Pinoy Big Brother: Unlimited

House theme

For the season, the exterior of the House was slightly tweaked to have slotted walls and minor modifications, but still keeping the yellow and blue color scheme. There are five areas for this season: four Houses and a special area. Two of the houses, the Industrial and Luxury Houses, are connected via a secret hallway first revealed on Day 22 and fully opened on Day 65.

Slums: First occupied on opening night, the Slums was made to look like a typical squatters' area in many urban areas in the Philippines. This was done to let the housemates experience the same living conditions as 15 million Filipinos who live in such areas, based from a typical answer during auditions of experiencing typical Filipino life. This House was demolished on Day 22.

Industrial House: The interior of the second House follows the regular House layout and its accompanying amenities. It is further given an "industrial" feel with steel, wooden, and brick walls. Unlike previous seasons, however, this House has no yard area. The house was opened on Day 8 and was closed down on Day 77.

Luxury House: Also called the Mansion, the third House is exquisitely furnished and brightly lit. Like the Industrial House, this House also has no yard area, although sunlight somehow passes through a curtain. This house was opened on Day 22.

Resort: Located adjacent to the Luxury House, this area is sophisticated with the inclusion of the pool and a jacuzzi in the beach-themed Garden area. It is used as a venue for special occasions and tasks. This area was opened on Day 15 and the door to the resort (hidden under a curtain in the Luxury House) was opened on Day 65.

Hacienda: Located at the activity area, the Hacienda is modelled after a typical plantation in the Philippines by featuring several plants. It contains a large hut where the housemates would live in. This House was opened on Day 128.

Unlimited twists

Reserved housemates — short-listed auditionees are given another chance to become official housemates.

Unli-Day/Unli-Night —The show features two houses, each containing a different set of housemates. To accommodate both, a second main program, Unli-Day, was aired in the afternoons to focus on the events in the Industrial House. The setup only applies to weekdays; on weekends, nomination and eviction nights, and special shows, the primetime program would cover both Houses. With the closure of the Industrial House on Week 11, Unli-Day was directed towards covering events in the active House(s) while the host has an interview session with former housemates.

House Swaps — Housemates will be made to swap houses and group members as instructed by Big Brother.

SE Voting System — The public votes to save or evict a housemate. The housemate with the lowest net votes, Save and Evict votes combined, is evicted. This voting system was stopped after the fourth eviction round.

Head of Household — Housemates compete against each other to be granted immunity in the coming nomination.

House Competitions — For ten weeks, the two Houses compete in weekly major competitions with PHP150,000 at stake in each. At the end of those ten weeks, the cash accumulated by each team would be shared among the final five housemates in each House. The teams would also compete in "mini-battles" wherein the winning team would be given minor rewards.

Intensity 7 — On Day 71, the remaining 20 housemates, 11 from Team High-Voltage and nine from Team Wayuk, were put-up for 24-hour public voting. The top five housemates from each team will be safe from elimination on Day 78, where six housemates will be evicted from the house. A sequel twist, called the Aftershock, would test the remaining housemates further.

Various Nominations – Various nomination processes were implemented as per Big Brother. See Nomination history for details.

Overnight Voting - In some eviction nights, people will only be given 24 hours to vote for their favorite housemate.

House Players - An evicted housemate will remain in the house to test the remaining official housemates through tasks set by Big Brother and the audience.

Wildcard Housemate - An evicted housemate will have a chance to come back on the roster of housemates.

Power of One - Starting the 13th eviction, the public may only vote once per day per mobile phone number.

Big Shot for the Big Slot - The final five housemates are given the chance to have a fifth slot in the finale by completing a shooting task.

Housemates

A total of fourteen housemates entered the House on Day 1, thirteen official housemates plus a sub-official housemate acting as a "mole" in a task to become the fourteenth official housemate. That sub-official housemate was chosen by lottery from a pool of 30 reserved housemates. These are the auditionees who were shortlisted for the show, but did not make the official cut.

All thirteen official housemates plus the sub-official "mole" housemate, chosen via random sampling, entered the House on Day 1 (October 29, 2011). A second batch of housemates entered the House on Day 8, although those assigned to the Industrial House were not physically inside until the next day. Eight reserved housemates entered on Days 15, 23 and 25. The ages indicated were the housemates' ages upon their entrance to the House.

Origin indicates where the housemates were born or based before joining the program.

Houseguests

Similar to the franchise's previous seasons, Big Brother invited guests to his house for special purposes.

Notable houseguests for this season were ex-housemates from previous seasons such as Melisa Cantiveros, Jason Francisco, Anthony Semerad and David Semerad. Franzen Fajardo, Baron Geisler, Beauty Gonzalez, Rica Paras returned as house players. Previous winners, Nene Tamayo, Beatriz Saw, and Keanna Reeves, who became Fairy Godmothers.

House Competitions (Kontra Battles)

On Day 30, Big Brother announced the start of House Competitions, where the two Houses will compete for ten weeks for P150,000 at stake every week. The accumulated pot money for each House will be divided among the remaining housemates of each House after ten weeks. Group immunity from nomination was also put at stake with the seventh and eighth challenges.

The Luxury House residents are known as Team High Voltage and the Industrial House denizens are codenamed Team Wayuk.

Weekly tasks

Below is the list of weekly tasks performed by the housemates. Each of the tasks below are "all-or-nothing" tasks; failure would mean no budget for the next week. There are separate weekly tasks for each House.

The first weekly task was done by the first batch of housemates in the Slums.

Teams High Voltage and Team Wayuk were formed on Day 30. Weekly tasks prior to Day 30 were done by the same sets of housemates, with the exception of the very first weekly task. On Day 22, Jaz and Seichang transferred to the Luxury House and joined in doing Team High Voltage's extended 3rd weekly task. On Day 31, Luz and Seichang transferred to the Industrial House and became part of Team Wayuk.

Starting Day 71, the members of Teams High-Voltage and Wayuk who were drafted into the top 14 were made to do their weekly task as one group.

Joint Team (Wayuk & High Voltage)

Legend:

     Weekly task was performed in the slums      Weekly task was performed in the industrial house      Weekly task was performed in the luxury house      Weekly task was performed in the outside world      Weekly task was performed in the hacienda

Notes:

^T1 : Reserve housemate Carlo lost the 4th task on purpose as part of his secret task as a mole.

^T2 : This task was extended to the Luxury House after the fish flew away from the Slums during its first hour, hence, becoming the team's weekly task for two weeks. Big Brother declared the task a failure because Fifi's tailfin touched the floor frequently.

^T3 : Big Brother declared the task a success because the Luxury housemates ignored nine of 14 distractions.

^T4 : The Luxury and Industrial housemates earned PHP71,500 and PHP48,600, respectively, for charity which resulted a success for both their weekly tasks.

^T5 : By the time accumulation was halted at around 9:30 PM on Day 30, 20,959 "Likes" were posted. The target of 14,000 "Likes" was already reached at around the afternoon of Day 29.

^T6 : Five of the six contraptions were successful - two from Team High Voltage and three from Team Wayuk.

^T7 : The success was assured after the nominees of the week got 20 out of 20 answers correct in a challenge to match each housemate's picture with the proper Chinese characters in the right sequence.

^T8 : The task was declared a partial success because the housemates were recognized during the trip at some point.

^T9 : The task was declared a failure because only one housemate (Paco) sat on the throne.

Head of Household Competitions

Housemates from each houses will compete against each other, and the winner/s of the competition will be each house's HOH for week. The HOH will be granted immunity in the coming nomination.

Notes:

^N1 : Paco did not participate in the challenge, but was declared as HoH to protect his status as house player.

^N2 : Since Paco was the only one to sit on a special throne reserved for the Big Winner, he was declared the HoH.

^N3 : The M5 House Players were explicitly told by Big Brother to pick Paco as HoH to protect his status as house player.

Big Night at the Grandstand

On March 31, 2012, 154 days after the season started, at the Quirino Grandstand, Slater Young was declared the Big Winner after amassing 40.02% of the votes. Leaving before him were Second Big Placer Pamu with 21.49% of the votes, Third Big Placer Biggel with 21.39% of the votes and Fourth Big Placer Paco with 17.10% of the votes. Slater thus earned the distinction of being the first male winner of a regular season four years after Ruben Gonzaga was declared as the first male winner of the entire franchise. The Big Night voting was only done overnight, with the Power of One rule in effect. This is also the first and only season wherein only vote percentages are shown and not the actual number of votes. The theme of the Big Night is Filipino style.

This table shows the summary of votes as obtained by each of the Big 4 in the Big Night.