The 5 Most Hated ‘Survivor’ Players in the History of the Game

If you love Survivor, then you know that sometimes it’s just as fun to root for your least favorite players to lose as it is to root for your favorites to win. Some Survivor “villains” are truly a joy to watch — which is probably why we got an entire Heroes vs. Villains season. While it’s natural to want good things to happen to good people, we can’t deny that it’s the lying, blindsides, and sneaky strategies that keep us coming back season after season.

But we’re not here to discuss the Jonny Fairplays and Boston Robs of Survivor. Most of us can admit that we love a good villain — they keep the game interesting! But there are some Survivor players that are just straight-up hateable without any of the charm to keep us invested in their story. Obviously, each Survivor fan is going to find different contestants relatable (or not), but here are our picks for top five most hated Survivor players.

The top five most hated ‘Survivor’ players are:

You’ve gotta give Richard his dues when it comes to Survivor villainy. As the main villain in Season 1, he had no prior players to base his game on, yet he seemed to naturally understand exactly what kind of mental warfare it’d take to win the game. Walk around naked? Check. Form an alliance? Check. Win $1 million? Check. It took quite a few seasons to get another player as talented as Richard in the game, and many of the other early seasons are downright boring when compared to his Season 1 performance.

That being said, the guy really seemed to take a lot of pleasure in being the bad guy, and the whole incident with Sue Hawk on All-Stars definitely took some of the shine off of Richard’s questionable strategies. We’re secretly kind of glad that he wasn’t included in Winners at War, even though we wouldn’t have been surprised to see him there.

OK, this Survivor: Thailand contestant has flown under the radar for far too long (probably because he was a pre-merge elimination). He didn’t brand himself as a villain at all, but this guy was such a bummer to watch! Remember when he choked fellow contestant Clay during the infamous “Attack Zone” challenge? And then complained that his team had gotten beat by “a bunch of rules”?

He was also pretty unpleasant to his fellow tribemate Shii Ann. And he brought a skateboard as his luxury item. A skateboard! Where did he think he was going to skate? Come on, Robb.

This one is tricky because for the majority of his Survivor run, Jeff was actually very well-liked by pretty much everyone. It wasn’t until his hugely problematic move in Game Changers that he became enemy No. 1. When Jeff outed fellow player Zeke as a transgender man, his tribe instantly (and rightfully) turned on him. He was voted off the show and canceled IRL (though he has since apologized for his actions and he and Zeke seem to be on OK terms now). 

You’d be very hard-pressed to find any true Colton stans in the Survivor fanbase. First, there’s the fact that he decided to keep his Immunity Idol as a souvenir upon being medically evacuated from One World rather than giving it to someone else on his tribe. Then he voluntarily quit Blood vs. Water because, by his own admission, he “just didn’t care about his tribe.” 

Add that to the fact that he said a bunch of derogatory stuff about fellow players and was just generally unpleasant to be around, and he handily earns his spot at No. 2 on our list.

Honestly, there are probably plenty of NaOnka fans out there, but we don’t understand why. She spent her entire season (or at least the part of her season that she stuck around for) picking fights, shouting people down, and just generally being a bully. If that wasn’t bad enough, she also decided to quit with only 11 days left in the competition, throwing the rest of the season off. While plenty of mean people have been fun to watch on Survivor, NaOnka was just plain mean.