Fear Factor is a game show that first aired on NBC in 2001. Unlike other shows, it’s more of a dare game show where contestants compete against each other in three different challenges to win $50,000 and the challenges are always something that’s scary or dangerous. A lot of them involve what the contestants are afraid of like bugs or heights. The episodes with bugs are hard to watch, especially when they’re crawling all over the contestants. It leaves you feeling like there’s bugs crawling all over you too.
The show was canceled in 2006, but it was revived in 2011 for a year and then in 2017 again for another year. Some of the episodes had celebrity contestants to get more people’s attention and make things even more interesting. Here are 10 celebrities that competed on Fear Factor.
10 Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi
Snooki and her fellow Jersey Shore star, Deena Cortese, appeared on Fear Factor years after their Jersey Shore days. They called themselves Team Meatballs during the game show to represent their short and curvy appearances. According to Grunge, “During one challenge, the Meatballs played a spin the bottle game involving creepy crawlers and landed on a crab, a millipede, a hornworm, and a scorpion. They were tasked with moving the creatures with just their mouths and succeeded in moving three of them. Unfortunately, after the scorpion bit Polizzi's lip, she gave up.”
9 Donny Osmond
Donny is Marie Osmond’s famous brother who is a singer and dancer like his sister. Out of all of the competitors, you wouldn’t think he would be the one to do scary things, but he actually turned out to be kind of a daredevil on the show. According to Grunge, “In 2001, he squared off against rapper Coolio, Baywatch stars, David Hasselhoff and Brooke Burns, WWE star Joanie Laurer, and actress Kelly Preston on Fear Factor… Osmond tackled every challenge with excitement, including one in which he had to put his head in a box filled with centipedes, millipedes, worms, and scorpions.”
8 Alison Sweeney
Alison is known for playing Sami on the soap opera, Days of Our Lives. She handled most of the challenges pretty well, but one of them made her completely freak out on camera. According to Grunge, “Days of Our Lives star, Alison Sweeney, went on the show in 2002 with the aim of proving that soap stars were tough and not divas. But there was one challenge that scared the heck out of her. She was tasked with moving white snakes from her torso into a bucket while worms squirmed all over her legs, and cockroaches covered her face.” Despite her freaking out over that challenge, the rest of her time on the show showed people she’s not a stereotypical soap opera actress.
7 David Hasselhoff
David Hasselhoff has been a famous celebrity for decades and is one of the most recognizable people on TV. “In 2001, he appeared on Fear Factor, and one challenge involved collecting as many flags as possible on top of a moving bus. Before entering the competition, he told the audience in the video you can see on YouTube, ‘I'm going to win because if I don't win my kids will think I'm the biggest wimp in the world,’” according to Grunge. The famous celeb spoke too soon and only got four flags out of the thirteen he needed for the next round. His daughter, Taylor, competed on the show sixteen years later though to try to redeem the family name.
6 Lil Yachty
Lil Yachty just started gaining fame a few years ago, but he became even more popular after he appeared on Fear Factor. “In 2018, rapper/singer Lil Yachty's challenge involved corralling some turkeys. All he had to do was wrangle some of the Thanksgiving dinner favorites and move them from one cage to another. It doesn't sound too challenging, but for Lil Yachty, it was quite difficult. At one point he was able to get one into the required cage but only after making some suggestive hip thrusts in the animal's direction,” according to Grunge. That’s definitely an interesting way to get a turkey into its cage.
5 Stephen Baldwin
Stephen is less famous than his brother and even his daughter, but fans loved seeing him on Fear Factor in 2001. They got to see a side to him they never did before. According to Grunge, “After he was covered with thousands of night crawlers, snakes, and Madagascar hissing cockroaches, he joked that his manicure had gotten ruined but was calm and cool and didn't miss a beat. In his final challenge, Baldwin had to use one of several keys to escape from a shark cage and successfully swim to the surface of a giant swimming pool. He did so in a whopping 24 seconds.”
4 Kevin Richardson
You might not know his name, but you may recognize him from the iconic boy band, The Backstreet Boys. On top of performing with the band, he starred on the show and beat some of the other celebrities. According to Grunge, “Richardson compared his feelings about the challenge to butterflies before going on stage for a concert. He wasn't afraid of heights but felt a lot of pressure to win… Thicke commented that it was a ‘Boy Band Record’ for the number of flags on a skyscraper. Richardson got four flags, more than Baldwin who stopped at two and more than Hasselhoff, who fell during the task.”
3 Pauly D
Pauly worked with his fellow Jersey Shore alum, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, who is also claustrophobic like him. That fear didn’t stop them from beating their other Jersey Shore co-stars and the other contestants though. According to Grunge, “The duo competed alongside fellow Jersey Shore alumni, Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi and Deena Cortese, as well as four stars from the show Floribama. On the last challenge, the guys had to descend from a helicopter and rescue a dummy by attaching it to the helicopter hook. The Jersey Shore pair rocked the task.”
2 Ali Landry
Although Ali was Miss USA in 1996, she proved that pageant girls can be fearless. “She had no problem scaling the 36-story building in the 2002 episode. And while she found bugs crawling all over body ‘freaky,’ she didn't break down like fellow contestant Alison Sweeney did. Landry was fairly calm throughout the challenge, commenting afterwards that the worst part was the sound of the hissing cockroaches,” according to Grunge. She got far into the competition until she lost to Stephen Baldwin during the final shark cage challenge.
1 Ludacris
Ludacris didn’t participate in any of the challenges, but he started hosting the show a few years ago and helped shape it into what it is now. “When MTV revived the series in 2017, the network replaced Joe Rogan with rapper/actor Ludacris, who also executive produced the program. The show changed its focus slightly, avoiding challenges such as eating disgusting insects to more ‘playful’ tasks that resonated better with Generation Z viewers, like coping with a waterlogged smartphone,” according to Grunge. The famous rapper says he also likes hosting the show because he’s an adrenaline junkie and gets the opportunity to help people overcome their fears.