Brendon Godin

Brendon Godin was a contestant on Season 1, Season 3- Fans vs Favorites, and Season 4- Heroes vs Villains.

Brendon began the game in Season 1 on the winning Purple tribe, but came into the merge meaning to rekindled his pre-game alliance with Ashley. He became the target at the merge and was idoled out by Anthony.

He returned as a favorite in Season 3 and immediately faced a dilemma when he had to decide between his friend Matt and his brother Cam. Reluctantly, Brendon vote out Matt and laid low for a bit and let Cam call the shots. This backfired at the merge because he didn't have the connection with the Fans, who ended up idoling him out for the second season in a row.

Brendon came back for the fourth and final season, Heroes vs Villains, as a hero because of his non-agressive approach to the game. However, much like his opponents, Brendon went all out and shed his hero persona and played behind the scenes, manipulating the multiple alliances. He found idols and played them, and won two immunities. However, his *Survivor: Dearborn* journey came to an end when he failed to make fire in the final four.

## Profile

### Season 1

**Personal Claim to Fame:**Legitimate 100% Mountain Man. No longer allowed to run for office in band. Eagle scout, Ninja Warrior, Black bet, Music Prodigy, Bible Quiz contestant

**Inspiration in Life:**Shamu

**Hobbies:**Camping, hiking, building fires, physical activities, mental activities, Surviving! ...and model plane building

**Pet Peeves:**Broken bikes, broken bones, city slicks

**3 Words to Describe You:**Unstable, murderous, stoic

**Survivor Contestant You Are Most Like:**Bear Grylls

**Why do you think you'll survive Survivor: Dearborn?:**I think my background of working on the railroad prepares me for almost any challenge!

**Why do you think you will be the Sole Survivor?:**I will attack and strip the title from anyone who wins.

### Season 3

**Name:**Brendon Godin
**Age:**19
**Hometown:**Dearborn, MI
**Previously Played on:**Season 1
**Tribe Designation:**Favorites

**How have you changed since the last time you played?:**
I changed my clothes, I changes my game, I changed my underwear

**What skills do you bring to Survivor that will make you a useful member to the group and what skills have you been learning since you last played?**
Outdoor skills: I can make fire. I can identify lots of edible plants. I have expanded my edible plant knowledge by at least 25+ plants. I can put my feet behind my head.

**What are you most proud of from the last time you played?**
Making it to the merge with no knowledge of what was going on. I am really proud of how well I would have done… if I had done better.

**What, if anything do you most regret?**
Not being there to win the food challenge. Not being there for my son’s 9th birthday. Also not playing my idols

**How will you play differently this time?**
Alliances, that’s what it’s all about and that’s what I’m all about.
No longer will my ear be to the ground to sense the buffalo but how to sense those snakes

### Season 4

**Name:**Brendon “Big Mo” Godin
**Age:**20
**Hometown:**Dearborn, MI
**Current Residence:**Dearborn, MI
**Occupation:**Hotel Bellman
**Previously Played on:**Season 1 and Season 3- Fans vs Favorites
**Previously Placed:**11/18, 9/20

**How have you changed since the last time you played?:**
I’ve turned my life around. I drink more water. Drugs are not a problem for me.

**Favorite Past Moment:**
Squeezing between Cam and Mikey for warmth in the middle of the night in Season 3.
Finding an idol and being too excited to open it in Season 1.
Thinking I found an idol but finding out it was not an idol in Season 1.

**What are you most proud of from the last time you played?**
Beating Nichole in a spinach eating competition.
Staying in as long as I did after most my allies got voted out.

**What, if anything do you most regret?**
Losing to Carly in a sardine eating competition. I am better than that.
Losing most of my allies.

**How will you play differently this time?**
I’m going to make more of a presence, not as behind the scenes as I’ve been before. I will dominate the game like I used to dominate youth soccer.

**Previous Survivor you Respect the Most:**Delano

**Previous Survivor you Respect the least:**Matt McNeff

## Survivor

### Season 1

Brendon was the 17th person casted on the first season of *Survivor: Dearborn.* He went into the game not knowing much about how to play and only knew of the survival aspect of it. As an eagle scout, he had experience making fires and was excited to show this off. After being placed on the Purple tribe, he helped build the shelter, which consisted of a tarp and some cinder blocks. The host, Dom, had told them to they had to take it down because that was where the voting booth was going to be. Brendon began making an alliance with Jen, who was separated from her pregame alliance with Ashley.

In the first challenge, Brendon ran against Peyton Schock and beat him to the bean bag, but ultimately the throwers were the ones that won the challenge. Brendon then focused on designing his tiki with a knife he brought. He was carving a design into it so that he knew it was his. He sat with his tribe and led some sing-a-alongs to Disney songs.

In the second challenge, the volleyball challenge, Brendon performed decently and won his match, which ultimately helped win the challenge. Again the Purple tribe sat and relaxed while the Green tribe proceeded to vote out Evan Waszkiewicz. Soon after, the third challenge, lightning, was played. Brendon did somewhat poorly in this challenge, but the Purple tribe still won and Logan Korte was sent home. This process continued when the purple tribe won the sponge challenge and Green tribe sent Ben Brotherton home. It was sometime after this that Brendon found an idol. Because of his lack of knowledge of the show, all he knew about idols was you shouldn't tell anyone about it. So, he didn't get it on camera or say it in any confessionals because of the fear that they would tell other people.

After the Purple tribe lost their first challenge, Brendon was talking with Matt about who to vote out. There were three plans in the making: John- led by Matt McNeff, McNeff- led by Matt Orischak, and Jen Lessnau- led by Alyssa Witzleben, Anthony Raona, and John Urbanick. Brendon knew about the Jen plan, but thought there were more votes on McNeff. He was the first to vote and while voting, he drew a dinosaur on his vote. Again, because of his lack of knowledge with the show, he didn't know that the votes would be read. Due to the length that he was gone, it was evident to everyone, including McNeff, that he voted for McNeff. But he was blindsided when Jen was sent home.

After tribal, the Purple tribe was standing by the tiki station while McNeff was sleeping and were talking about the last tribal council. When Anthony had brought up McNeff's pressure he was applying, Brendon lead with the suggestion to vote him out and everyone followed suite. After losing the next challenge, McNeff was eliminated in an unanimous vote.

After winning the last challenge of day 1, the Purple tribe waited for the Green tribe to vote Andy Kohn and when it was done, the tribes merged. Brendon spent to night reconvening with his pre-game alliance Ashley which his former Purple tribe noticed. After a night outside and an individual immunity challenge, the Purple tribe bonded and vowed to target the Green tribe. However, Brendon was very obviously trying to play both sides, and was in on a plan to blindside Anthony that was concocted by the Green tribe. Matt was also in on this plan, but was also in an alliance with Anthony and he told Anthony to play his idol, and he did. All of Anthony's votes were nullified and Brendon was sent home with three votes and became the first ever jury member.

In the final tribal, Brendon voted for Martin, who was his former alliance member.

### Season 3- Fans vs Favorites

Brendon returned as a Favorite for Survivor: Dearborn's third season. He was a fairly early addition to the cast and had opportunities to make pre-game alliances. He spent the whole summer working with Matt Orischak as a hotel bellman. When his brother Cam Godin was cast, things became divided which was evident in the game.

At the beginning, Brendon was immediately confronted with two alliances- Matt, Alyssa, Peyton, and Jacob and Cam and his alliance of Anthony, Andre, and McNeff. Meanwhile, he had connections with Santana Davis who he was friends with outside the game. In a typical *Survivor* game, having the most connections is ideal, but in this case, Matt was out for Cam, who he believed was stirring up drama. However, Cam was Brendon's brother. Despite Brendon's constant claims of being open to voting his brother out, he was still hesitant to the idea.

Challenge wise, the Favorites were dominating and won the first three challenges. But when they lost the fourth one, Brendon was forced to choose sides. There was one factor that Matt had not thought about: that Anthony had an idol. Because McNeff was playing double agent, Cam was informed of the plan to split the vote between himself and Andre. They had planned to vote Matt out using Anthony's idol, and when Brendon told Cam he was a target, Cam simply said "Good", and Brendon knew Cam was safe. Not wanting to interfere with his brother's plan, he switched his vote from Andre to Cam, which was nullified on the idol play and his former ally and co-worker Matt was sent home.

The next round merged Fans and Favorites and the Fans had heard about the attempt to vote Cam out. Thinking that Brendon wouldn't go against his brother, they assumed that the two Godins were on the outs, when in reality, it was Jacob and Peyton. Mikey Divis led his Fans alliance to allow the Godins into their plans, which was to target Peyton. Meanwhile, Cam and Brendon both got paired together in the double immunity and won. While Cam was busy playing both sides, Brendon wanted to get rid of some of the Favorites that were standing in the way. However, Delano Dalfonsi flipped and Mikey was sent home.

From this point, Brendon allowed Cam to make the moves necessary. He voted out Cam's number one adversary, Jacob Brenner, and when tribes were reswapped, he was put on the Orange tribe with Cam again. And yet again, he followed Cam's lead and voted out Peyton and Alex Petlichkoff. When the tribes merged again, he voted out Marc Bergeron and continued the Fans disassembly. That night, Brendon started making connections with Delano, who was a former Favorite, but was voted onto the Fans tribe. He knew Cam had his tight four and wanted to cut them off, specifically Anthony. When he brought this up to Cam, he was rejected and reluctantly voted for Carly.

The next round Brendon wanted to make his move on Anthony, but Cam wanted to split the votes while they could, not knowing that both Delano and Nichole Gersten had an idol. When they played their idols, they also had split the minority between McNeff and Brendon. However, Cam had played an idol on McNeff which ultimately sent his own brother home and became the fourth member of the jury.

In the final tribal, Brendon voted for his brother, Cam.

### Season 4- Heroes vs Villains

Brendon returned for the fourth and final season as a Hero. Entering the game, there was a big age divide between the "College Juniors" with five, and the "High School Graduates" with six, and Anthony Hancock in the middle. Brendon immediately rekindled the connection with Ashley from Season 1. However, Noah was planning on targeting Brendon as an offer to the High School Graduates for his potential alliance with Cam on the Villains tribe. When the Heroes lost the first challenge, they were sent immediately to tribal and Brendon sensed his name was on the chopping block. So when Marc said he wanted Ryan out, he jumped on that name and spread it around to save himself, resulting in Ryan's unanimous elimination. During the voting, he received an idol from his brother Cam that he found at the challenge. The idol was only good at the first tribal, and Brendon didn't use it and he kept it in his back pocket.

Immediately after this, Brendon making connections with the younger players, specifically Stephanie Polakowski and Nichole Gersten. He continued his alliance with Ashley as well. Despite winning his round against Michael Hancock, the Heroes still lost the sumo challenge and were forced to send another player home. It was between Anthony Hancock or Stephanie and because of his connection with Stephanie, Brendon convinced his alliance to vote for Anthony.

From this point forward the Heroes won a string of immunity challenges. In these challenges, Brendon performed decently. Some highlights include hugging Jen and Alex Petlichkoff in the rugby challenge and forgetting to give Nichole the golf balls in the sled challenge, resulting in the Heroes taking a penalty. Despite this, the Heroes still won.

On Day 2, there was a swap and Brendon found himself on the New Villains with former Heroes Anthony, Delano, Andre, Marc, and Nichole and former Season 1 and 3 alliances Matt and Alyssa who were old Villains. After the New Villains lost the challenge, Anthony wanted to work together with the old Villains to target Brendon. He pulled Matt and told him the plan and then told his alliance what the move was. However, Matt thought Anthony was lying to him and told Brendon the plan to blindside him. Brendon sensed this, and had a rough draft of a plan to avoid this fate. He played on Matt's paranoia and told him he had an idol and to vote for Marc. Matt then forced Jacob and Alyssa, who were set to vote Brendon, to vote Marc. Brendon knew he didn't have numbers, so he confronted his old alliance member Nichole and told her he also had an idol. Nichole believed him, so she told Anthony that Brendon had an idol and they switched the plan at the last minute to vote Jacob. Brendon didn't play his fake idol, but still voted for Marc, but Nichole stuck with the Anthony and the alliance and Jacob was sent home.

After this, Brendon had to do damage control and told Anthony and their alliance that his idol was fake and continued telling Matt and Alyssa it was real. He lied about voting for Marc, which both Anthony and Marc saw through and targeted him for the next tribal council they attend. However, the next tribal was different because both tribes would be going. the winner of the challenge would go first and watch the losing tribe's tribal. When the New Villains lost the challenge, Anthony and Marc made a plan: if Cam was voted out on the New Heroes, they would target Alyssa. If Cam was still in the game, they would vote out Brendon. To Brendon's luck, Cam was eliminated and was spared. Before the tribal, Matt begged Brendon to give him the idol because he had found one already and they would be saved. Brendon refused and Matt knew that he was being played. So Matt played the idol and Alyssa was sent home.

Brendon knew he was the split vote if they attend tribal again, and when they lost the challenge, he was subtly desperately looking for a real idol. When he found it, he kept it to himself and voted out his old friend Matt. He did receive split votes like he thought he would, which gave him a drive to win the next challenge. This is exactly what happened and Brendon found himself in merge for the third time.

The New Heroes went in with a plan to blindside Anthony and his alliance and brought in Brendon and Nichole. When Brendon won his first individual immunity, the target was placed on Marc, and everyone but Anthony, Marc, Delano, and Andre were on the outs. That night, Anthony and Brendon reconciled and talked about their future plans. Brendon wanted to work both angles of the New Heroes and the New Villains to take control of the game. He then found a clue to the merge idol in the pretzel bowl, which brought his idol count up to two.

The next challenge saw the merged tribe divide into two teams and the winning one would be immune at the next tribal. Brendon's team won, which had a majority of the New Heroes on it. They wanted to split the vote between Andre and Delano, who were on the losing team, but Brendon didn't want to lose their numbers just yet. He secretly gave Anthony one of his idols and because Anthony already had one, both were played to keep Delano and Andre in, sending Alex home.

The next round Brendon let John make the move on Martin. But after Martin was sent home, he targeted John to break up the tight two of John and Ashley and force Ashley to vote with him. He utilized Delano and Andre, who were on the bottom, and Nichole, who had control of Stephanie's vote. When John was sent home, Brendon found himself in somewhat of a power position. He then targeted Noah with Ashley and the younger group and Noah was sent home.

After working with the girls, Brendon realized that the girls alliance was tight and wanted to unite the boys to combat them. The boys agreed to vote Ashley, who Delano viewed as the number one threat due to her control on the game. Both Andre and Charlie joined in on the plan and were ready to execute. However, Brendon wanted to switch the vote last minute to target Nichole. It came down to a rock paper scissors match between Delano and Brendon, which Brendon ultimately won. With the plan switched, Andre didn't want to send Nichole home and decided to vote with the girls, sending Charlie home.

After this, Brendon got upset with Andre for not sticking to his plan and wanted to target him. With the idol in his back pocket, he was determined to eliminate his former ally. At this point, Ashley was the only person that was voting with him, and after losing immunity, he knew he had to play his idol. At tribal, he gave a speech about Delano and Andre voting against him, despite Brendon saving them for the merge. He played his idol and nullified the four votes against him and sent Andre home.

The next round, he played up the victim card which flipped Stephanie to his side who had felt guilty for voting for Brendon. Brendon told Ashley and Stephanie that Nichole and Delano were next on the chopping block, and when Delano won immunity, it was Nichole. During the challenge, Brendon found the immunity idol and used it at tribal, nullifying the two votes against him and sending Nichole home.

The final round found Brendon's final three of Ashley and Stephanie against Delano. The final immunity challenge was an endurance challenge that Delano was built for. Brendon fell second, leaving Ashley to fight it out against Delano, which Delano ultimately won. Delano knew Brendon was his biggest threat in the final tribal and planned on voting for him. Stephanie knew that she was the target between Brendon and Ashley and voted for Brendon as well, leaving it a two-two tie between Brendon and Stephanie, leading to Survivor: Dearborn's first and last fire making challenge.

Brendon began the challenge by making a base, while Stephanie placed a piece of wood on the fire and watched it burn. Brendon was frantically adding wood and blowing to make the flame rise. But it was too late, and the single piece of wood that Stephanie placed on the the fire broke the string and placed Stephanie in the final three and Brendon as the final member of the jury.

In the final tribal, Brendon voted for his alliance member Ashley, giving her one of the two votes.

## Post-Survivor

Brendon attended University of Michigan- Dearborn

## Trivia

Brendon was the oldest contestant in Season 1 and Season 4.

Brendon was both the first ever juror and the last ever juror.

Brendon is one of three people that has played three seasons and has made jury three times.

Brendon has never been voted out by a majority vote.

Brendon was the last player to find an idol and the last to play one.

Brendon has played a total of 129 hours and 8 minutes of Survivor: Dearborn, ranking him the fourth most out of all players.

Brendon has the most idol finds in a season, with 3, and the second most career wise with 4- One in Season 1 and three in Season 4.

Brendon was the first to go home with an idol in his pocket.