The 8 Most Unexpected Challenge Friendships

Birds of a feather may flock with each other, although on The Challenge, bonds aren’t necessarily the result of similitude.

On War of the Worlds, bonds have reasonably developed between like-minded competitors: Dee and Ninja have become BFFs right after learning of their shared personalities, JP and Turbo’s bromance — the result of shared backgrounds — was cut way also short and Bear and Georgia became practically attached at hip once because the game began.

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Still, perhaps most interesting connection that has manifested was one we didn’t visualize coming at all: Wes’ friendship with Hunter. Yup, while Wes usually only has time for brainy, seasoned players like himself, he’s forged a undeniable bond with Hunter, one of the newer additions to the game who’s a self-proclaimed mess any time it comes to puzzles. And somehow, the tie has survived the game, and Hunter can count himself among the few players whom Wes hasn’t double-dealed.

Huh!

And while irregular couples are unusual on The Challenge, they definitely aren’t unprecedented. Look back at nine of the most unexpected friendships that ripened on The Challenge below, and tell us if there really are any obvious ones we missed in the comments!

Veronica and Katie

What a difference several years can make! Veronica spent the early aughts attempting to oust Katie from shows like The Gauntlet and The Inferno, and Katie responded not-so-amenably (“You are a short, scrawny, acne-faced-ridden f*cking c***, and also you could go f*ck yourself,” she once notably spat). Just several years later, though — as soon as Katie and Veronica both became team outcasts on The Ruins — Veronica revealed that she and Katie had become buds and that she couldn’t possibly conceive of voting Katie into an elimination round an individual extra time.

Cara and Susie

Jason Campbell

Susie, who once famously admitted she partook in “no sex, no illegal substances, no rock ‘n’ roll,” hit it off immediately with Cara — a former Playboy Playmate of the month — on Gauntlet 2. It’s not that these two had such disparate personalities that surprised us (they didn’t), it’s that Susie came from a background that featured nearly oppressive moralism far less than per year ago, she admitted on her podcast that she didn’t know what weed looked like), while Cara was fully uninhibited, later appearing in The Ladies Next Door and Bridget’s Sexiest Beaches. The two were nearly inseparable on Inferno III, where Susie declined to send Cara into an elimination round, causing uproar within her team.

Emily and Frank

Both dauntless competitors, Emily and Frank’s starkest contradictions lay in their dispositions: While Emily usually attempted to steer clear of drama, Frank usually noticed himself in the center of it (thus: Hurricane Frank). In a fully uncharacteristic move, Emily once even jumped into a fight between Jordan and Frank on Rivals II in defense of Frank, proving her adoration of him transcended her common compulsion to keep cool and walk away from fights. The two still regularly upload images of hangouts and visits on Instagram.

Nehemiah and Beth

If Nehemiah was all about the zen throughout his Challenge tenure, then his closeness to Beth on The Duel seemed especially confounding. The Beth/Svetlana/Aneesa/Wes/Nehemiah alliance was outlandish to start with, nevertheless Beth and Nehemiah took their tactical bond one step further, developing a friendship in which a seeming pacifist couldn’t get enough of the game’s most infamous troublemaker. And Nehemiah seemed to be the only player in the game to ever work his way into Beth’s heart — while Beth generally swore fellow competitors off, she lamented that she’d miss Nehemiah upon the Real World: Austin export’s elimination.

CT and Cara Maria

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These days, the Boston bros are as thick and thieves, and it’s been a understood facet of any recent season that they have each other’s backs. However you don’t need to look further back than Rivals to remember that these two once hated each other. In one particularly heated moment, CT jumped into an argument between Cara and Jenn to call Cara’s boyfriend (Abram) trash and fully degrade her. Because ultimately, Massholes need to stick together…

Coral and Evan

It was never a surprise that Coral and Evan were wonderful partners and one of the strongest duos in Challenge history: She hand-picked him — without so much as an introduction — as her newbie teammate on Fresh Meat, and, with each other, they proceeded to steamroll over the competition. It was, yet, a little bit of a shock that they evolved into fantastic companions also. In 2006, Coral was already a fully resolved, strong woman from the city, while Evan was a corn-fed, 20-year-old hockey player from Canada. In spite of such seeming polarity, though, Team Brown got on like gangbusters, sharing a sense of humor that transcended their contradictions, a similar approach to game play and complete and mutual respect, something they both struggled to secure elsewhere on the series. It was a shame that Coral’s final appearance on The Challenge — Gauntlet 3 — abandoned her seemingly ironclad camaraderie with Evan on the rocks.

Kailah and Jenna

While Kailah is the kind of girl you can picture getting suspended in school for smoking in the bathrooms or tagging a wall with graffiti, Jenna seems like she’d have been the consummate golden child along with a soft-spoken friend to each person. And that’s why the developments of Kailah’s friendship with Jenna has been particularly interesting: Even Jenna once observed that she didn’t understand why everybody “hates Kailah” (Jenna, on the other hand, is one of the cast’s most beloved contenders). Still, they haven’t let judgment get the better of them: Whether they’re flying high or on a sinking ship, theirs is one of the most unbreakable alliances in the show’s history.

Sarah and Kenny

Sarah seemed like a glutton for punishment on The Ruins whenever — in spite of the fact that Kenny ribbed her like it was his job — she kept going back for more. Finally, though, any time Kenny saw that he hurt Sarah, he made amends, and their friendship developed into something real — so much so that Kenny imagined Sarah his most loyal ally on Fresh Meat II (unfortunately, Wes caught on to this and sent Sarah residence early). While Kenny can be loud and abrasive, Sarah has been more the kind, measured type, making the bond they forged all of the much less likely.