This is how bad my Survivor fandom can get at times. Sometimes, as I start to drift to sleep, I start to think of the show. On some nights, my brain just likes to rattle off information back to me. The seasons in order with their first boots and winners. I try to think of returning players and how they placed on each occasion. You know, totally normal things.

Then on some nights, I try to think of alternate realities and what we may have missed out in our world. Sort of like a Chrono Cross universe, only this is on a single island instead of an Archipelago and the Australians have their own show instead of being included in ours.

“Who the fuck voted for me mate?”

For example, my mind often drifts back to Survivor: Panama. In a world where Cirie Fields isn’t quick enough to build bonds and separate Tina Scheer from the group, I like to wonder how everything would have played out with Cirie as a first boot. We’re talking about one of our four-timers. A living Survivor legend and if a few things don’t break her way, she becomes a non-entity in the Survivor universe. Maybe Ryan Aiken drafts her in his “Casting a first boot Survivor season” podcast on RHAP: Ryan has a Podcast.

It’s crazy when you really think about how easily everything on this show could be different. Timber Tina was built, at least physically, to thrive on Survivor. How would she have performed if she had taken Cirie’s place in the season? Might she become an iconic character that gets brought back for multiple seasons? It’s easy to see how even the smallest ripples completely change our own realities.

She could have been a contender.

The biggest actual example of this is Boston Rob. In Survivor: Marquesas, Rob was a funny character. He had a lot of biting confessionals. He was a bit rough around the edges. In terms of gameplay, Rob’s biggest contribution to Marquesas is the Hunter Ellis blindside. It was the first time a real physical threat was taken out during the merge portion of the game, making it an acceptable strategy for future players.

Even counting the Hunter Ellis vote-off, Rob did not stick around Marquesas for particularly long. He finished in 10th place and didn’t even make the jury. By the time the season wrapped up, Rob became a distant memory for many fans… unless they watched his performance at the reunion show, which remains the oddest reunion show Survivor has ever put together.

He didn’t even have the Sox hat in Marquesas.

Fast-forward a few years to when producers had decided they wanted to do an all-star edition. Taking the room temperature at the time, I would be lying to you if I tried to convince you that Boston Rob would have been on a lot of people’s minds. There had been three seasons between Marquesas and Survivor: All-Stars and plenty of people that might take Rob’s spotlight.

The other male ­All-Stars seemed like obvious locks too. Richard Hatch, Rob Cesternino, Colby Donaldson, and Rupert Boneham were the ones they absolutely had to have. Ethan Zohn was at the time, the show’s most beloved winner. Rudy Boesch was one of the breakout stars of Survivor’s origin story and Big Tom was essentially a more red-neck version of Rudy. Lex Van de Berghe, like Rob Cesternino, was one of those “strategic players who fell just short” that people always love. To fill that last spot, there were a lot of people that seemed worthy of the name All-Star.

In just the previous season, Jonny Fairplay had become one of the show’s biggest names after his villainous performance. Andrew Savage had also propped himself up as a big favorite because of his role as the leader of the downtrodden tribe. From Survivor: Thailand, Brian Heidik had put on a dominant performance on his way to a win. At that point in time, many would have placed him as the best player ever and his real-life creepiness hadn’t yet boiled completely to the surface. In Survivor: the Australian Outback, Michael Skupin had suffered the worst injury the show would see for years. Like Brian, much of his creepiness would stay masqueraded for another long period of time. It wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary for the producers to try to get Gervase Peterson back on to add some extra Survivor: Borneo flavor into the mix.

Hell, even in Rob’s own season, many would argue that Sean Rector should have probably been ahead of Rob in the All-Stars queue, and I would be one of those people. You might have even seen somebody like Alex Bell from Survivor: the Amazon taking Rob’s spot in All-Stars.

My point is that to get a second shot at the game, Rob got a little lucky. He took that luck and he ran with it. Regardless of your opinions on the man himself or All-Stars as a season, you can’t argue that Rob took the season as his tool to make himself a household name. He may not have won the game but he made sure that he would forever be remembered in Survivor lore.

That performance became the pillar for his two subsequent returns and eventual win. We could easily be living in a world where Boston Rob is some cult fan favorite who gets mentioned in every “who should come back” thread on r/Survivor. Instead, Boston Rob has become the face of Survivor and somebody who gets brought in every “who do you never want to see play again” thread on r/Survivor.

When you really stop and think about it, it’s crazy how little things are under our own control. What if Ozzy Lusth picks up the Upolu buff in Survivor: South Pacific? There is no way he is starting an alliance based in Christianity like Coach Wade did. How would Savaii’s alpha males (plus John Cochran) react to having someone like Coach come into their camp? The simple act of picking a random buff (assuming the producers aren’t lying to us and we sort of have to) completely changes the entire course of a season.

Because Survivor has now made it clear that returning player seasons are fairly common, altering one season just slightly shifts everything out of focus. Imagine a world where Boston Rob never returns. Now imagine Heroes vs Villains and obviously, Redemption Island. There’s no way you can even map out the many possible changes but it’s fair to say it would definitely not look like our current versions of either season.

In fact, some more random luck came to Boston Rob’s aide for Redemption Island if we are to believe Richard Hatch. This is to be taken with a grain of salt, considering the nature of Redemption Island’s theme seems to be based off Russell and Rob’s rivalry in Heroes vs Villains, but Richard has claimed that he was originally slated to appear on that season opposite Russell. According to Richard, Rob was only brought in as a replacement for Richard after a judge denied Richard’s request to leave the USA.

All this to show you how quickly things could change. They say history is written by the winners but in Survivor, it’s more accurate to say the history is written by the ones that producers deem to be relevant. My hope as you read these words is that the next time your mind starts to wonder before bed, it’ll fall onto Timber Tina and you’ll go from there.