The Hunger Games and Reality TV

Following the March 2025 release of Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel novel to Suzanne Collins’ acclaimed series, The Hunger Games, fans were quick to call out parallels the trilogy bore to some of its reality television-based influences. Rebecca Perlmutter, for Swoon.com, released an article in May of that year comparing the relationship between Katniss and Peeta, the star-crossed lovers at the emotional center of Collins’ books, with “Boston” Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich (now Mariano), the Survivor “it-couple” of the early 2000s. Even with many comparisons evident, as Perlmutter put it, “there has been no real confirmation that the reality competition that inspired The Hunger Games was Survivor.”[1] However, with the expected 2026 release of Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans as well as the film adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping, the story of Panem’s 50^th Hunger Games, it’s hard not to draw comparisons, at least in premise, between the two franchises once again.

The origin story for the Hunger Games has been repeated by Collins in multiple interviews. As she told the Scholastic Journal, she lay awake one night flipping the channels between competitive reality television and actual war coverage when the lines started to blur and the rest is history[2]. But now, as avid fans of both the series and competitive reality television alike ruminate over the connections, I can’t help but wonder which competitive reality show had she been watching that fateful night back in the early 2000s? If not Survivor, what other competitive reality shows may Collins have found inspiration in?

Regardless of which show specifically was airing that night, the allusions to competitive reality television shows are evident throughout Collins’s series. She combines elements seen in many popular American game shows to explore the ways in which media can desensitize its audience to the world around us. By comparing the series to its numerous reality television influences and different elements within the genre, we can begin to maybe answer the question of which show Collins was watching all those years ago. As an avid fan of Survivor’s sister show, CBS’s hit competitive reality, Big Brother, it’s easy for me to imagine the 24/7 voyeuristic program as the one Collins may have landed on while letting the lines begin to blur between reality and fiction.  

Released in November 2025, Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother, by Taran Armstrong, deep dives into the creation and cultural development of CBS’s version of the program. Armstrong makes the case that Big Brother is a mini reflection of our American society and the problems raised or spotlighted throughout its 25-year history are problems we have with reality itself[3]. In order to do this, Armstrong dives into different aspects of the shows production and the community the audience has built around it. Suzanne Collins characterizes both the production and the audience of her fictional Hunger Games similarly to that of Big Brother.

The overall premise of Big Brother is simply to avoid eviction or win power week after week over the course of three or more months all while being broadcast live and 24/7 for all of America to witness. Detailed in Armstrong’s book, Big Brother was created in the Netherlands by producers Jon De Mol and Paul Römer and adapted for American TV audiences in the summer of 2000. Over its 25 year and counting run, the TV show has created a hyper-realistic arena wherein up to 17 Houseguests attempt to survive eviction each week with the goal of winning $750,000, previously $500,000 until the show’s 23^rd season in 2021[4]. In Collins’ fictional dystopia, the Hunger Games, also the name of the trilogy, is a televised event in which 24 tributes, one male and one female, from each of Panem’s 12 districts fight to the death to crown one sole victor. The “Games” [5], as they are shortened to in the book, are playing out in real-time while simultaneously being broadcast live for the entire nation of Panem.

On the surface, I’m sure you can already see similarities in the structure, but let’s take a closer look. The goal for Big Brother’s Houseguests is to be the sole remaining Houseguest and crowned the winner. For tributes in the Hunger Games the goal is to be the sole remaining tribute and crowned the victor. To achieve the goal in Big Brother, Houseguests must avoid the nomination block. In the event they are nominated, Houseguests must survive an eviction vote where the other Houseguests choose which of the two or sometimes three Houseguests nominated to vote out. In the Hunger Games, tributes are literally trying to survive a theoretical chopping block. This theoretical chopping block, or nomination block if you will, takes form in the Hunger Games via combat amongst tributes or other arena-based elements introduced by the Capitol’s Gamemakers (or producers to really drive home the comparison). Once a tribute is faced with combat or another one of these elements, they either live or die. Surviving the arena for another day after engaging in combat forces a tribute to reckon with a rockier path to achieving the final goal of winning. Similarly, if a Houseguest does manage to survive an eviction vote, they tend to have a rocky journey to winning the game, unless they’re Dan Gheesling but that’s a point of comparison for another time.

Tributes, the theoretical cast of the Hunger Games, are structured similarly to the various casts of Big Brother. While the cast of Big Brother, at times, features 17 total Houseguests there is typically an even number, and in recent years that has been capped at 16. Like Collins’ Hunger Games, the genders of the Big Brother Houseguests, tend to be evenly split, eight women and eight men. Regional diversity is another structural concept applied to casting that is similarly portrayed in both Big Brother and the Hunger Games. While Big Brother can’t cast one man and one woman from each of the 50 United States, each season does aim to feature Houseguests from various American geographical regions. The Hunger Games includes the concept of regional diversity by reaping tributes from each district, which are described as distinct industrial regions within the broader nation of Panem. As Big Brother is produced in Los Angeles, we can consider that the regional center for Big Brother’s production. Comparatively, the Capitol is the regional center for the production of the Hunger Games. In curating a cast that is regionally diverse, Big Brother includes contestants from California and the Los Angeles region, whereas the Capitol does not allow for their children to be reaped. However, within Panem, District 1 is described to make luxury items for and to be geographically near the Capitol.[6] Tributes from District 1 can, to a lesser degree, reflect the Capitol demographic based in Panem’s regional center.

The primary audience for the fictional Hunger Games are the citizens of the Capitol, Panem’s regional center and the heart of its power. In Collins’ trilogy she “send[s] [her] tributes into an updated version of the Roman Gladiator games” drawing upon the Greek Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.[7] It’s hard not to make comparisons between the pomp and circumstances of the Roman Games and competitive reality television. As Collins put it, “the audiences for both the Roman games and reality TV are almost characters in themselves,” and can even “play a role in your elimination.”[8] In, Behind the Mirror, Armstrong uses a similar analogy to analyze Big Brother’s audience. While describing aforementioned legendary contestant Dan Gheesling and his mostly “clean and positive” antics in comparison to previous contestants, Armstrong describes this as “resonat[ing] with an audience usually thirsty for blood and drama as if they’re the screaming attendees of the Colosseum that is modern-day reality television.”[9] While I’m sure we can analyze the cultural similarities between the audiences for Roman gladiator games and competitive reality television, the point that both Collins and Armstrong have hit on here is how audiences find ways to involve themselves in the game being played one way or another.

The broadcasting of both Big Brother and the fictional Hunger Games occurs 24/7 and live. Cultural eco-systems have been built around both Big Brother and the Hunger Games, for audiences to participate in the live 24/7 broadcasting of the programs. Big Brother’s primary product is the edited and produced episodes that air on CBS’s syndicated programming around three times a week. The primary attraction of Big Brother, however, is the live feed(s) broadcast on the internet. Similarly, the Hunger Games, we learn, are being broadcast seemingly live and 24/7 for most of the country to see, specifically the Capitol. Condensed replay style broadcasts are shown to be aired in Panem as well, primarily through the descriptions of our narrator and protagonist, Katniss Everdeen. In chapter six Katniss takes us through the aftermath of the Opening Ceremonies and mentions watching a replay of them, which were also broadcast live as they were happening[10]. We are also told of the replays earlier in the book during District 12’s reaping. Katniss tells us she must not appear weak, so she isn’t marked as “an easy target” for the other tributes to take out[11], an early example of how the audience will affect the game to come.

The Capitol audience depicted in The Hunger Games plays a very large role in tribute success. As described by Katniss, Capitol citizens will sponsor tributes in the arena, paying money to their mentors to send supplies directly to the tribute of their choosing within the arena. Big Brother has featured a variety of instances in which the audience directly impacts the outcome of an individual contestant’s game. On Season 18 of the program, the sponsor style gifting to tributes was practically recreated when fans voted on a Houseguest to send a care package to. During the Hunger Games, when tributes are sent items, they enter the arena on a parachute device, floating directly to the contestant it was meant for[12]. During Season 18, fan favorite and return player, Nicole Franzel, received “America’s Care Package,” which was floated into the backyard of the Big Brother house by a parachute[13]. The visuals really sell the point, but nonetheless we see here how Big Brother has featured elements of audience participation nearly identical to that in The Hunger Games.

While fictional, it may seem macabre to compare the death of teenagers to the adults who have participated in Big Brother or other reality television programs. As mentioned earlier, one of the core themes explored in Collins’s work is how media desensitizes its audiences to real-world issues around them. Desensitization to war is the core issue Collins is portraying; reality TV is the medium she is using to explore how that manifests in a fictional society. While I do think reality television has its own ways of desensitizing us to real-world issues, I do not want to seem as if I am ignoring the issues at the heart of Collins’ work. There’s also certainly a meta-commentary on the desensitization that is manifested here with abrupt transitions in discussing violence and death to a somewhat silly reality television show.

I know I haven’t really made the case that Big Brother was the show Suzanne Collins was watching all those years ago. If we’re being honest much of the series is largely reflected in Survivor, which was the marketing basis for the books. However, I do think the programming of Collins fictional Hunger Games most closely resembles CBS’s Big Brother. Hopefully by exploring only a few of the similarities laid out above we can start to piece together other comparisons seen between The Hunger Games and not only Big Brother, but Survivor and so many other programs across the reality genre. Why else would Suzanne tell her audience it was the inspiration if not to inspire us to pick it all apart?

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[1] Perlmutter, Rebecca “Did Boston Rob & Amber’s Epic ‘Survivor’ Romance Inspire ‘The Hunger Games?’ Swoon, May 21, 2025. https://www.swooon.com/1193405/survivor-boston-rob-amber-romance-the-hunger-games-inspiration/

[2] Collins, Suzanne. “Q&A with Suzanne, Collins” Interview by Scholastic Inc. Scholastic, Inc., 2010. Accessed Jan 18, 2025.

[3] Taran Armstrong, Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother (Sourcebooks, 2025)

[4] Big Brother, season 23 episode 1, aired July 7, 2021, on CBS, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/Lz8gWBWdDN83XFX9Xm_A7d0tT_iBPPqp/?searchReferral=desktop-web&source=google-organic&ftag=PPM-23-10bfh8c

[5] Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 23. This shortened version is first introduced by Effie Trinket while proclaiming “’That’s the spirit of the Games!’” after Katniss volunteers as tribute.

[6] Ibid, 69.

[7] Suzanne Collins, “Q&A with Suzanne, Collins” Interview by Scholastic Inc. Scholastic, Inc., 2010. Accessed Jan 18, 2025. https://www.scholastic.com/content/dam/newsroom/press-kit/hunger-games/Suzanne%20Collins%20QA%20no%20contact.pdf

[8] Ibid.

[9] Taran Armstrong, Behind the Mirror: Inside the World of Big Brother (Sourcebooks, 2025), 184.

[10] Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games. (Scholastic, Inc., 2008), 78.

[11] Ibid, 23.

[12] Ibid, 188. The first time Katniss receives a sponsor gift it is sitting on her sleeping bag with a “silver parachute” attached.

[13] Big Brother, season 18, episode 25, aired August 14, 2016 on CBS, https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/F6DC1A2F-705F-9F46-C970-8A454E800C10/