There are no rules.
Siberia is a scripted TV show stylized to be a Reality TV show about 16 individuals sent to survive in the wilderness of Siberia with no help, no supervision and no rules. After the first couple of days, though, an incident leads to a death. There is a debate on whether to continue the show or not, rather than just shutting down the competition right away, and things suddenly get stranger.
This show include examples of:
- Affably Evil: Johnny, at first. Then character development sets in.
- Anyone Can Die: In the first episode, something happens that kills one of the players and injures a cameraman.
- Bury Your Gays: Played pretty straight. Natalie dies only an episode after it is revealed she might be bisexual, and willing to give a relationship with Annie a chance. And then Annie gets shot in the last episode of the first season - making the only two main characters to die that survived the premiere the only two non-straight characters as well.
- Chekhov's Gun: There's a machine that dispenses them.
- Closed Circle: The Contestants and the Camera Crew are five hundred miles from the nearest town.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Sabina was raised in an orphanage, raped and impregnated by one of the staff members. During her mandatory stint in the Israeli Defense force she was dishonorably discharged for stopping her commanding officer from raping a girl, causing her to lose custody of her son as a result. She joined the show to get him back.
- Deconstruction: Of Reality TV shows like Survivor.
- Developing Doomed Characters: The entire first episode (including the opening credits), looks and feels like a Reality TV show, with two contestants getting eliminated before even arriving at camp, and many others embodying certain archetypes in an almost cliched matter. Then Tommy dies and it quickly becomes clear that something is not right.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: When the contestants find the producer's base camp trashed and deserted, there is blood everywhere but no bodies.
- This also happens later when Johnny, Joyce, Daniel, and Sam find a research station.
- Expy: A lot of clear-cut character types from reality shows are at play, but Esther in particular is very clearly inspired by Jerri Manthey of Survivor.
- Fall Guy: In episode three, it looks as though Johnny stole the food and burned down the shed. Later it turns out to be Carolina, at the behest of the producers.
- The Faceless: We rarely see the Camera Crew, and when they speak, their dialogue is often subtitled.
- First-Episode Twist: Tommy dies near the end of the first episode
- Fingore: Johnny cuts off part of one of his fingers while chopping firewood.
- For Science!: The label found on the Revealer in Episode Six seems to imply that the show was a front for some sort of behavioral psychology experiment. Whether or not the experiment is still going on is up to debate.
- Found Footage Films: Found Footage Series.
- Genre Shift: From Reality TV to Found Footage.
- Honey Trap: Esther seduces one of the cameramen to blackmail him into helping her in the game.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Johnny is turning into one of these.
- The Mole: Carolina AKA Joyce is a plant by the producers.
- Mushroom Samba: Victoria experiences a particularly bad one, encountering violent hallucinations after eating bad mushrooms. It leads to her bailing out.
- One-Word Title: An example of The Place.
- Only Sane Man: Only Sane Woman: Sabina, a retired Israeli soldier who is also the only person who seems to understand that they should be preparing to survive a friggin Russian Winter in the middle of nowhere. She also realizes that their plan to light a signal fire to summon help may very well draw whatever wiped out the producer's base camp as well.
- Ontological Mystery: What is behind what is happening to them? Who (or what) is stalking them in the woods? Where did all that snow come from? Is whoever is in charge of this show still running things? Or have things gone FUBAR and have they been abandoned as a result?
- The Place: The show is set in the Siberian wilderness.
- Reality TV: Designed to appear as one, right down to Confession Cam moments.
- The Reveal: Almost every other episode. Carolina burned down the food shed. The button isn't real. The producer's camp has been ransacked. Natalie is dead.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Tommy, one of the more easygoing and charismatic contestants who risked elimination to help another injured contestant, dies at the end of the first episode.
- Sanity Slippage: Miljan was kind of weird from the start, but once he finds a totem and book in the woods, he gets increasingly creepy and violent.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: George does this shortly after Tommy's death, taking the producer's offer of $5,000 to leave the show now. Victoria later does this after eating some hallucinogenic mushrooms and seeing visions of everyone else dying.
- Shown Their Work: Those fake-looking red-and-white mushrooms that have hallucinogenic properties and are poisonous until boiled? Yep, those exist
. And in Siberia, like in the rest of Russia, they are common knowledge and even kids recognize them.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Tommy. He's the nicest of the group, and doesn't live past the first episode. His passing is greatly mourned by the others.
- Wham Episode: Episode 5 Carolina is exposed as The Mole for the producers. Irene gets badly injured in a trap forcing the other contestants to push the button in order to get help. The button is revealed to be a prop. The crew are revealed to be just as stuck as the contestants and they all go the the producers Base Camp, only to find it deserted.
- Wham Line: The reveal of Tommy's death.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Esther gets this when her trick is exposed at the start of episode six.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Harpreet, Berglind, and Tommy in the first episode, Victoria and George shortly after.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Neeko. Even after everything goes wrong, he still keeps assuming things are props.
- Yandere: Miljan has his moments, especially with Esther.
