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Roleplay / Survival Of The Fittest Mini

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Survival of the Fittest Mini is a spin-off site of Survival of the Fittest, a Play-by-Post Game based off of Battle Royale. Unlike the main site, versions on the main site tend to be smaller, quicker, and geared towards those new to SOTF or roleplaying in general. The site can be found here

Additionally, while vanilla SOTF has only one continuity, the Mini site has multiple. All have a common theme: teenagers are taken away, for some reason or another, to fight to the death. However, each has a different world behind it. A list:

  • The Program: In the year 2025, America has become a military dictatorship. Citizens are obligated to serve two five year periods of military service (more if they've committed a crime), the Internet is heavily filtered, and, above all else, Americans are taught that their country and their military are top priority. About four times a year, a school and grade is picked on "Announcement Day," and with it, students from that group. They are to die for their country in a death game. May be retiring as a setting due to its bleakness and parallels to real-world issues.
  • SOTF-TV: The setting is the 2020s, in a dystopian future where all entertainment has become boring and stagnated. However, there is a solution, and it's an unconventional one. Host an Immoral Reality Show about high school kids fighting for their lives, of course! SOTF-TV is unique among the settings in that it's more world-building heavy due to the setting's nature, with an official system in place to establish events in past seasons and other details. The third version is nearing completion.
  • Second Chances: The closest to main-site SOTF, in that instead of having fresh characters appear in a new setting, it's an Alternate Continuity of past main site and Mini versions. Danya, the main site's Big Bad, is back to do his dirty business, and once again, kids from past versions are to go through hell. Has had two versions so far, with a third one being constantly de-confirmed.
  • Virtua SOTF: In the future, virtual reality games have become popular. And one of the most popular is "Virtual Survival of the Fittest'', also known as "The Game." You become a teenager trapped inside a death game, and you must fight your way out. Only has had one version so far.
  • Battle Royale AU: The first mini hosted on the site. Instead of creating new characters (or bringing back past characters as in SC), it was essentially an alternate universe version of Battle Royale canon. The original version remained incomplete due to various factors, but a second iteration was later launched to celebrate the twelve year anniversary of the site.
  • SOTF: Evolution: A mysterious organization kidnaps teenagers and experiments on them, giving them new powers and mutations. However, they need to see who is the strongest. And they have a way of testing that. There has been only one version so far.
  • SOTF: International: The setting is similar to main-site SOTF in that terrorists are behind the abductions. However, instead of Danya and the Arthro Taskforce it features a new group of terrorists lead by a man named Jack. While every other version (apart from BRAU) is about high-school students from the USA, the students in International all come from different countries and are therefore complete strangers to each other. The first Version is currently nearing completion.
  • SOTF: Supers: In 1973, a Mass Super-Empowering Event called "the Emergence" granted superpowers to everyone on the planet. These are called "Gifts", and they're generally low enough on the Super Weight scale that society has not been radically altered from Real Life. The first Version ended on June 15th, 2022, after a successful escape, though most of the students died.
  • SOTF: U: In this universe, Survival of the Fittest is a clandestine research project, facilitated by an unscrupulous team of academics and scientists who work for Janus-Hayes, a powerful corporation that secretly bankrolls and facilitates the entire project; the subjects are a group of unsuspecting post-secondary students at the prestigious University of Cascadia. Decentralized, powerful, and with tendrils in various governments and non-governmental organizations, the company operates with near-impunity and answers to no one.
  • SOTF: Cyber: This universe saw a massive technological revolution in the 2010s that brought about the most advanced version of Virtual Reality yet; Cyber Reality. It has become so engrained in the public eye that even virtual schooling has become ubiquitous. However, a group known as Initiative Earth has plans that aim to shake the virtual world forever. This version is currently ongoing.

This work provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 
    SOTF Mini: The Program 

All versions

Program V1

  • Boring, but Practical: Jessica Vogel and Melinda Schenn spend the majority of the game in the watchtower. Because there are no collars to track them and no danger zones to make them move, they can stay there as long as they want, and they block the only way in or out with a chair.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Brigadier General David Adams of The Program. His antics include spontaneously breaking into the American national anthem during an announcement (when he's supposed to be reeling off who died), making bizarre jokes, contradicting himself mid-sentence and thinking out loud (both also in announcements). For all that, The Program was his idea, and given the setting, there's no possible way he can be an incompetent leader or tactician.
  • Creepy Twins: The Program's Sophie and Stephanie Mason.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: The Program is pretty much based entirely on this trope. It's set in a militaristic, extreme nationalist version of America 20 Minutes in the Future. So, there's a fair amount of this. Most notably, as a result of their nationalist upbringings, many characters are to some extent xenophobic and treat "foreign" looking people not too kindly, which is most prominently seen with Japanese-American Marilyn Williams and angry black man Bryant Carver.
  • Does Not Like Men: The Program's Chanel Mortimer.
  • I Call It "Vera": David Byrne's's pipe wrench Janice, and Megan Jacobson's weapons - Helmut Von Slappenstien and Winston Choppington.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Kami Steele. Boy howdy, Kami. She tries her hardest to play, and while she does have a small body count, most characters she runs into don't take her seriously.
  • Instrument of Murder: John Ferrara used, of all things, a banjo to beat Matthew Gourlay to a pulp.
  • Mad Artist: Madeline Harris, who is killing people to fill the gallery in her mind. She is very prolific.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: Many characters in The Program fit in some way or another. This is a Justified Trope, in that this is a setting based off of Deliberate Values Dissonance.
  • Scary Black Man: Bryant Carver.
  • "Take That!" Kiss: Matthew Payne delivers one to Luke Mendoza, after the latter fatally wounds him.
  • Troll: In-universe examples would be Logan Sorenson.
  • Troubled Fetal Position: Marilyn Williams does this in reaction to being thrown into the compound, under a bed, no less.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Durriken Lovel, as the youngest child of a Gypsy family is cursed to have terrible luck. Of course, he's put in the Program.
Program V2
  • Boomerang Bigot: Dylan Walker is not half-black. She is "tanned". Do not bring this up.
  • Break the Haughty: Lenny Osborne, an unabashed racist who looks down on foreigners, is betrayed by a teammate of his to a mixed-race girl who kills him. He never sees the face of his killer, but the double-crossing is still enough to sap his fighting spirit.
  • Death Seeker: After a first day consisting of robbery and attacking other students, Maxim Senders has a Heel Realization and decides to attempt suicide in this manner.
  • Ear Ache: Dylan Walker gets her ear shot off by Maxim Senders in their first in-game thread.
  • Embarrassing First Name: America Clara Fox.
  • Fiery Redhead: Marley Jenkins is a redhead who's also very... temperamental.
  • The Gambler: Bailey Williams definitely qualifies. She has a tattoo of a red spade on the back of her neck, wears long red and black dresses and even set up a gambling group called "The Bloody Spades." This is only further reinforced when the first thing Bailey does when seeing someone else in the Program is offer a game of cards with them. Wordof God has confirmed that Bailey was based around the concept of a Lady Luck Persona.
  • Good Bad Girl: Felicia LaChapelle is described as someone who enjoys flirting and going on dates, even if it's exaggerated by the rest of the class. She is also a Nice Girl who tends to play a sort of Cool Big Sis role among her friends.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Damien Stone after doubting whether his previous two kills were right or not, kills a third classmate, he has a full breakdown and resolves to change his ways. These thoughts are interrupted by another classmate shooting him in the back of the head.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Lenny Osborne makes a suicidal attempt to rescue Frank Callahan, his teammate, from danger. The awful twist is that Frank is collaborating with the murderer.
  • It's All About Me: Brian Meyerhold Callison sees himself as the quintessential American man, and thus more worthy of winning.
  • I Want My Mommy!: Brigid Paxton in her first scene in The Program V2
  • Kick the Dog: Brian Meyerhold Callison's first thread in-game him treating a group of potential allies in a Jerkass manner, by hitting on Felicia LaChapelle when she's clearly not interested and snapping at the very sight of Gerald Lawson (who is Hispanic) for offering pie. His exit from the thread has him smash a Furby, utterly wrecking it. After this, he goes off to do much worse things.
  • Nightmare Sequence: Louisa Bloom gets a fairly graphic one in her first post in The Program v2, which involves being called out on her anti-American beliefs, followed by being forced to execute her classmates and then her family at gunpoint, then being executed herself by her own mother.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Bailey Williams is wearing a floor-length red and black dress with 3-inch heels. Needless to say, the inappropriateness of this outfit choice for suddenly being on Program has been lampshade hung multiple times.
    Conclusion: *the rest of the conclusion is scoured out, apparently using the tip of some kind of blade* A dress? Heels? There is no conceivable way this is not going to end badly.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Clara Fox seems to think so.
  • Slut-Shaming: This is a prominent part of Felicia LaChapelle's backstory. Word of God states that she is supposed to be a Deconstruction of promiscuous female characters.
  • Troubled Fetal Position: Dylan Walker spends most of her first thread in this position.
  • Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Maxim Senders wears an American Flag bandanna on his head.
  • With a Friend and a Stranger: Ashley Sydor and Jasmine Stone, both best friends and members of a young band, team up with Amanda White, a track team member who happened to cross their path very early.
  • Yandere: After being abandoned by Shawn Bowe-Crooke, Robin Pounds responds by tracking him down specifically so she can destroy him and anything he has ever loved.
  • Your Makeup Is Running: Happens to both Jasmine Stone and Felicia LaChapelle in their respective first in-game posts.
Program V3 Prologue
  • Afraid of Blood: Leo Menendez is prone to fainting in response to violence. Naturally, he gets to see a friend of his shot to death within minutes of waking up in the game.
  • Ambition Is Evil: This is Anneliese O'Doyle's Fatal Flaw. She's someone who's determined to not be a "loser," and attacks someone for this reason. She ends up getting killed in self-defense.
  • Armoured Closet Gay: James Bagstad fits this to a T. Having seemingly had a new girlfriend every week, he mainly did so in fear that he would disappoint both his family and his country if they ever found out he was gay.
  • Attempted Rape: Larry Rosenberg tries to rape Kate Sanderson early on. He is thwarted by Kate ripping his chest open with her assigned scimitar.
  • Awesome Mc Cool Name: Rodney Vasicek notes how cool Bishop Smith's name sounds and even considers using it in a story before remembering he's in a death game.
    • Harland Strange's name sounds like it came out of a pulp sci-fi novel.
  • Bait-and-Switch: The premise of Prologue as a whole: the Program begins as usual, but is interrupted partway through when the British military storms the arena, kills the showrunners, and rescues most of the remaining students. The actual Program V3 consists of British students kidnapped by the United States and forced into the game as retaliation.
  • Berserk Button: Scott Whitman has two. The first is insulting him or his devotion to his country in any way, even if it's only a perceived insult. The second is evading one of his murder attempts.
  • Beware the Quiet Ones: Nellie Fitzpatrick is a shy, quiet, and bookish girl. She snaps almost as soon as she is chosen for The Program and murders the first person she encounters before later killing herself in a fit of remorse.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Bridie Mossberg. She's polite and cheery most of the time, but she's completely resigned to the game and willing to play, to the point that she's actually confused when someone seems reluctant to kill.
  • Boomerang Bigot: Santiago "Sandy" Ibarra is Latino, but passes for white and bullies other non-white kids to maintain his street cred among his racist friends.
  • Bound and Gagged: Marion Williams, who ball gags and handcuffs herself to a gazebo in an impulsive decision to try self-bondage.
    • Brittany Chesterton ends up leaving Ingrid White like this.
  • Bruiser with a Soft Center: Kassandra Vaitaki is a tough girl and a competent fighter, but the realization that she will never see her parents again causes her to burst into near-inconsolable tears. And that's not even mentioning how her composure completely collapses around Marion Williams.
  • Butt-Monkey: Marion Williams is one, largely because she thought it was a good idea to handcuff herself to a gazebo and sexually proposition people who come by. This does not work out for her for obvious reasons.
  • Closet Key: Marion Williams for Kassandra Vaitaki.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Lisa Brighton suffers one of these, being shot in the gut and momentarily left to bleed out before being stabbed to death with a pitchfork.
  • Death by Falling Over:
  • Evil Brit: This trope is explored when the escape officially happens. In lore, Britain is a significant political enemy of America. So when the British armed forces come in to rescue the remaining children, many of them are at best apprehensive, in large part because their only frame of reference for what British people are like is this trope as seen in movies and propaganda.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Charles "Charlie" Cade Jr. is, in fact, a girl. Her father didn't want to give her a different name.
  • Gentle Giant: Charlie Pemberton and Rodney Vasicek are both shy kids who happen to be upwards of six feet tall.
  • It's All About Me: Brittany Chesterton only really cares about herself.
  • Loveable Sex Maniac: Marion Williams, who, after handcuffing herself to a gazebo in an impulsive attempt at self-bondage, is more interested in getting in the pants of her rescuer Kassandra Vaitaki than actually escaping.
  • Man Bites Man: Charlie Cade Jr doesn't just bite Travis Dyne, she rips off half of his face with her teeth as they fight.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: Scott Whitman, without a doubt. This extends into his approach to The Program, where he decides to kill because it's what he's expected to do. Several other students follow suit, as is typical in the Program, but Scott is by far the most zealous.
    • Bridie Mossberg also shows shades of this, and her actions in the Program follow suit. Fittingly, she and Scott both die when they choose to attack the British soldiers attempting rescue.
  • The Narcissist: Brittany Chesterton, who fits the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder quite well.
  • Nervous Wreck: Bishop Smith is in a constant state of panic. Although considering his situation, you can't really blame the poor guy. It's heavily implied Charlie Pemberton has an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.
  • Rebellious Spirit: Mina Mashall, the disgraced daughter of an officer who turned to petty crime and acting out after she got in trouble and caused her father to be passed up for a promotion within the government. She shoplifts, vandalizes, and gets in fights for no real reason other than being angry with the system, and is aware that she's only make her own situation worse by doing so. She's a little beyond an angsty teen due to her self-sabotage and ability to hit the destruct button even in circumstances where she has no reason to do so. In the game, Mina frequently lists out all the reasons she shouldn't take the destructive course of action, and then does it anyway.
  • Red Shirt: PV3 Prologue's NPC's are explicitly designed as one-shot characters who will swiftly die and/or be killed in a single scene. A couple of characters don't even make it past their opening post.
  • Rich Bitch: Brittany Chesterton.
  • Shout-Out: Stan Astley's first name is Ulrich. He sings for the school choir.
  • Small Guy, Big Gun: Bishop Smith is a short, skinny, harmless looking guy, but he picks up a powerful shotgun fairly early on.
  • The Stoic: Scott Whitman is very unemotional, even when killing people. The only time he isn't is when his Berserk Button is pushed, sending him into a sadistic rage.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: Scotty Ward has a very bad case of this, coming after shotgun-wielding Mick Sexsmith and refusing to back down even after realizing it was a bad idea. Unsurprisingly, he gets killed.
    • Larry Rosenberg is another case, being openly gleeful to be chosen for the Program and declaring that he will win. He is killed the first time he tries to attack someone.
  • Tastes Like Friendship: When the "Dogtown" group is established in the bar, they snack on some donuts that one of them was assigned as a weapon.
  • The Quiet One: Nellie Fitzpatrick, who never spoke during her time in the Program.
  • With Friends Like These...: Danielle Baumgartner murders her best friend Jacqueline Hastert immediately following a teary reunion.

PV3 Proper

    SOTF Mini: SOTF-TV 
TV1
  • Auto Erotica: Happens just offscreen in pregame, between Amber Lyons and Sterling Odair.
  • Ax-Crazy: While there are a fair portion of killers, Harold Smythe is by far the most batshit out of the lot.
  • Backed by the Pentagon: An in universe example is present, where it is a TV show backed by the Government to keep people entertained.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Bob Lazenby and Todd Hudson both engage in this after waking up on the island.
  • Character Blog: Survival of the Snarkiest, which is an in-universe Television Without Pity style blog for SOTF-TV.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Nate Chauncey and April Stone.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Karen Ruiz is known for her kill style of sneaking up on people and shooting them from as far away as possible. This works out pretty well for her for the most part. In fact, enough to get the ten kill release.
  • Companion Cube: An odd example pops up with Shawn Morrison and a dead snake. For bonus points? He also uses it as an Improvised Weapon.
  • Creator's Pet: Ferric Tam was an In-Universe example. He was the only student from Silver Dragon Academy on the Orange Team, whose mentor was a teacher from the same school. Said mentor's messages to his team consisted solely of building Ferric up as an incredible leader who would undoubtedly lead them to victory.
  • Cryptic Background Reference: Because in-universe SOTF has had 64 seasons before TV1, occasionally events in past seasons are alluded to. A good portion of these are explained on the wiki. There is also a process to officially establish events in past seasons, as long as it's cleared by site staff.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Marvia Jones. See Kick the Dog for elaboration. Her handler has confirmed her as such. Shortly after that incident, she teams-up with Harold Finston Smythe, by far one of the least stable characters on the island.
  • Destination Defenestration: Taylor DeVasher is pushed out a tower by Vahka Basayev.
  • Eating the Eye Candy: Zach Johnson to Mae's butt and Bobby Goldman to Amber's breasts.
  • Embarrassing Middle Name: Zachariah "Andross" Johnston, anyone? Not to mention Mae "Myfanwy" St. Clair.
  • Evil Laugh: Harold Smythe when plotting about "saving" the other players.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Jacob Langston ditched his girlfriend and his former friend with benefits so that Zach Johnston could teach him how to kill... after discussing plans to escape with everyone only moments before.
  • Fanservice: Everyone on the island received Fanservice costumes in their packs.
  • Femme Fatale: Surprisingly (or not) this seems to be a fairly common tactic among female characters in SOTF-TV. Marvia Jones, Panya Bishara, Sidney Rice, and to some extent Odile Jones (no relation to Marvia) have all tried to use this sort of method, with varying degrees of success for each. According to Survival of the Snarkiest, this has happened quite a bit in previous seasons as well.
  • Friends with Benefits: Sterling Odair and Amber Lyons, along with (apparently) Kevin Fielding with Jeanette Buendia, David Myerez with Sidney Rice, and Jacob Langston with Mikaela Warner. In the latter's case, the "benefits" part of the arrangement ended when Jacob got in a more serious relationship with Madelyn Conner.
  • Genius Bruiser: Kevin Fielding is a 6'2", 235 pound bruiser who can easily toss people around (which proved fatal to Bob Lazenby) and in artwork bears some resemblance to Gaston. He is also well read, familiar with classical music, a skilled fencer, and had plans to become a lawyer prior to SOTF-TV. He was working on a plan to unite the Silver Dragon students against their Detroit opponents and possibly the producers of SOTF-TV itself when his collar was accidentally detonated.
  • Hurricane of Puns: After throwing Bob Lazenby into a tar pit, Kevin Fielding's internal narrative briefly fills with tar-related puns as he processes what just happened.
  • I Call It "Vera": SOTF-TV had Skyler Thsani's crossbow, named David Bowie.
    David? really? he scolded himself, Did you just name your crossbow? And what's more, did you name your crossbow David? As in David Bow-ie? How the fuck did you come up with such a stupid pun on such short notice?
  • Kick the Dog: Marvia Jones' first appearance was getting high, drugging another woman, having sex with her, and then beating her up before stealing her supplies.
  • Lighter and Softer: SOTF-TV is generally considered to be a lot more light-hearted in tone in comparison to the main games and the other Minis, especially when compared to its immediate predecessor The Program. The basic premise is the same, but a lot of elements (mostly relating to the reality TV aspect) allow more opportunities for humor.
  • Little Dead Riding Hood: In TV2 Alice Young gets a Little Red Riding Hood costume as her fanservice outfit. In her starting oneshot she hangs a lampshade on the implications.
  • Love Dodecahedron: Cesar Perdomo loves Odile Jones, who loves both him and Amber Lyons, who in turn loves both her and Sterling Odair. For bonus points, the latter three are bisexual, while the former is biromantic.
  • Love Triangle: The most prominant is the triangle of Shawn Morrison, Zachariah Johnston, and Mae St. Clair
  • Love Martyr: Zachariah Johnston is well-known for his Undying Loyalty to his childhood friend and crush, Mae St. Clair. It doesn't matter if she's more interested in Shawn Morrison, if she isn't a team mate, or if she is willing to exploit it. This reaches creepy extremes at times.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Odile Jones from takes the cake.
  • Product Placement: SOTF-TV gets a lot of endorsements In-Universe, due to it being a reality show. It reaches the point where one of the mentors has a habit of asking contestants to throw in a line to advertise Verizon.
  • Rape by Proxy: Attempted (thank god) in a notable scene in SOTF-TV. There's a scene where Sterling Odair and Amber Lyons start to "get intimate", only for their mentor to interrupt humorously. It results in Mood Whiplash when Lou Becker, having seen everything, breaks in and tries to force them to continue. only to get a hatchet to the face as a result.
  • Scholarship Student: Mikaela Warner.
  • Sex Signals Death: Sidney Rice and David Myerez have a hook up on the island. The next thread immediately after, both of them are killed by Karen Ruiz.
  • Stepford Smiler: David Myerez is heavily implied to be a Type A example.
  • Token Wholesome: According to her handler, Karen Ruiz is intentionally designed to be as unsexualized as possible, largely to avert common stereotypes about female villains in SOTF. While she does have a notable appearance that other people in-universe comment on, it's more... iconic.
  • Troll: Sidney Rice is infamous for intentionally provoking others with her crude, confrontational mannerisms and competitive attitude. There's some overlap with The Tease, due to her exploiting her fanservice outfit for what it's worth. Needless to say, she isn't a nice person.
  • Unusual Euphemism: Harold Finston Smythe tends to describe the act of killing someone as "saving" them.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: The mentors who occasionally give advice to the players. In terms of usefulness they range from actually pretty helpful to making Captain Obvious statements to not really all that helpful advice at all to suggesting the players advertise their product.
  • You Are the New Trend: It's been confirmed that people tend to copy fashion trends and so on of SOTF-TV contestants in-universe, largely due to it being a Immoral Reality Show that's one of the few things on that's considered "good". This blog post lists some examples from Season 65 (TV1).

TV2

  • Afraid of Blood: Will Brackenrig and Bella Bianchi. Ironically, they both also happen to be SOTF fans. According to her profile, Bella is also Afraid of Needles.
  • Animal Motifs: In addition to the color theming like last season, the teams are named after animals (Amber Eagles, Bronze Bears, etc.)
  • Attention Whore: Taylor DeVasher wants to be absolutely sure that the fandom remembers him, so he wears a Elegant Gothic Lolita dress without underwear and plays things up for the camera. He gets killed by Vahka Basayev in short order.
  • Badass Cape: Vahka Basayev's fanservice costume.
  • Broken Ace: Bella Bianchi is described as being talented as an actress and dancer, enough to potentially get a career, and has a reputation for being a sweet, hard-working Nice Girl. However, she has a bad relationship with her mother, who pressures her to succeed as a performer. As a result, she's anxious, has some difficulty socializing due to how busy she is, and has self-esteem issues. She also has a worrying tendency to resort to violence, as seen with Gene Steward and Paisley Hopkins.
  • Can't Take Criticism: Gene Steward left the drama club when he was criticized for his acting ability. He's also introduced in pre-game by ragequitting a MOBA he was playing because he wasn't doing so well and people were mocking him for it. It's a theme.
  • Caustic Critic: Asa Rosen has his own blog called "Garden of Thorns", and from what excerpts we see from it he doesn't show much kindness towards the topics covered. A fair amount of the IC bloggers and commenters also qualify.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Anastasia Arcadia from proposes to her boyfriend, establishes the sovereign nation of Awesometonia, and changes into a Pimped-Out Dress in order to lead said nation, all in the first few minutes of her waking up.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: Yagmur Tekindor had a drinking habit prior to the game, but as the game goes on he spends a lot of time in various states of intoxication. Similarly, Nina Riddhi also starts drinking (despite trying to quit) when she hears about the death of her friend Saachi Nidal.
  • Eye Scream: Davis Todd gets his eye gouged out by Gabriel Munez early on. This also happens to Cathryn Bailey at the hands of Anastasia during the Endgame.
  • Fan Hater: In-Universe, Lukas Graves loathes SOTF fans almost as much as he hates the show itself.
  • God Save Us from the Queen!: While not actually a queen for obvious reasons, the motif is there with Anastasia Arcadia. At first it was just her goofing off with her fanservice costume while trying to convince people not to fight, she has since undergone Sanity Slippage into Ax-Crazy.
  • Goth: Major player Jewel Evans. Her portrayal is an example of Shown Their Work on the subject, as she's largely portrayed as an artistic music fan who, while still a Fangirl of SOTF and an antagonist in the game proper, has an ideology and tastes that match up with the actual goth subculture. Her post-game Twitter account (as seen here) also features her, among other things, occasionally musing about the subject.
  • Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Nina Riddhi, who is also The Lad-ette. Though she's been trying to tone it down in more recent history.
  • Heroic BSoD: After her crush Caroline Leveson is shot and killed in front of her, Anzu Sakamoto slips into denial and believes she's just sleeping for an entire thread.
  • Heroic Wannabe: Nina Riddhi wants to do as many good deeds as possible before dying, and to die with dignity. Cathryn Bailey robs her of that opportunity by smothering her in her sleep.
  • I Just Want to Have Friends: This is Marcus Redder's main motivation. Unfortunately, he's not so good at not killing them.
  • Kick the Dog: In TV2, Vahka Basayev comes across his friend Marcus Redder. All's well and good, until he notices that Marcus shares a team with someone Vahka had previously fought with. Cue Vahka severely beating and mugging him.
  • Love Dodecahedron: Vahka Basayev and Pia Malone are Friends with Benefits. Vahka also has slept with Regina Aston. Dougie Sharpe was dating Pia and cheated on her with Regina (the former and him broke up, but for unrelated reasons). You'll need a chart for this one.
  • Love Martyr:Shawn Thornton looks out for his girlfriend Anastasia Arcadia, even as her Sanity Slippage steadily progresses. He also doubles as a Living Emotional Crutch, as Ana fully goes off the deep end once he's shot dead.
  • Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Anastasia "AnArchy" Arcadia of TV2 invokes this. As the game progresses, it's become increasingly clear she's actually a Deconstruction; it's heavily implied (and screamed by Ana herself mid-breakdown at one point) that the quirky ethical hedonist persona is an attempt to cover up her own insecurities.
  • My Beloved Smother: Bella Bianchi has one of the Stage Mom flavor.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Anastasia Arcadia receives an elaborate ballgown as her costume. In addition, Taylor DeVasher and Bella Bianchi both get lolita outfits for theirs, with Taylor having the "goth" variety and Bella the "sweet".
  • Troll: Lukas Graves is an internet troll that specifically targets SOTF fan forums. This is because he hates the show and everything it stands for. His in-game introduction has him point out that putting him on the show only gives him more avenues to troll everyone.
    • Asa Rosen decides to become this as protest for being put on the show. To be specific, he decides to become "the worst winner" imaginable by taking out anyone who has even the slightest potential to become a fan favorite, and generally doing things specifically to make the audience dislike him.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: Averted with Taylor DeVasher, who runs around the arena wearing a gothic lolita dress and no underwear.

TV3

  • Continuity Nod: The mentor HQ is explicitly the same cruise ship that was an area in TV1.
  • Cordon Bleugh Chef: A Running Gag in sandbox is characters making bizarre food combinations and choices. Examples include drinking hot sauce straight from the bottle, wrapping well-cooked steak with milk-soaked bread, putting mustard flavored ice cream on gluten-free potato bread, a mixture of fountain drinks, and an ungodly amount of chicken nuggets with various condiments.
  • Embarrassing First Name: Pippi Bloodworth's first name is actually Pineapple. Needless to say, she goes by Pippi more often.
  • Fangirl: Aside from the various SOTF fans, Ashanti Baker is a major follower of 36 winner and pop singer Louisa Lynn.
  • Goth: A significant amount of characters this season are goth or an adjacent subculture. Aside from the return of Jewel Evans as a mentor and Emmy Soon (another mentor), we have Bacchia Rubus, Bethan Gayle, Mary Cheung, Calla Evans (no relation), Sylvain Kessler, and Vasily Ivanov.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Leslie Lowell refused to put on his bandanna early on, which causes people nearby to panic and/or get angry as the beeping noise from his collar blares through the area.
  • Jerkass:
  • Malevolent Masked Man: "The Respects" are a group of players who, among other things, wear masks made from cut-up pillowcases.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ivan Rodriguez gets subjected to this by The Respects early on.
  • Only in Miami: This season's students were taken from a private school in Miami. The stereotype and culture get lampshade hung a lot.
  • Wild Teen Party: A sandbox arc dealt with a hurricane party hosted at one of the students' house.

    SOTF-TV Lore Seasons 
  • Abandoned Hospital: Season 31 took place in an abandoned mental hospital as part of a horror theme.
  • Amusement Park of Doom: Season 13's Frontier Funland Wild West Park, Season 24's Jerusalem Land, Season 34's Cherry Acres Family Amusement Park, and Season 41's Tortuga Bay all seem like perfectly decent places to stay if it weren't for the Immoral Reality Show aspect.
  • Ass Pull: In-universe, the ending of Season 48 was this. It looked like Maria King was about to win, but she suddenly got sniped by Rena Edwards, a girl who'd been hiding so well that she never interacted with anyone over the course of the game. Fans weren't pleased.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Players and other villainous figures win fairly often, perhaps most notably and successfully with Season 3's Kenny Yamana. Kenny was the first villain to win a season and went on to become one of the most successful public figures after the fact.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Season 6's winner was Susan Moreau, an Actual Pacifist who often got the "Parker" label. When her twin sister killed her friends and boyfriend however... well, she cracked enough to repeatedly stab her to death. It's implied she regrets it, based off the mention that she's avoided the spotlight since her win.
  • Bigot vs. Bigot: Season 24 tried to invoke this by taking one half of its cast taken from a religious school with the other half taken from one that had a high atheistic/agnostic population, then setting it in a Christian-themed amusement park. However, this backfired when it turned out this wouldn't influence most of the kids' actions in the game proper.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Most cases of this are considered rather heinous by the fanbase; notable occurrences happened to Season 28's Erin Crawford (sister of the TV1 mentor and Anti-SOTF protester Susan Crawford), and Season 51's winner Clara Hoffman.
  • Dark Horse Victory: Season 48's winner, Rena Edwards, was considered this, as she spent the entire season hiding, uttering no lines on camera and interacting with no other contestants. She managed to win by sniping the last remaining student without the other girl even knowing she was there.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Every season has a few of these pop up In-Universe, especially in terms of who ends up being marketable during and after the season. Season 30's Julie Warner is a notable example, having retained popularity long after her season due to her acerbic wit and numerous quotes.
  • Epic Fail: Particularly poorly-received seasons are given the "Abysmal" rating; notable examples are Season 10, which saw most of its contestants die in the opening minutes and ended in a protracted, boring standoff, and Season 60, which ended with the vast majority of its contestants freed thanks to exploitation of a flaw in the collars.
  • Evil Twin: Mary Moreau of Season 6, twin sister of winner Susan Moreau. Mary was the season's top killer, while Susan was a heroic figure.
  • Femme Fatale: Several notable past contestants assumed this kind of persona, including Season 28 player Miami Schreiner and Season 45's winner Ivy Jain.
  • Halloween Episode: Seasons 31 and 46 took place around Halloween, thus having an appropriate theme for both. 31 took place in an Abandoned Hospital rumored to be haunted, while 46 was a Mexican village decorated with Halloween and Day of the Dead decorations.
  • Improbable Weapon User: Season 52's Dylan Calloway, who became famous for bludgeoning someone to death with a toaster. The out-of-character awards/reviews for SOTF-TV are called the Killer Toasters in honor of it.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Season 39's Abby Afolayan, whose antics included trying and failing to charm a male classmate, attempting to kill someone who was much bigger and had grappling experience (resulting in her being Bound and Gagged), and failing to land a fatal blow with a gun. Despite this, she actually won by spending the entirety of Endgame hiding inside a pantry eating. For obvious reasons, she's also an in-universe Memetic Loser.
  • Made of Iron: One of SOTF-TV's past winners was one Archibald "Archie" Stewart, who was this. Subverted slightly when he turned out to be wounded too badly to leave the arena (a shopping mall) under his own power, and nearly died in hospital.
  • Memetic Mutation: A few in-universe examples:
    • One particular incident in Season 6 had Mary Moreau, the top player of the season, try to pretend to be her more pacifistic sister to win the favor of her friends. However, she didn't realize that Susan had been with them the entire time. Said incident is referred to as "the twin switch fail", and there's a well-known Voice Clip Song of the scene.
    • Season 20 had a shot of Daisy Robinson hitting a girl over the head with a baseball bat after being found in a bathroom stall. Because the position was great enough to see the girl's teeth go flying, it's frequently used as a reaction gif for unpleasant surprises.
    • Erin Crawford's Cold-Blooded Torture in Season 28 is this, partly because of how long and drawn out it was, as well as her killer's hammy delivery. Erin's sister wasn't amused.
  • Pirate: Season 41's location, Tortuga Bay, was a pirate-themed amusement park, so there was a "treasure" gimmick and costumes to go with the theme. Surprisingly, many of the kids actually embraced it wholeheartedly.
  • Stout Strength: The same winner as in the Made of Iron example was a very large man, a bit on the pudgy side but still very strong and a highly skilled wrestler. He ended up losing a good bit of the extra weight during his recovery.
  • Stupid Good: In-universe, the term "Parkering" is used to describe a variant of this trope where someone refuses to attack others even when it causes issues for them or their allies. This is named for Season One's winner, Brandon Parker, who spent much of the game hiding behind others, only for them to die because of his own actions. Some other cited examples include Season 6's Susan Moreau (with one major exception) and Season 33's Lara Oliver.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A notable example happened In-Universe in Season 51. After watching her boyfriend die and being tortured by a racist and homophobic bully, eventual-winner Clara (formerly Cedric) Hoffman gave one to the bully before killing him.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Some of the seasons' outcomes show what kind of difficulties an Immoral Reality Show would have. Some examples:
    • A few winners are polarizing because they won through pure luck, don't have good screen presence, and/or use Boring, but Practical strategies. A good example of this is the ending of 48, where a student who had been hiding away from everyone the entire game suddenly sniped the presumed winner through the head from a distance.
    • While some of the winners are fairly well-adjusted, some of them... aren't. Season 28's winner Arthur Lam developed a pain-killer addiction after the game, and eventually died in a drug-fueled car accident. 45's winner, Ivy Jain is notorious for tabloid drama. And those are the ones who came out intact; just ask Danielle Austen, 61's winner who went comatose from her injuries after her win and hasn't woken up since. Similarly, Season 5's Jonathan Stone died of his injuries shortly after his win, leaving the producers to focus on some students that managed to escape.
    • The infamous Season 10 opened with an extreme blood-bath... only to fizzle out a short time after. A mixture of a small arena, too many assigned guns, and most of the contestants killed early on meant that the rest of the game was at a stalemate. The game ended with a standoff won simply because one contestant eventually fell asleep after 37 hours.
    • As noted above, the producers tried to invoke Bigot vs. Bigot in Season 24 by taking one half of its cast from a religious school and the other from a more secular population, then setting it in a religious-themed amusement park. Of course, one thing they didn't account for was the fact that most people aren't extremists. As a result, the theme got downplayed hugely since most of the cast weren't playing into the role.
  • Wife-Basher Basher: Season 52's winner Dylan Calloway got his In-Series Nickname from his one truly cold-blooded kill: beating someone to death with a toaster for bragging about raping and killing female contestants.

    SOTF Mini: Second Chances 
Second Chances V1
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: Taken literally with Carol Burke. In both incarnations it's mentioned that she has a habit of dyeing her hair various colors. While in her original v4 incarnation it was dyed black, in Second Chances she is described as having dyed green hair.
  • Alternate Universe: All of the Mini site games qualify to some extent, neither of them in the same continuity as the main site or each other. Second Chances takes it a step further, in that while the other Minis have original characters, it instead has characters from previous games returning in an alternate continuity.
  • Auto Erotica: Happens offscreen in pregame, between David Jackson and Nicole Husher.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: The death of Nicole Husher in Second Chances, wherein it is deliberately left unclear just what happened to her.
  • I Call It "Vera": Having returned for Second Chances, Megan Jacobson named her stun gun Nikoletta Sparks, or Nicky for short.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: This is how Maria Graham kills Craig Hoyle
  • Land Mine Goes "Click!": How Carol Burke meets her end .
  • My Greatest Second Chance: In a meta sense, Nick Reid, the winner of Second Chances.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Nicole Husher's death.

Second Chances V2

  • Academic Alpha Bitch: Eris Marquis is Denton's Student Council President, and is a no-nonsense, competitive person. Saachi Nidal had elements of this when she first appeared in TV2, but it's played up more here. Jasmine King and Miranda Millers are more of the traditional variety.
  • Action Dress Rip: Miranda Millers does this around the first announcement.
  • Adaptational Heroism: In V4, Maxwell Lombardi was the villain with the most kills, and felt that Evil Feels Good. Here, he's actively going out of his way to not kill people and even participate in escape attempts. He's also disturbed by some of his darker thought processes. He ends up becoming the winner of Second Chances v2 with zero kills.
  • Adaptation Personality Change: Present to a degree with many characters, either through a deeper understanding of them, an alternate spin on their thoughts, or just better writing. For example, Kris Hartmann pivots from her out-and-out insanity in her original incarnation to dark, brooding, and much more deliberate nihilism in SC2.
  • Animal Motifs: Seagulls have come up a lot, usually in the context of death scenes. It started with Richard Ormsby's and Will Lohman's death thread, where seagulls ate Richard's corpse and tried to eat Will alive, but it's since become somewhat of a dark Running Gag.
  • Ax-Crazy: It didn't take too long for Blaine Eno to attack his classmates. He's even smiling as he does so.
  • Best Friend: Felicia LaChappelle to Yumi Nunes. When Felicia dies, Yumi doesn't take it well.
  • Better to Die than Be Killed: Jasmine King and Damion Castillo both attempt to take their own lives before they can be killed by someone else or a Danger Zone, respectively. Both are unsuccessful.
  • Black Comedy: Blaine Eno subjects Michael Crowe to some seriously awful and lengthy Cold-Blooded Torture, only to get interrupted by Simon Leroy, who decides to stop him. He and Michael end up killing Blaine, but Simon is so injured he dies in the same thread. The title of this thread? "Surgeon Simulator 2017".
  • Bandaged Face: Michael Crowe following his encounter with Blaine Eno.
  • Butt-Monkey: Adonis Alba never seems to catch a break. He gets held at gunpoint multiple times, fumbles his way through most interactions, and when he is given the duty of navigating for his group, he winds up taking them all the way across the island in the wrong direction!
  • Career-Ending Injury: Damion Castillo gets shot in the knee, completely destroying his future as a soccer player.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Wendy Fischer is somewhere between this and The Ophelia.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Blaine Eno puts Michael Crowe though this.
  • Do Not Go Gentle: Adonis Alba's death. Despite being stabbed in the back by a multiple murderer and having a pitchfork sticking out of their body, they manage to fight back and nearly beat their killer to death with their bare hands before tiring out due to blood loss.
  • Dumb Jock: Two solid examples in Keiji Tanaka and Adonis Alba.
  • Dying Dream: Kasumi White experiences a series of bizarre and disturbing dreams and visions before her death.
  • Evil Is Petty: Jay Harland, who attacks the first person he sees and only stops short of killing her because she's a girl, and who is totally cool with the idea of killing another classmate because said classmate insulted his writing in pregame.
  • Eye Scream:
    • This happens to Richard Ormsby posthumously. We get a graphic description of seagulls eating his dead body, including tearing out one of his eyes straight from the socket.
    • Tina Luz also gets a tree branch in the eye, and later badly scratches the same eye due to pain and irritation caused by debris under the lid.
    • Aria Samuels gets a bottle of disinfectant thrown in his eyes, ruining his vision permanently.
    • Tania Chell is finished off with an ice pick to the eye socket.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: Sebastien Bellamy offers to help Miranda Millers with an injured leg, unaware that she got it from attacking someone else. She ends up stealing his gun and shooting him to death in a panic-filled argument.
  • Fingore:
    • The first order of business for Blaine Eno's Cold-Blooded Torture of Michael Crowe is ripping off his fingernails with a set of pliers.
    • Ramona Shirley gets her fingers blown off while trying and failing to deactivate Zubin Wadia's collar. It also works as a reference to her death in Virtua where something similar happened.
  • Friendless Background: Adonis Alba used to have friends, but by the time of the abduction they had all cut ties with him on account of his personality.
  • Game-Breaking Injury: Kasumi White gets shot in the legs in her first thread, leaving her unable to move from her starting area until her death.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: Wendy Fischer had planned to grant a group of her fellow students a peaceful death via poisoning, but didn't know the actual effects of the poison she was using. As a result, Sophie McDowell and Felicia LaChapelle die agonizing deaths. To make matters worse, the fallout from this directly leads to the deaths of James Mulzet, Theo Fletcher, and Yumi Nunes as well.
  • Groin Attack: Michael Crowe is the victim of a particularly nasty one in SC2, courtesy of Blaine Eno.
    • Jay Harland recieves a bullet to the crotch from Katarina Konipaski.
  • I Call It "Vera": Kasumi White names her baseball bat Bible Thumper as a play on her Christian faith.
  • Irony: Maxwell Lombardi in v4 was one of the most infamous and prolific killers in SOTF before his death. Not only does Maxwell actively refuse to kill in SC2, he ends up winning without having killed anyone, the first role-played character to do so on either Main or Mini.
  • Lady Swears-a-Lot: Jeanette Buendia in SC2. She can barely get through a sentence without throwing in an obscenity or two.
  • Mercy Kill: Sophie McDowell to Jeanette Buendia, at Jeanette's request after getting shot by a would-be player.
    • Wendy Fischer to Yumi Nunes, after Yumi loses the will to live following Felicia La Chapelle's death and is too consumed with fear of other players to continue on.
  • Naked on Arrival: Amanda White's first in-game appearance has her taking a shower after witnessing the tail-end of a fight. Jason Andrews walks in on her.
  • Noodle Incident: According to a Sandbox thread, someone threw a cup of applesauce at Miranda Millers during a school movie night in Freshman year. It's unclear how it happened, just that she was upset that her clothes were ruined.
  • Painting the Medium: The death of Kasumi White uses this for Surreal Horror as part of her Dying Dream.
  • Plucky Comic Relief: Keiji Tanaka continues to be upbeat comic relief, even as others around him slowly succumb to cynicism.
  • The Pollyanna: Keiji Tanaka retains the hope that he and his friends will be rescued and everything will be okay for far, far longer than most.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Aaron Chalmers's death, resulting from two groups with peaceful intentions being too suspicious of each other to talk face to face, and their panic and paranoia getting Aaron shot.
  • Pummeling the Corpse: Tina Luz violently attacks the corpse of Blaine Eno in frustration upon the discovery that they had died by someone else's hand.
  • Running Gag: Keiji Tanaka's complete inability to navigate the island, resulting in him repeatedly getting lost and accidentally doubling back on himself.
  • Stylistic Suck: One sandbox thread has Jay Harland working on a horror story about a demon-possessed child who kills people, starting with his mother in childbirth, and eventually invokedbecoming a war-mongering President when he grows up. Michael Crowe, upon having it described to him, actually thinks it's a parody. Jay is not amused.
  • Tampering with Food and Drink: One thread involves a group of people eating hot soup that contains fish and red cabbage that was prepared for them. The "red cabbage" is actually aconite, a highly toxic flower that the host had gathered earlier. Most of the group gets sick from the poison, with two outright dying.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Kyran Dean and Adonis Alba absolutely hate each other, but wind up aligning with each other on the island out of convenience.
  • Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Maxwell Lombardi survives with a grand total of zero kills.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Wendy Fischer presumes that poisoning food is a relatively clean, painless, and efficient way of killing a group of people in a peaceful manner. This is proven wrong. The two who do die suffer excruciating pain as their bodies shut down, and the rest of the group, who either hadn't consumed a lethal dose or hadn't touched it yet, immediately starts panicking. This results in one more death from paranoia, and later two more from Despair Event Horizon.

    SOTF Mini: Evolution 
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: According to her profile, Evolution character Ashlie Jackson was one of these before coming to the island.
  • Body Horror: Many of the "powers" in Evolution fall into this. Some are pretty "standard" as powers go, such as solar-powered Super-Strength and invisibility, "memory absorption", Telepathy, and control over electricity, while others are pretty pathetic. Others, however, include things such as mold growing from the mouth and a character developing cat-like claws that are poisonous. The most notable one, though, goes to Johnny Marsh's "power", in which his skin is invisible, but the rest of him (muscles, organs, etc.) aren't. This, of course, means that his muscles are completely visible like an anatomical model. This receives a Lampshade Hanging when the scientists puts a full-body scuba suit on him to avoid him scaring the other subjects and interfering with the research. And then there's Billy-Jay Clarke's death in which he suffers a power malfunction, causing his eyes to catch fire and melt out of their sockets...
    • Not to mention what happens when Cavery is 'absorbed' by Dr. Botchi...
  • Full-Frontal Assault: Jay Harland pulled this off on Ashlie Jackson in Evolution as his practical solution to his nocturnal invisibility powers not extending to his clothes.
  • Goth: Kiera McDonald from Evolution of the Perky Goth variety
  • He Who Must Not Be Heard: Joel Deitrick of Survival of the Fittest: Evolution is notable for not speaking at all during his time on the island, his only lines of actual dialogue coming from flashbacks.
  • Personality Powers: Despite the fact that the powers are completely randomized, some of the mutations in Evolution ended up coincidentally fitting the characters' personalities. The most notable example would be Cristo Ruiz, a drug addict, having hallucinogenic venom secreting from under his fingernails. Lampshade hung in his profile's conclusion:
    Conclusion: So the drug addict now secretes a hallucinogen. Hm.
  • Playing with Syringes: What The Organisation does in Evolution to induce the superpowers in the students. The Super Serum is a success, although the powers created have varying values of 'super'.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The ending of Evolution is that there is no winner. Kate Black and Taryn Jones make it to the end as the last two standing and both die from blood loss and dehydration.
  • Super Serum: Every single character in Evolution that takes part in the game gets their power via an injection of chemicals. Some of the powers are... questionably useful, though.
  • What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Most of the SOTF: Evolution powers.

    SOTF Mini: Virtua 
  • Acrofatic: Ramona Shirley in Virtua. Described as being pudgy, she is also a star basketballer.
  • A Glitch in the Matrix: In Virtua, there's a locked drawer in the Sheriff's office filled with used sheets of paper. But the programmers forgot to put any writing on them.
  • Ascended Fan: Katie Tanaka was a big fan of Western movies. Take three guesses as to what the background for Virtua is.
  • Ascended Fridge Horror: The fluff for Virtua heavily implies that use of the game can result in serious physical and mental health effects. In addition, handlers speculated on whether the fact that none of the events are real changed how serious they were, as well as the possible Death of Personality implications. The Epilogue elaborates on this in the most horrific way: upon exiting the program, Rebecca Clark has a Freak Out when she slowly realizes that everything wasn't real and for entertainment. What's worse, she's not even who she believed she was; she wasn't a teenage girl but an adult man. Her reaction, once everything catches up to her, is to start harming herself. The epilogue ends with her player looking back on the game fondly, and wondering if he could bring a friend next time. The death tag confirms that this is pretty much a death scene. Yup.
  • Ax-Crazy: To some extent, Simon Mattheson of Virtua could qualify.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Simon Leroy is a male example.
  • Companion Cube: Virtua has Sycanus Appletin and Tobeyn, her teddy bear.
  • Coup de Grâce: In Virtua, Delilah Rivers performs one on Patrick Reynolds by stabbing him in the heart after she sliced through his abdomen.
  • Dream-Crushing Handicap / I Coulda Been a Contender!: Virtua character Clarisse Huntingdon was gearing up to become a model in her backstory. However, in the same car accident that killed her friends she broke her nose, rendering her incapable of modeling
  • Eating the Eye Candy: There's Virtua's Brian Larke. There's a scene where he's trying not to look at Renee Murphy's hindquarters while she's trotting out of a house.
  • Gentle Giant: While mocking him for it has been hinted to be a Berserk Button of sorts for him, for the most part Michael "Big Mike" Gibraltar in Virtua has been described this way. He's about 6'3, weighs 225 pounds, plays hockey... and is actually pretty friendly, with a fondness for fashion and vampire romance stories.
  • Goth: Jaqueline "Cameo" Conroy from Virtua played straight to the stereotype
  • He Who Must Not Be Heard: Simon Mattheson, who is also The Speechless.
  • Infectious Insanity: Sycanus Appletin in Virtua. Shortly after she had an encounter with Simon Mattheson, she too started to hear voices.
  • Kick the Dog: Jacqueline "Cameo" Conroy from Virtua was perhaps the only person who Simon Mattheson could trust in their time in the game. She's somewhat okay with the fact that he's murdered four of her classmates; however, once she finds out that he's doing it specifically for her, she cruelly abandons him, causing him to have a mental breakdown.
  • Man in a Kilt: Benny Lightfield from Virtua. Definitely not of the fanservice flavor, though.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: As of the first announcement, Katie Tanaka has been planning this in regards to Simon Mattheson, and implicitly other major players.
  • Sassy Black Woman: Ramona Shirley in Virtua.
  • The Speechless: Simon Mattheson in Virtua. He has a severe social phobia, rendering him incapable of speech until he bludgeons another character to death.
  • Unusual Euphemism: In Virtua Katie Tanaka quickly developed the habit of calling players "bandits".
  • Wild West: The setting for Virtua.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Virtua's Brian Larke believes that he is on a game show, and that there is some sort of monetary prize at the end. This would be sound reasoning... if he was in SOTF-TV.

    SOTF Mini: International 
  • Blood-Stained Glass Windows: A major shoot-out happens at the church on the island involving a large number of the cast, resulting in several injuries and a death.
  • Blatant Lies: A few people choose to lie about their names. The very obviously Indian Pranay Shankar says that his name is George Harper from California, which is likely the same lie he told tech scam victims.
  • Code Name: The terrorists have short words they call themselves with. If the student profiles are any indication, they even use these codenames when talking among each other. The names known so far are Prodigy, Polar, Quaker, Disco, Freebird, Overlord and Jack. Whether or not there is any deeper meaning behind the codenames remains to be seen.
  • The Commonwealth of Nations: Though called International, all participants were at least living in countries that are members of the Commonwealth.
  • Language Fluency Denial: As most characters speak more than one language, this is a lie of choice for a few. Fabiano first encounters Soraya who lies and pretends to speak limited English despite being fluent. After he loses her, he asks Austin if he's seen a girl matching her description. Austin responds in Welsh, also pretending he can't speak English.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Archie saves Jia from a shoot-out, gets her to safety while she is wounded, and reassures her when she has fallen into despair that he will stay with her and protect her. She repays him by trying to kill him by hitting him in the head with a rock. Clara is equally unrewarded for trying to help Caleb, who looks like he's being held at gunpoint when he turns on her and sides with the person that walked up to him with a gun, Tarren
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Being Northern Irish, Deirbhile Callahan has many colorful and obscene turns of phrase. Her story also contains 22 instances of the word "cunt".
    Deirbhile: Oh fuck, you fuckin'... Bri'ish cunt! Go have tea with the Queen and go fuckin' ooh, off to Marks and Spencers to go fuckin'... fuck yourself ya wee shit!

    SOTF: Supers 
    SOTF Mini: New Battle Royale AU 

  • Gang of Bullies: The Kiriyama family, and to a lesser extent Mitsuko, Hirono and Yoshimi.
    SOTF: Cyber 
  • Animate Inanimate Object: An established in-universe meme is 'woodies,' which are people who roleplay as various items of furniture and other objects. It originated as people joining non-human servers as such in an attempt to mock furries. However, it quickly backfired and got reclaimed by the very people it was intended to make fun of. It is now almost a full-fledged subculture with varying degrees of irony and sincerity.
  • Asshole Victim: The third teaser for Cyber introduces us to Theodore Chandler, who gets blackmailed into handing over his entire stock of digital items and becomes the first canonical victim of the terrorists kill switch. He qualifies as this primarily because he is an unrepentant pedophile.
  • Axes at School: The arena set up for the game is actually the classes own school, modified to be inescapable and with a number of locations having strange, sometimes glitchy gimmicks to them.
  • Chuunibyou: As the RP focuses on a class of high school students attending a school in Cyberspace, it's only natural that a fair portion of characters have elements of this, which is helped along by Character Customization being easy in-universe. Typically it's the more tech-savvy and Geek students who would, for example, change their appearances to something more anime-inspired.
  • Crapsack World, Escapist Sanctuary: Downplayed. While Meatspace doesn't appear to be much worse than Real Life, a few characters use CR as a way of dealing with things like mental illness, trauma, disability, and gender dysphoria. It goes a long way in explaining the quirkier leanings of the cast.
  • Cyberspace: Cyber Reality, of course
  • Future Slang: Downplayed because the timeline is still well within the present day, and not everyone uses these terms, but the advent of Cyber Reality has caused a few unique slang terms to develop. Chief among them are referring to the virtual world as “Cyberspace” or “CR”, and the real world as “Meatspace.”
  • Live but Delayed: As stated in the official SOTF: Cyber Setting, Location, Virtual Environment, & Abduction Information thread, this is the case for the game's events. The actual game begins at 9:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time (PDT). Still, the corresponding live stream doesn't start until 9:40 AM (wherein it plays the introduction ceremony), and the game's events don't play until 10:00 AM—nearly an hour later.
  • The Mole: When the game starts, it is revealed that the seemingly sympathetic Zeph Newman is in truth both an agent of Initiative Earth and the announcer for the game, punctuated by them being the one to murder the classes homeroom teacher.
  • Unnaturally Looping Location: The schools parking lot (which was never actually usable in the first place due to it being a virtual location) has been converted into an endless, flat landscape broken up by the occasional vehicle.

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