The final six of the competition are told to do an obstacle course in a Call-Back to Chef's boot camp in Season 1. At the same time, Alejandro tries to convince everybody that Mike is in fact Mal, with little success, and a lot of sabotage from Mal himself.
Tropes:
- Always Need What You Gave Up: It seems like the sole reason the campers have to wear heavy backpacks during the obstacle course is that Scott couldn't keep his mouth shut. As such, when his pack gets entangled in a bush, Scott chooses to ditch it rather than waste time getting it free. He regrets that decision when the last part of the obstacle course turns out to be a cable across a chasm. The equipment to zipline across is in the backpacks. Trying to climb across doesn't work out for him.
- Berserk Button: Mal gladly presses Alejandro's by calling him "Al."
- Big "NO!": Scott gives one after he cockily says that the challenge was easy, resulting in them getting heavy bags for the entirety of the challenge.
- Butt-Monkey: Scott takes a lot of punishment throughout this episode, he gets stuck in one of the tires, has his butt chewed on by snapping turtles, has an electrical shock from the wire on the climbing section, to being stuck on the ziplines at the end of the episode.
- Call-Back:
- The episode's challenge in general is one to Chef's boot camp from "Basic Straining".
- The Snapping Turtles come back after their appearance as Duncan's first challenge in "No Pain, No Game".
- The backpacks that Chris gives the contestants look almost identical to those from "A Mine Is A Terrible Thing To Waste".
- Chef uses one of the leech guns from "Saving Private Leechball" earlier in the season.
- The Zipline to the finish line is similar to one from "Mutiny On The Soundstage", where Duncan and Beth had to zipline before a sprint to the finish.
- Cassandra Truth: Alejandro unsuccessfully tries to convince everyone that Mike is really Mal and that he's dangerously evil. However, no one believes him because he's lied and manipulated so many people before.Mal: And who's going to believe you? The most manipulative player in Total Drama history.
- Chekhov's Gun: The bags, which Chris initially said were for the torment of the contestants, are revealed to contain the equipment necessary to get everybody across to the finish line.
- Comfort Food: Scott starts the day by eating dirt, which he claims he always does when he is sad. The reason he's sad is because he thinks Courtney was unfaithful, prompting him to tell the dirt he knows it will never cheat on him.
- Crying Wolf: Alejandro gets this treatment after all the times he lied about other contestants (as well as himself) being dangerous in World Tour.
- Didn't Think This Through: Gwen says she's sick of sharing the spa with Chris and needs a break. Chris says fine and that she's spending the night on Boney Island.
- Eat Dirt, Cheap: Scott eats dirt when he's upset.
- Electric Torture: Scott receives this after he climbs a faulty live wire in the climbing part of the challenge.
- Embarrassing Last Name: Alejandro's last name is revealed to be Burromuerto, which is Spanish for "dead donkey".
- "Eureka!" Moment: After suddenly losing Svetlana's abilities, Mal wonders what went wrong before realizing that Mike is free.
- Even Evil Has Standards: In the confessional, Alejandro declares that Mal belongs in jail. While being flushed, he warns the others that a greater evil lurks among them.
- Facepalm: Mal tells Scott that Cameron kissing Courtney was Alejandro's idea to drive a wedge between the new couple. When Scott asks if he means a wedge of cheese, Mal's reaction in the confessional is to facepalm.
- Foreshadowing: Alejandro hid video evidence of Mal. While being flushed, he offers a clue of the location.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Courtney is displeased to see how much closer Gwen and Zoey have become since the last episode.
- Hypocrite: After the grief she got over Duncan, Gwen accuses Courtney of this for kissing Cameron while being with Scott. Courtney insists this is different, and it is since Cameron initiated the kiss and it was by accident, but getting lectured about this trope was exactly why Courtney didn't want Gwen to find out about this.
- Idiot Ball: Alejandro grabs it big time when he tells Mal he has a DVD of Mal's antics hidden in the spa hotel. Mal's goal for the rest of the season is for either himself or Zoey to win in order to find it.
- Infernal Background: Flamethrowers are part of the obstacle course. After Mal throws a tire at Alejandro to prevent him from warning Gwen about Mal, two flamethrowers just so happen to shoot up on either side of the secret villain.
- Internal Reveal: Mal realizing that Mike isn't chained up anymore.
- Ironic Hell: Svetlana is carving butter to make fish, she even says that she must do her job or else she'd die.
- Karmic Death: Alejandro's elimination has many amusing parallels to Noah's elimination in World Tour. Both are the ninth contestant eliminated from the second season they competed in. Both started by feigning friendship with the Big Bad then insulting them when believing they were at an advantage, both tried to expose them to the rest of the party but failed and in both cases went out with a coded warning against them.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Alejandro officially becomes one compared to Mal, mirroring his dynamic with Heather in "World Tour".
- Laser-Guided Karma: Alejandro used and manipulated everyone in World Tour so he could win. As a result, Mal has absolutely no trouble getting rid of him by turning the rest of the cast against him.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Alejandro, who is well-built, thinks he's overpowered Mal, who has a rather lanky build, while blackmailing him. Alejandro quickly realizes that Mal is much stronger than he looks via a Possessive Wrist Grab, quickly bringing Alejandro to his knees.
- Mustache Vandalism: One camper, who can only be Alejandro, votes for Mal by handing in a photo of him marked in red with devil horns, a goatee, a mustache, and an extra set of eyebrows to make him look angry.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Alejandro repeatedly loosens his efforts to win the challenge and get through it safely in order to try to warn the other contestants about Mal, but no one wants to listen to him. Meanwhile, Mal's deceit ensures enough votes against Alejandro to get him eliminated that evening.
- Not Me This Time: Mal makes work of casting blame Alejandro for things he did. Because of Alejandro's history of betrayal, it's easy for Mal to convince the other contestants to vote him off no matter how hard Alejandro tries to warn them about Mal.
- Possessive Wrist Grab: When Alejandro threatens Mal with blackmail, with the former holding the latter by his shirt, Mal grabs Alejandro's wrist and immediately overpowers him, bring Alejandro to his knees.
- Plot Allergy: Zoey is allergic to dog hair and therefore has to abandon her climb halfway through when she realizes the rope is made of dog hair. Her allergic response is light sneezing.
- Properly Paranoid: Hearing Alejandro use Mal's name, Zoey begins to suspect the truth and intends to keep an eye on her boyfriend.
- Pun-Based Title: The title is a play on "obstacle course".
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
- Running Gag: Alejandro trying to tell the truth about Mike to other contestants, but for one reason or another, being unable to do so, often by Mal's interference.
- Series Continuity Error:
- Despite what Scott was told and what she claims, Courtney never once kissed Alejandro.
- Additionally, this once more brings up the inconsistencies between how much time has passed between seasons as Courtney says the kiss was years ago while Alejandro states that he was in the Drama Machine for a year after the events of World Tour.
- Shout-Out:
- When doing the recap, Chris refers to his kidnapping as a "kidnapping of the hosty kind".
- Chris calls Courtney and Scott "the Bickersons".
- Spanner in the Works: Alejandro continuously tries to stop Mal from getting ahead in the challenge.
- Super-Strength: Mal is strong enough to crush Alejandro's wrist with one hand, hold on to the snapping bars with Alejandro weighing him down and break the camera in the confessional.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Mal has a migraine trying to convince Scott that Alejandro convinced Cameron to kiss Courtney last episode. Eventually he gives up and just goes along with Scott's conclusion that Alejandro kissed Courtney. Fortunately for him this apparently did happen at some point during World Tour, or at least she believes they did and this was enough to convince Scott to vote Alejandro off.
- Status Quo Is God: Last episode had Gwen being able to stay in the spa hotel until she was eliminated, meaning that she could have found out about Mal. But at the end of this episode, put off by Chris, she loses this perk and returns to the cabin with the other contestants.
- Taking You with Me: When it becomes obvious Zoey and Mike won't pass Alejandro, Mal, desperate to prevent Alejandro from winning, has Zoey take the line and jumps onto Alejandro. Mal tries to intimidate Alejandro into giving him the location of the DVD that could expose him, but Alejandro refuses and plunges into the river.
- The Unreveal: Alejandro trying to tell the truth about Mike to his competitors.
- Visual Pun: Svetlana mentions that Mal has "ears everywhere", shown by an awful lot of ears floating above her.
