Johnny Bananas is known for being a villainous reality TV character based on his mischievous activity on many seasons of The Challenge.
While he currently stars in The Challenge: USA 2 spinoff on CBS, he’ll bring his skillset into another competition show.
In the aptly titled House of Villains, he gets pitted against other reality TV villains, and one contestant will walk away with $200,000. It doesn’t appear Bananas will have an opportunity to win with a partner and steal all the prize money, but that could always happen.
Others competing against Bananas include Omarosa, Survivor’s Jonny Fairplay, Vanderpump Rules’ Jax Taylor, Flavor of Love’s Tiffany “New York” Pollard, and The Bachelor’s Corinne Olympios.
A new trailer has arrived featuring the seven-time champion of The Challenge and his co-stars as they get their wicked games underway.
As the footage is unveiled, the format of this unique competition show is also revealed, and Bananas gets the spotlight in a few early glimpses of what’s on the way.
Bananas appears in highlight House of Villains trailer moments
E! ‘s House of Villains takes some of reality TV’s biggest villains of all time and puts them under one roof to determine America’s Ultimate Supervillain. This will be achieved through a series of challenges, with one competitor eliminated each week. In the end, one individual wins the title and $200,000.
It seems like familiar territory for Bananas, who has endured that setup for multiple seasons of The Challenge on MTV. More recently, he’s appeared in spinoffs, The Challenge: World Championship and USA 2, which incorporate more of the same, albeit on Paramount+ and CBS.
He is featured in the newest trailer for the show, which showcases some of the mayhem the competitors will be involved in. During one scene, Bananas is shown holding a handwritten note for the camera.
“I thought you just played it up for TV, but after meeting you in real life, you really are a douche,” the note reads.
Soon after that scene, another shows Bananas’ castmate Corinne telling him, “I didn’t write that note,” before yanking it away from him and storming off to ask who wrote it. Bananas may have intentionally created fake drama in the house, something he’s done before.
Later on, Bananas is shown seated at a table with castmates. During this scene, New York seems to yell at him as he lowers his head and doesn’t make eye contact with her.
“You goin’ down before I do, you amphibian reptile motherf***er,” she says, suggesting he made a sarcastic remark or had a hand in some sort of plot against her.
In another spotlight moment, New York calls out Omarosa with an expletive-filled sentence about her political affiliation.
“This show is gonna be really good,” host Joel McHale says, chuckling.
Bananas was involved in ‘note’ drama during The Challenge
While the full context of Bananas’ handwritten note isn’t shown in the House of Villains trailer, it may be a throwback to his playbook from The Challenge.
During the Vendettas season, the former Real World: Key West star stirred up a good bit of drama in The Challenge house with some fake notes he created and distributed.
These notes were left in the beds of female castmates, causing accusations to start flying about who wrote them. Bananas wasn’t among those getting accused, though, so it had the desired drama-causing effect.
According to US Weekly, Bananas cooked up the idea with The Challenge OG Mark Long a month before they left for Vendettas.
“At first, we were just going to do them on everyone — guys’ beds, girls’ beds, whatever. Then we’re like, ‘The girls on the show are just so much more just catty, obviously, than the guys are, so we’ll just write a bunch of phrases or just a bunch of scenarios,” Bananas said.
“I guess no one just was sick enough to think that someone would plot this outside of the show months ahead of time and then execute in the house. But I was. It ain’t my first rodeo,” he also shared.
Bananas also admitted during that 2018 US Weekly interview that he was regularly given a “villain” edit on The Challenge, so he decided to embrace it for what it was.
“By nature, I’m necessarily a villain, but I’m a troublemaker, and I like being mischievous. I enjoy stirring the pot, and I’m good at it, so it’s like, “Why not?” At this point, you just have to own it. You can’t run away from who you are. Your destiny chooses you,” he said.
With seven championships on The Challenge, will this legendary villain fulfill his destiny as America’s Ultimate Supervillain?
House of Villains premieres October 12 on E! The Challenge: USA 2 airs Thursdays at 10/9c on CBS.