Recap / Battle For Dream Island S 2 E 11 Lots Of Mud

Beauty is the true key.

The eleventh episode of Battle for Dream Island Again and the 77th episode of the overall series. Spongy is eliminated, the teams are restored to how they were in BFDIA 9 (with FreeSmart now being called Less-Restricted Less-Dumb, or LRLD), Puffball Speaker Box is put out of commission and has her spot as host taken by Flower, and the featured challenge is to pluck Flower's petals, which are held together by four tungsten locks.

---

"Lots of Mud" contains examples of:

• Actor Allusion: A few regarding Black & White Cookie and Vegemite:
  • Black & White Cookie saying, "Getting lucky is not a crime," is a reference to a phrase said by speedcubers when their detractors accuse them of getting lucky, as his actor, Max Park, is a world champion speedcuber.
  • Black & White Cookie saying they'll get 3.13 years of good luck is a reference to Max Park's speedcubing record of 3.13 seconds, while Vegemite saying they'll get 4.73 years of good luck is a reference to the speedcubing record his actor, Feliks Zemdegs, held in 2016 of 4.73 seconds.
• April Fools' Day: The episode starts with a special appearance by Jack (from Michael Huang's very first animation, "I Can Make a Difference!") as an April Fools' joke.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The three doors in Flower's punishment room. Door number one causes you to get crushed by a wall of spikes, door number two causes you to get burned alive by a blast of fire, and door number three holds Flower's greatest fear... a single bug. The bugs do rapidly multiply by the end of the episode, but this only proves to be a problem for Flower herself.
• Bait-and-Switch: The episode leads you to believe that Ice Cube is going to be eliminated, with Pin giving her the same "everyone loves you" speech that she gave to Teardrop before her elimination in "Zeeky Boogy Doog", but it's Spongy who ends up getting eliminated.
• Blessed with Suck: The single benefit to Pin's faceless situation is that she no longer needs to breathe and therefore can't drown.
• Boomerang Bigot: After Tennis Ball questions if the now-featureless Pin heard his team's plan, Fries, himself an Animate Inanimate Object, dismisses her as being "just an object". He gets crushed by a wall of spikes for this remark.
• The Bus Came Back: Flower returns to host the show in place of Puffball Speaker Box. It's also worth noting to be Flower's first time playing a major role after being reduced to cameos after BFB's conclusion.
• Call-Back: When Ice Cube has to choose between immunity into the final 10 or removal of another contestant's face, Pin says, "That's an easy choice, Ice Cube! You don't need immunity, everyone loves you!" She had previously said the same thing to Teardrop in "Zeeky Boogy Doog".
• Call-Forward: At one point during the Costume-Test Montage, Flower wears one of X's baskets on her head. Lampshaded by Book when she says that it's "ahead of [Flower's] time".
• Costume-Test Montage: Happens as LRLD give Flower a makeover.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Coiny names his new team the Water's Open Aperture Hater Bunch, but in the grand scheme of things, it's still W.O.A.H. Bunch.
• Eat Dirt, Cheap: When Fries asks what Jack ate for lunch, Jack replies that he ate lots of mud.
• Epic Fail: Tennis Ball attempts to get the keys out from the ocean with his magnet, but ends up with just about every single other piece of metal that is a similar size.
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: After spending the entire episode as her old, monstrous self, Flower ends off the episode by running away screaming from a swarm of bugs while the credits roll.
• Facial Horror: Ice Cube's Cake at Stake reward is to remove a contestant's face, and she picks Pin out of revenge for trying to convince her not to go to Match's dance party. Now limbless and faceless, Pin is utterly useless until Coiny realizes her sweating can determine the unsafe doors out of the three TB left him to look through.
• Fantastic Fireworks: When W.O.A.H. Bunch plucks the first petal from Flower, they decide to stuff a firecracker in it to show that they're in the lead. When it explodes, it says "FLOWER IS SO UGLY!" in clear text.
• Foreshadowing: One of the possible prizes on the prize wheel is "Flower hosting". Guess what happens after Spongy is eliminated?
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: As Book flips through her pages to find the one on antonyms, we can see:
  • A sloppy sketch of herself
  • "dear diary hi. love, book"
  • "dear diary i am a book but also manual and dictionary and im having an identity crisis"
  • Another crudely-drawn self-portrait
  • A drawing of a beach ball
  • "antonym for the other team: GOOD! HA! GET IT!"
  • Two pages of messy scribbling, followed by "sorry i got mad on the last page"
  • Yet another crudely-drawn doodle of herself
  • A sketch of Leafy's Football form from "Return of the Hang Glider"
  • The script to Bee Movie
  • Sketches of a stick of butter and a butterfly
  • SpongeBob's pineapple house
  • "what if the next page was the exact one i needed"
• Friend to Bugs: Upon opening door number three and finding that it's filled with bugs, Coiny is elated and starts frolicking among them.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • The "Bad Face Destruction Institute".
  • W.O.A.H. Bunch now stands for "Water's Open Aperture Hater Bunch".
  • The Special Edition Title, But Flower's Doing It!!.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Just as soon as Tennis Ball refers to Flower as "a monster", she comes up behind him and rips Tennis Ball in half. His torn remains are then seen during the Fake-Out Opening.
• Hostile Show Takeover: With Flower as the host, she rebrands the show as But Flower's Doing It!!.
• Incoming Ham: Flower introduces herself by ripping Tennis Ball in half with a Slasher Smile on her face.
• Intoxication Ensues: Coiny dulling Pencil by forcefully scribbling inside of Book causes her to become woozy.
• Kick the Dog: After Pin already got her limbs removed by Puffball, Ice Cube's Cake at Stake prize has her remove Pin's face, leaving Pin a featureless, yet still living husk.
• Killed Off for Real: Puffball Speaker Box is crushed by Spongy, so Flower takes over as host.
• Kill It with Fire: Golf Ball burns to death when she opens door number two.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Ruby says that without her petals, Flower looks like Cary. Of course, Flower has no idea who Cary is.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Coiny uses Pencil to shatter Ruby into little pieces.
• Mouthscreen: The close-up of Pin's mouth as she says "Everyone loves you!" in slow-motion.
• Never Trust a Title: The title and the episode description barely have anything to do with the episode, except for Jack having eaten lots of mud. Then again, it was meant to be an April Fools' joke.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: Black & White Cookie and Vegemite are rather out-there individuals. In addition to being serenely calm boaters, they believe W.O.A.H. Bunch's banana snorkels to be portals to another dimension where aliens use fish food as currency, and that giving these supposed aliens fish food brings you good luck.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After Pin guides Coiny to the door with the last key behind it, even with her being unable to speak, Coiny rewards her by giving her a bug, which proceeds to poison her.
• Not Quite Dead: Even though Ruby gets shattered by Coiny thrusting Pencil into her, she's seen in The Stinger alive and well, albeit glued together and having a bandage on her head.
• Off with His Head!: After being pulled by Tennis Ball's dual magnets, Needle is sent flying at the Fish Monster's neck, decapitating it.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Flower addresses Golf Ball as, "my Cake at Stake rival, who got me eliminated first." This, despite Golf Ball having no control over the votes, and her getting crushed by the Announcer Crusher being an accident.
• Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat: Because Pin's now little more than a featureless object with sapience, her only way of communicating with Coiny is through her oozy sweat.
• Pie in the Face: During Cake at Stake, Golf Ball and Tennis Ball's slices of cake splatter them in the face.
• Revenge is Sweet: Ice Cube gets one of her only successful bouts of revenge by using her Cake at Stake prize of removing a contestant's face on Pin for trying to talk her out of going to Match's Dance Party, and after Pin's face is removed, Ice Cube rubs her revenge in Pin's nonexistent face.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Ruby can't tell that Flower is being sarcastic when she says that ripping her petals off sounds "wonderful".
• Say My Name: Fries bluntly saying that Jack's hairpiece makes Flower look even uglier than usual causes her to angrily curse LRLD's original team name.
  Flower: FREEEESMAAAAAAAAAART!!!
• Shout-Out: One of Book's pages features a doodle of SpongeBob's pineapple house, while another one has part of the Bee Movie script.
• Special Guest: Black & White Cookie and Vegemite are voiced respectively by speedcubing world champions Max Park and Feliks Zemdegs.
• Spikes of Doom: Fries is crushed by a falling wall of spikes when he opens door number one.
• Status Quo Is God: After the last episode switched things up by having everybody but Fries join FreeSmart, the old teams are basically back in play after Golf Ball sabotages the Beautiful Face Devotion Institute by uninverting Icy's beautiful face back into an ugly face. The alliance sticks together, and renames themselves Less-Restrained Less-Dumb, but they're openly referred to as FreeSmart, as well. Golf Ball drags Tennis Ball with her to form a new team, and since she doesn't name it herself, their team is dubbed "Team No-Name". When Fries comes back, Puffball Speaker Box tells him that he can't be on a solo team, so he decides to join Team No-Name since it has the least members and he wants to feel like a rogue, accidentally reforming the old Team No-Name. The remaining four contestants, ex-W.O.A.H. Bunchers who have formed the Bad Face Destruction Institute, refine their name into Water's Open Aperture Hater Bunch... or W.O.A.H. Bunch.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Bomby and Nickel try to share air by breathing back and forth between one snorkel, but because oxygen is reduced by half every time it's breathed out, they promptly drown after Nickel lampshades that it isn't working.
• Tempting Fate: Subverted. Icy is given a choice between immunity or removing a contestant's face, but Pin convinces her to choose the latter since "everyone loves her", the whole thing a callback to Teardrop's elimination. This time, though, while she's in the bottom two, Ice Cube is safe.
• There Was a Door: Zigzagged. After hiding the last key, Tennis Ball leaves Flower's punishment room by kicking open the door, which ends up taking the entire wall down with it.
• Title Drop: Done by Jack when Fries asks him what he ate for lunch.

---