15 Wildest Reality TV Moments Of 2024

It's widely known that a lot of reality shows are scripted, though there are plenty of other reality TV shows that are actually real. Either way, reality television is prone to unpredictable moments due to the personalities that make up the genre's stars. These days, there are so many reality shows on TV that it can be easy to miss some of the craziest moments from each one. That's where we come in.

Like most years of reality television, 2024 was not lacking in noteworthy examples of people stealing a scene — if not any entire series — with their actions or behavior. Some of these moments are funny, some are gross, and some are just plain bizarre. What they all have in common is that they are excellent examples of why reality TV has so many fans, and why it's a category of television that isn't going away anytime soon. 

It might sound like a parody show, but TLC's "MILF Manor" is very much a real series. Season 1 has eight sets of women and their adult sons get sent to a Mexican villa with the promise of finding love. However, when they arrive, they don't find a lineup of new people to date. The young men and the "MILFs" are there to date each other.

For Season 2, the show's producers once again deliver a slightly different premise than advertised. For the entire first episode, both the contestants and the audience think there are simply younger men and middle-aged women there to date each other, this time being two groups consisting entirely of strangers. But at the end of the season premiere, the twist is revealed — the fathers of the young men show up, and they're going to be competing with their sons for the same women.

There have long been reality shows involving celebrities, and some controversial reality TV moments even killed celebrities' careers. On "Claim to Fame," the contestants on the show are all relatives of celebrities, but they don't reveal which famous person they're related to; the other contestants need to figure it out. Contestants have included Tom Hanks' niece, Eddie Murphy's daughter, and Zendaya's cousin. 

Once someone's celebrity relative is correctly guessed, a video package is presented showing pictures of the person with that celebrity. Sometimes, the celebrity even records a video message specifically for the show as part of the reveal. In the 2nd episode of Season 3, "Two and a Half Men" star Jon Cryer took things even further by actually showing up in person to pick up niece Gracie Lou Hyland in a limo after she was eliminated from the show. 

After becoming viral sensations on social media, the group of Mormon women known collectively as MomTok were bound to get their own reality series. Hulu gave them exactly that when it launched "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" in September 2024. The show follows the women as they deal with becoming famous for the various controversies connected with their careers as social media influencers.

One of the women, Jessi Ngatikaura, is very open about her dissatisfaction with the way her private area looks, and decides to have a procedure done called a labiaplasty. Before the surgery, she hosts a vagina-themed party where her guests do paintings of what they wish theirs looked like. And that's not even the moment we're referring to. That comes after Ngatikaura has her surgery, while her friends are visiting her in the hospital. Ngatikaura lifts her gown, showing all of her friends how "it" looks after the procedure. 

Discovery's reality series "Sin City Tow" debuted in 2024 and follows the channel's trend of shows about dangerous jobs. In this case, it's people who tow vehicles in Las Vegas and are frequently confronted by the owners of said vehicles. For instance, on one episode, a man smashes the window of the tow truck and gets uncomfortably close to doing something similar to the tow driver himself. 

The 4th episode of Season 1, titled "Tricks, Treats, and Tows," features several tows related to Halloween. In one instance, the driver needs to remove a vehicle parked outside of a haunted house. The typical confrontation takes on a spooky twist when several costumed performers come out and attempt to intimidate the driver, still moving and skulking around in character and not saying a word. One is brandishing a chainsaw, while another has a costume that allows him to create sparks on the ground. It's certainly a night that that tow driver won't ever forget. 

Reality shows have long relied on getting attractive people to flirt and make out with one another. Netflix's "Too Hot to Handle" both revels in and also subverts that trope, filling the casts with hot people who prioritize hookups over relationships but defying them not to act on the attraction they feel to one another. So what does a show like that do in Season 6 to up the ante? 

"Too Hot to Handle" introduces Bad Lana, the "evil" version of A.I. bot Lana that was the de facto host for the previous seasons. On the 1st episode, Bad Lana shows up and tells the contestants that they can do whatever they want. Despite the fact that everyone should've known this was probably a trick — and that there would indeed by repercussions, despite whatever this clearly shady A.I. was promising — several contestants immediately throw caution to the wind and misbehave almost immediately after being told they could. 

Anna Delvey — aka Anna Sorokin – spent several years pretending to be a wealthy heiress in order to scam actual rich people out of their money. The Netflix miniseries "Inventing Anna" tells a fictionalized version of her story, but whatever happened to the real Anna Sorokin? Well, in 2024, she was a contestant on "Dancing with the Stars," presumably as a way to improve her public image. Delvey (her currently preferred surname) being announced for the show to begin with wasn't without its controversy since she was arguably only famous for being a convicted con artist. 

Delvey, along with actor Tori Spelling, were the first two celebrity dancers sent home on Season 33 as part of a double elimination. Naturally, Delvey was asked in her exit interview what she learned from her experience on "Dancing with the Stars," and that was her chance to prove she was trying to be a better person. Instead, she delivered the one-word response her 'round the world: "Nothing." She subsequently accused the show of exploiting her for ratings. 

A lot happened with the Bachelor franchise in 2024. January was the wedding of Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist from Season 1 of "The Golden Bachelor," though they got divorced three months later. Season 28 of the OG "The Bachelor" ran from January to March, ending with Joey Graziadei giving the final rose to Kelsey Anderson. So are Joey and Kelsey still together, or did they break up? As of now, they remain engaged. And "The Golden Bachelorette" Season 1 ended in November, seeing Joan Vassos choose Charles Chappie. 

"The Bachelorette" wrapped up Season 21 in September and featured Jenn Tran and Devin Strader proposing to one another in the finale. But in the live follow-up that aired immediately after, Tran revealed that Strader almost immediately began acting cold and distant, and shortly thereafter revealed that he had already fallen out of love with her and regretted getting engaged. Two weeks later, news broke that Strader had previously had a restraining order taken out against him by an ex-girlfriend, which he didn't disclose and which the producers' background checks failed to discover. 

Debuting in 2024, "Deal or No Deal Island" is essentially "Survivor" meets "Deal or No Deal." The contestant pool draws from past participants of both those and other reality shows, with Season 1's lineup including Robert "Boston Rob" Mariano who had previously appeared on multiple seasons of "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race." He was easily the most famous face of any of that season's contestants. 

Which makes it all the more shocking what ended up happening with Mariano on "Deal or No Deal Island." He made it all the way to the final four, favored to take the whole thing. But while the four contestants are trying to solve a puzzle in one of the final challenges, host Joe Manganiello noticed that Mariano had looked at one of the other contestant's puzzle boards in order to see the answer. Manganiello stopped the game, and a discussion was had with how to proceed. It was decided that Mariano could stay in the game, but with a very costly time penalty in the next challenge, which made it all but impossible for him to win. 

By its very title, the reality series "Big Brother" has always evoked that fear of technology being used as an intrusive and overpowering presence in our lives. The show leans into this via the "hidden" cameras placed throughout the house, plus the live feeds that have aired at various points. Season 26 of "Big Brother" took this even further by taking on artificial intelligence as its theme. 

The 1st episode of the season features an unusual wrinkle — on top of the 16 houseguests that had already been introduced, the group learns of a surprise 17th contestant named Ainsley. Ainsley introduces herself via a short video, pleading for the group to vote for her to come aboard — a vote that she ultimately loses. But when she appears again, she informs the group that she would be part of the game anyway, at which point she transforms from a human woman into a computer-generated image and reveals that "she" is actually an AI program who would be controlling the game throughout the season. The contestants were all visibly and audibly shocked, with one even heard saying, "that's creepy." 

An expected side effect to all of these competition-based reality shows is that a lot of so-called villains are born. Various series have begun leaning into that, either existing shows having seasons heavily featuring such figures or entirely new shows being built around encouraging people to be their worst selves. Peacock's "The Traitors" is an example of the latter, with contestant rosters filled out by people who made a name for themselves playing dirty in some capacity on previous reality shows.

And true to its title, the Season 2 finale of "The Traitors" sees two people live up to the titular descriptor. The final four people who are in the running to share the show's jackpot prize are Chris Tamburello ("The Real World: Paris"), Kate Chastain ("Below Deck"), Mercedes Javid ("Shahs of Sunset"), and Trishelle Cannatella ("The Real World: Las Vegas"). They all have the option to end the game there and split the prize money, or to banish someone and bring it down to three. Tamburello, Javid, and Cannatella all decide to give Chastain the axe, seemingly under the pretense that they would then split the winnings between them in the final vote. But that's not the way things went. Tamburello and Cannatella instead double cross Javid and vote her off, splitting the prize money 50/50 instead. 

There are two reasons to watch one of the Real Housewives shows. One, because they are sometimes the wives of celebrities, and that in and of itself is fun. And two, because of the fighting, not just verbal but often physical. Fights from the Real Housewives franchise are frequently memed, and talk shows have a field day showing clips of the women throwing drinks — and sometimes fists — at one another. And 2024 saw a Real Housewives fight for the ages. 

The culprit this time was "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and its very tense Season 14. How tense was it? So tense that the season didn't even have a reunion show for the first time ever, simply because the group wasn't in any position to come together and peacefully discuss the season. And nobody who saw the Season 14 finale was especially surprised by that news, given the lunchtime brawl that erupts and gets so out of hand that members of the crew have to step in — something that only happens on these shows when it is absolutely necessary, most commonly because someone is in some kind of legitimate danger. The irony of the whole thing? The original intention of that lunch was to mend fences. 

No, this isn't sitcom "The Carmichael Show," which was canceled after three seasons in 2017. This is the "Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show," which follows the real Carmichael as he goes about his day to day life. The eight episodes of Season 1 aired between March and May of 2024 and earned raved reviews, as well as winning a Gotham TV Award for breakthrough nonfiction series.

On the show's first episode, Carmichael has a tough conversation with one of his friends, rapper Tyler, the Creator. Carmichael had previously confessed romantic feelings for Tyler, and Tyler mocked him for it. Carmichael confronts him on this, and they begin to actually have a heartfelt conversation, but things soon turn awkwardly quiet — followed by room service showing up to deliver food, and the two of them eating their meals for several minutes in absolute silence. At the end, Tyler seems uninterested in returning to the previous conversation, only wanting to discuss how the good the meal was and the fact that it has made him gassy. 

Plenty of reality shows are built around seeing if people can fall in love as quickly as possible, and under less-than-ideal circumstances. Netflix's "Love is Blind" takes this to an extreme, having people try to develop a connection entirely through conversation without being face-to-face — or even see what the other person looks like — until they've already paired up and declared their love for one another.

One such budding couple was Season 7's Leo Braudy and Brittany Wisniewski, who chose one another in the pods and got engaged. But awkwardness arose when Brittany was asked on camera to state what she loved about Leo — and she essentially froze, unable to say anything about Leo at all, nice or otherwise. It seemed pretty obvious where things were headed when Leo and Brittany didn't join the rest of the couples in Mexico on the retreat where the newly-engaged couples all go to finally spend physical time together. It was revealed later that they opted to take a special trip together, presumably in an effort to connect in a more natural way rather than in front of cameras on a reality show. But they broke up a few weeks after that trip anyway. 

"90 Day Fiancé" follows internationally long-distance couples who have a month and a half together in the United States to decide whether or not to marry, in part so the non-American one can get their green card. Some couples opt not to marry, some get married and stay married, and others marry only to later divorce. As of the last public update on their relationship, Season 10's Gino and Jasmine remain married — but that's not to say there wasn't any drama. 

In fact, during the season-ending tell-all episode, Jasmine reveals that she had received a package and letter from a woman claiming that she had an affair with Gino. The package also contained what the letter claimed was the exact pair of panties Gino took off of the woman the night they were supposedly together. Gino denied it, saying it was likely from a vindictive ex, but a woman being sent another woman's panties in the mail is wild no matter who sent them.

"Love Island" is a sort of combination of competitive reality show and dating show, with the contestants secluded on an island together. Needless to say, things get a little tense when a bunch of people are stuck with each other for a long period of time, especially once relationships start and stop among them.

When Season 6 islander Robert Rausch ends up sparking a romance with two different women, things go badly, and Leah Kateb confronts him about it. Given all that happened, she is the one who has been scorned and deserves to have a meltdown. Instead, Rausch decides to have that meltdown himself. First, he falls to the ground in a melodramatic crying fit for the ages. Then, he inexplicably jumps into the pool to continue his emotional outburst, eventually spending some time sulking under a bridge. It's all a lot, to say the least.