released The Blair Witch Project. Later seasons had little, if any, reference to any piece of popular media.
- The merge was instead called a "merger" only in the first season, and the players knew in advance when it would occur. It happened at the same time in the next few seasons, allowing the show to do a twist in Thailand where the tribes were brought together on one beach and incorrectly assumed they had merged, when in fact they had not. In more recent seasons, the merge time has varied in order to keep the players guessing about when it will happen.
- While the torch snuffers tend to become more intricate over time, the first one was by far the most basic - simply an undecorated disk at the end of a stick.
- Lower-third graphics during confessionals featured a parchment behind the player's name. In the second season onwards, the graphic is simplified to text only.
- At the final four, when there is a tie, the contestants revote. This would never happen again, ties at the final four are considered final to avoid wasting time.
- In the first season, Jeff actually announced the winner on the night of the final votes, rather than a live segment. In the second season, instead of announcing the winner, Jeff, to the shock of the players, announced that the winner will be announced at Los Angeles in a live segment after the show's finale is broadcasted on television, then promptly left the island via helicopter (the live segment of the final episode opened with the players at Los Angeles, waiting for Jeff's helicopter to arrive). Each subsequent season's live segment presents Jeff's announcement of the winner to seemingly take place on the island, until a Studio Audience is suddenly heard cheering at the reveal of the winner, cuing a Reveal Shot showing that the players are actually at a studio.
Survivor: Marquesas
- The introduction to the rock drawing tiebreaker came with a rough edge ~ namely that it was used as the tiebreaker for the final four, leading to a rather controversial exit. In future seasons, the tiebreaker at the final four would be firemaking.
- For the first time, the tribes were so lopsided come the tribe swap, that when the the producers swapped tribes, they left tribe numbers the same, giving the larger tribe a massive advantage. In the future, tribe swaps would swap tribes into even numbers to keep things more fair.
