Total Drama: Revenge of the Island

The contestant pool consists of 13 new characters, while several characters from the first three seasons make cameo appearances throughout the season.

There are two teams again in this season, which are the Toxic Rats and the Mutant Maggots. Here are the original members for each team as of Episode 1:

• Toxic Rats: B (Full name "Beverly"), Dakota, Dawn, Lightning, Sam, Scott, and Staci.
• Mutant Maggots: Anne Maria, Brick, Cameron, Jo, Mike, and Zoey.

Note that at the start of the season, Brick was on the Mutant Maggots but then switched to the Toxic Rats in Episode 4, while in Episode 6 Jo and Scott volunteered to swap teams with one another, and in Episode 7 Dakota was brought back to replace Anne Maria (who quit) and placed on the Maggots.

The original concept designs of the twelve characters' lineup in the early production stages.

In the early production stages, the character lineup had twelve contestants, and most of them had body shapes, colors, clothing, heights, hair styles and faces that were completely different from the final designs. The thirteenth character who was added later was B. His design was similar to that of the character used in the Total Drama Island special as the man in the car when Courtney "discovered" civilization. That character also happened to be DJ's prototype from the original Camp T.V. promos.[13] Jo was later renamed to B (which stands for Beverly) while also getting his final design. The only other characters to have their name changed was Mary; she ended up using the name 'Jo'. Despite the rename, this character underwent the least amount of change in design. The other contestant who got renamed was Molly, being renamed to 'Zoey', while also carrying over her label. Anne Maria, Brick, Lightning and Scott had minor modifications made to their outfits. Sam and Scott had different facial hair. The characters who had the most changes made to their designs were Dakota, Staci, and Zoey. Zoey's final design actually used the clothing and body shape from the original design for Dakota. Mike and Cameron had their ethnicities changed. Dawn, who was not in the original lineup, replaced an unused character named Zoey. Cameron's initial design would be reused for Jay and Mickey on Total Drama Presents: The Ridonculous Race.[3]

Although the original contestants did not compete again in this season (according to Chris, they had outlived their usefulness), nine of them still had cameo appearances throughout the season:[14] Bridgette, DJ, Duncan, Ezekiel, Gwen, Heather, Izzy, Lindsay, and Owen. However, at the beginning of the season, all of the original contestants (except for Blaineley) were seen together on a yacht, revealing their status after Total Drama World Tour. They were all last seen (except for the nine who cameo) leaving on the yacht right before the new contestants were first introduced.

A list of all the cameos in Total Drama: Revenge of the Island and their roles during their cameos are shown below:

The fifteen original contestants who no longer appeared after the first episode of the fourth season were Alejandro, Beth, Cody, Courtney, Eva, Geoff, Harold, Justin, Katie, Leshawna, Noah, Sadie, Sierra, Trent, and Tyler. Harold was thought to have a cameo as soon as Brian Froud was confirmed to be part of the cast, but it turned out that Brian voices Sam instead. Out of all the cameos, Ezekiel is the only original contestant who made cameos in more than one episode in the season (he appeared in three episodes), while DJ is the only cameoing character who has the same voice actor as a main character (Chef) already with a major role.

As revealed by Christian Potenza on the Total Drama: Live Action Panel at Canada's 2011 Fan Expo, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island was originally scheduled to air in July 2011 in the United States and in September 2011 in Canada, but due to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear accident which caused many Japanese citizens to receive radiation poisoning, many staff members found some of the season's scenes of radioactive material and creatures to be considered insensitive to victims of the disaster. This initiated the producers decision to modify the storyline of the season in order to remove some of the radioactive references, leading to many scenes being edited out.

This process of re-editing the entire season required more production time, causing the U.S. air date to be delayed until September 2011 (the time when Canada was originally supposed to air the season), but failure to complete the full season by then (with many scenes that still had to be changed) now caused more delay for both the U.S. and Canada, until the season was fully finished by late 2011 for an early French airing. Now, Total Drama: Revenge of the Island aired three months later on Canada than originally expected on January 5, 2012,[2][17] while the new rescheduled air date for the U.S. was not until June 5, 2012[7][18] (eleven months later than the original air date of July 2011). However, France has aired the entire season in just 8 days from December 21, 2011 to December 29, 2011, becoming the only country in the world to air the season still in 2011. Although, they only aired the French spoken version of the season that did not include the voices from the original voice actors (except Chris and Chef).

On May 28, 2012, Australia also began to air the season almost as fast as France did (one episode per weekday), but this time in English.[9] Italy started to air the season on January 9, 2012, while Cartoon Network also aired the season in the Netherlands, Romania, Scandinavia and Hungary starting on March 5, 2012, Russia and Bulgaria on March 6, 2012, Poland and Africa on March 8, 2012[19] and Latin America on April 2, 2012. Originally, the season finale was set to air in the U.S. on September 11, 2012, but was instead pulled up to August 28 (two weeks from original date) due to that date being a national memorial holiday. The final two episodes were then combined into a one-hour full-length season finale.

On March 25, 2011, all the shapes of all the 13 contestants were revealed in this video. On March 27, 2011, all the names and personalities of the contestants were revealed in a press release.[4] On April 5, 2011, Christian Potenza posted a YouTube video of him recording the first line of Total Drama: Revenge of the Island. The quote was:

Camp Wawanakwa! Once a paradise on earth, now a radioactive [biohazardous] dump! The perfect setting to drop a gang of teen-freaks and let 'em run wild! We're going back to the island, baby! A whole new set of campers. Each one more abnormal than the next [last]. A whole new set of radioactive [dangerous] challenges! Insane, deranged, disgusting! These are just a few words that describe this season's high level of drama and another million dollar prize! Stay tuned for a brand new vengeful season of Total! Drama! Revenge of the Island![20]

This line is used for the promotional trailer that Teletoon showed at the end of the Total Drama World Tour finale, which was first released on April 24, 2011 (Easter Sunday). On June 1, 2011 Christian Potenza released on his Facebook the new season logo along with more final designs of the characters. On June 3, 2011 there were snapshots of radioactive Camp Wawanakwa. On August 25, 2011 the new Total Drama: Revenge of the Island flipbook was released. On August 28, 2011, the first official cast image was released to the public via Facebook. On September 24, 2011, the third official trailer was released which contained new scenes and confirmed the team assignments.[21] On September 27, 2011, at the Total Drama: Live Action Panel at Canada's 2011 Fan Expo, Cory Doran confirmed all of Mike's personalities, and Christian Potenza said that the team name for the Radioactive Rats was scrapped. On October 13, 2011, Christian Potenza revealed some stuff about the intro of the season and said that promos will be out soon.[22] On November 28, 2011 the official Canadian air date for the season was announced for January 5, 2012.[2] On December 14, 2011 an animated interview with Chris McLean and a fan was released and revealed that the new team name is now "Toxic Rats".[23] On December 18, 2011, the official Canadian TDRI website was launched that includes interactive menus and biographies of all the new contestants, as well as videos and season descriptions. On December 21, 2011, France began to air the season's episodes, two weeks before Canada.[24] On Christmas 2011, all of the auditions of the 13 new characters were released on Teletoon's official Total Drama site.[25] Cartoon Network viewers were able to vote for Zoey before the finale due to them airing Episode 12 and 13 in the same day.