The Challenge casts are season specific as the cast varies from season to season. The casts are made up of contestants originating from one of The Challenge's related TV programs and contestants originating from one of the few Challenge seasons that have allowed previously unknown contestants. These shows and seasons are: Real World, Road Rules, Are You the One?, The Challenge (from Fresh Meat, Fresh Meat II, Spring Break Challenge and Battle of the Bloodlines). Most recently alumni from Big Brother, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Ex on the Beach, and Geordie Shore have joined the show.
A season's typical multitude of cast members are usually divided up into separate teams or pairs according to a certain criteria, which varies from season to season. The criteria that teams have been arranged by over the show's history have ranged, from gender, a contestants original show, heroic/villainous status and ex-romantic partners of contestants. Each of the opposing teams compete in numerous missions in order to win prizes and advance in the overall game. Following each mission, a team or a cast member is voted into an elimination round to take on the least successful team from the previous mission. In elimination rounds, they must compete against one another to determine which one is eliminated from the season. Each season has its own, very distinct elimination round, distinguished from those of other seasons in title, design, and general atmosphere. Determining which two teams or two cast members are sent into the episode's elimination round frequently leads to drama and contestants playing the game dirty; this is due to the show's contestants being in charge of who is thrown into elimination rounds.[4] Like that of The Real World, sporadically throughout the course of each episode, various contestants are seen privately expressing themselves through reality TV confessionals about the events taking place on the show.
Some seasons, however, have used entirely different formats from the typical: The Island is one Challenge in particular that adopted many features atypical to Real World/Road Rules Challenge, instead taking concepts like that of another reality television game show Survivor; as another example, the first season (Road Rules: All Stars) ironically only included contestants from The Real World and consisted of a much smaller cast before the show was completely reconstructed by its second season. Except for season one, a monetary prize has always been the award for winning the final mission.
A season's typical multitude of cast members are usually divided up into separate teams or pairs according to a certain criteria, which varies from season to season. The criteria that teams have been arranged by over the show's history have ranged, from gender, a contestants original show, heroic/villainous status and ex-romantic partners of contestants. Each of the opposing teams compete in numerous missions in order to win prizes and advance in the overall game. Following each mission, a team or a cast member is voted into an elimination round to take on the least successful team from the previous mission. In elimination rounds, they must compete against one another to determine which one is eliminated from the season. Each season has its own, very distinct elimination round, distinguished from those of other seasons in title, design, and general atmosphere. Determining which two teams or two cast members are sent into the episode's elimination round frequently leads to drama and contestants playing the game dirty; this is due to the show's contestants being in charge of who is thrown into elimination rounds.[4] Like that of The Real World, sporadically throughout the course of each episode, various contestants are seen privately expressing themselves through reality TV confessionals about the events taking place on the show.
Some seasons, however, have used entirely different formats from the typical: The Island is one Challenge in particular that adopted many features atypical to Real World/Road Rules Challenge, instead taking concepts like that of another reality television game show Survivor; as another example, the first season (Road Rules: All Stars) ironically only included contestants from The Real World and consisted of a much smaller cast before the show was completely reconstructed by its second season. Except for season one, a monetary prize has always been the award for winning the final mission.