Survivor since 2000: Reliving the game’s greatest moments year by year

Survivor 2014: Tony’s Wild Ride

There’s one key difference between Tony Vlachos and Russell Hantz: Tony knows how to win. They’re both over-the-top villainous players in their own ways, with Tony playing up a wild, eccentric character from start to finish.

They both have a love for control and love to make others look the fool by promising them the world. He would spend his nights standing over his tribe, looking down on them in sleepless wonder. Whenever he needed to find out if someone else was plotting to get him out, he would run around like a lunatic and slip into one of his spy shacks.

Power (Tyler Perry idol + regular idol), fear (led the elimination of others) and respect (he was rarely double-crossed); that was the key to Tony’s game. He did so with plenty of character, too, ready to pop you a quote like no other while talking smack about others. He was an egomaniac, but he was a lovable egomaniac!

In any other season, he would have played a losing game. Instead, Woo chose to take him to the Final Tribal Council alone, setting up an intense, emotional event where his actions were deemed justifiably sleazy enough to win a million dollars. Tony Vlachos is one of the greatest new school Survivor players ever.