YMMV / Battle for Dream Island

aka: Battle For BFDI

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • "Sugar" in "The JingJing Squisher" was thought to be a metaphor for cocaine. Cary explained in his line-voicing video that it's actually just ordinary sugar, and the Official Character Guide backs this up with Ruby's fact stating she does, indeed, eat a lot of sugar.
  • Bell talking about Snowball's "size" in "The Seven Wonders of Goiky" comes across as her talking about something different, complete with Bell having her eyebrow raised.
    Bell: Y'know, "Yoyleball", you're pretty big!
    Snowball: And? What about it?
  • One of the randomly generated Yoyle City buildings is named "Adult Toy Store".
• Adaptation Displacement:
  • Few people know that the animated series is preceded by a series of comic books by the same creators in 2008. Although this is justified since the comics were only posted online in 2012, two years after the animated series' debut, and some parts of the comics were missing until 2020.
  • Four, X and most of the algebraliens are better known as this series' counterparts, rather than they originated from a 2008 short film, X Finds Out His Value.
  • The mouth design used for the first three seasons has become such a widely-used asset akin to clip art in media that often has nothing to do with the Object Show Community, that many outside of the OSC are unaware that it was an asset created for Battle for Dream Island in the first place. This eventually got lampshaded in "Why is the BFDI Mouth Everywhere?" Video.
• Adorkable:
  • Despite her bossiness and mean attitude, Golf Ball comes off as this. Bonus points for being small.
  • Pin isn't really great at making friends.
  • Tennis Ball is given, being softer than Golf Ball yet still nerdy at the same time.
  • Book was adorkable back in BFDIA, as she was somewhat curious and shy.
  • Pencil was the go-to for this in Season 1, having quirky bouts that had a chance of helping or not helping, and never knowing how to properly explain herself.
  • Basketball's shyness, intelligence, and passiveness definitely puts her in this trope.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Two can be seen as a Jerkass who willingly stole most of the contestants so they can compete in their show, or a friendly person who tried to save the contestants from Four.
  • Book can be seen as someone who has taken a lot of punishment from FreeSmart and has undergone severe trauma over the years, and thus her behavior with Bleh is believable, or can be seen as an Academic Alpha Bitch who never really feels sorry for her actions and has a weak Freudian Excuse.
  • Profily can be seen as a character who wants to just hang out with everyone or a self-centered Attention Whore who wants nothing but to be remembered.
  • In BFB 6, when Taco goes back to Earth in order to execute a plan to bring the Twinkle back there after a failed attempt to escape into space away from the Twinkle, Book says that Taco abandoned them again. Her teammates' annoyed reaction can be interpreted as either annoyance at Taco leaving again, or annoyance at Book for constantly complaining about that and never dropping it.
  • In BFB 3, after Lollipop throws away her eulogies for Taco, Saw says that she's keeping hers because, "in my eyes, they're still valid." This can be seen as her backhandedly saying that Taco is dead to her, or, based on the fact that she doesn't show animosity towards Taco in BFB 14, that her opinions of Taco still hold up despite her being alive.
  • In TPOT 5, Pillow lights Bomby's fuse and flings him at Puffball and Fries when they try to pursue Just Not, causing Puffball to say, "Woah! Not cool." Was she annoyed at Pillow for trying to blow them up, or shocked by her callously sacrificing one of her teammates?
  • In TPOT 9 due to a terrible connection Just Not is only able to hear Two announce that the challenge is "Two teams... completely wiped out", which causes Pillow to kill her entire team. But did she genuinely misinterpret the challenge, or did she know it couldn't possibly be the challenge and just used it as an excuse to kill her team? It is confirmed in TPOT 10 to be the first one, combined with her theory from TPOT 7 that killing people brings good luck.
• Arc Fatigue: BFDIA 5 was over 45 minutes long and aired in segments (plus a video game) over the course of 7 months. The general consensus is that it was a well worth the wait, but 3 episodes was still a fairly long time to go without any eliminations.
• Awesome Music:View this page here.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • In the middle of an elimination, Ruby looks toward the screen, spaced out, and says "Sorry mommy, did I do a no-no again?" This scene has no relation to the plot of the episode, and the idea of Ruby having a mother is never brought up again.
  • Leafy being revealed to be a football in the Season 1 finale. Leafy goes back to normal a few moments later, and this scene is never mentioned again.
  • Flower strangely mentions having rotting flesh in her head, and afterwards she mysteriously changes the number of petals. It was never made clear what correlation this had or how this change happened.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • "Fashion for Your Face!" is often considered this way by fans, due to several BLAMs (Boyinaband's cameo for example), Purple Face eating the Have Cots, and Flower causing deforestation.
  • "The Escape from Four" qualifies as well, since it mainly focused on setting up TPOT and post-split BFB.
  • IDFB 1 "Welcome Back" qualified as this for the time, as it was a slice-of-life episode in a normally heavily competition-focused series, as well as being the first episode in years featuring the BFDI characters.
• Cargo Ship: Loser x Chicken Nuggets, as a result of mentioning that he's craving them while imprisoned in the Liar Ball.
• Character Rerailment:
  • One of the biggest complaints with post-split BFB amongst fans was that, while Four still kept his newfound niceness from BFB 10, his violent tendencies had become severely downplayed, which was one of the things fans loved most about him. Come his and X's return in TPOT 6, and he's back to being as violent as the fans once remembered.
  • In TPOT 9, Pencil regained her initial characterization as a likeable and reasonable leader figure, after becoming a controlling jerk who only hung out with her clique in BFB. Instead of pairing herself with her best friend Match when the EXIT-ors decide to split, she tells her to go with Liy and Stapy, reasoning that they can always hang out after they escape. Similarly, when David expresses disappointment that they couldn't save Roboty, she agrees to return to the E.X.I.T. to see if they can rescue him.
• Crack Pairing:
  • Pick any ship involving Nonexisty (who as a reminder, doesn't even exist), and you have one of these.
  • After Pin lost her limbs in BFDIA 5 and her face in BFDIA 11, people started pairing Pin x Box, due to them being two of the only immobile contestants in all of Object Shows.
• Creator's Pet:
  • Cary and Michael have both said that Loser, loathed by the viewer base for being treated like God's gift to the universe until Fanny calls him out on lying about playing with popper balls when he was younger and the way his teammates are overly dependent on him, is one of their favorite characters and they were sad to see him eliminated so early in the game. Spongy's inability to be eliminated in BFB 16 allowed him to escape and reenter the competition, to many a viewer's displeasure. Though he got eliminated not too long after, in BFB 21. This appears to be dwindling as Loser gets called out by Winner for choosing fame over them.
  • Lollipop is another favorite of the Huang brothers who hasn't exactly endeared herself to viewers, though unlike Loser her hatred stems from her attitude, especially in regards to her needlessly cruel treatment of Barf Bag. Her team took fourteen episodes into BFB to lose a challenge when several other teams had already lost two or more contestants, and people are beginning to theorize that the crew is deliberately not allowing Bleh to lose until Lollipop is Rescued from the Scrappy Heap because they know at the current rate that she'll be eliminated by a landslide. She's becoming a bit more understanding of Taco's mistaken betrayal at the expense of Book, whose personality soon becomes defined by grasping the Jerkass Ball tighter and tighter with every episode over the situation. A minor point is that when both Bleh and ABNTT were stranded on the moon in "The Liar Ball You Don't Want" and are unable to participate due to Taco's death, Bleh narrowly avoids losing when Pen helps knock the ball into ABNTT's crater despite being fully aware that it'd put his best friend Blocky up for elimination.
  • Following her return in BFB 13, Satomi really liked giving attention to her personal favorite character, Saw, whereas Pokey was in charge of the talk in BFB 6 between Pin and Coiny, her favorite character, which a lot of fans feel like didn't amount to much in the long run.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • FreeSmart's solution when they need to cross the 500 mile-long Goiky Canal in BFDIA 5d is to abuse the HPRC to take turns recovering whoever drowns, leading to a minute-long montage of them repeatedly dying, having their corpses thrown out of the SuperVan and recovered. By the time they're finished, the canal is littered with hundreds of bodies.
  • TPOT 1 culminates in the cast, fed up with Two's poor communication skills, all ganging up on and taking turns beating them into a pulp — including the peaceful, friendly ones and violence-abhoring Death P.A.C.T. Two is unable to do anything but scream in pain despite wielding powers that eclipse Four's.
  • In TPOT 3, Death P.A.C.T. Again comes across a recommended character called "Cherry Jr. the Orphan". When Remote points out that the Jungle is too humid for cherry trees to grow, he cheerfully responds with "It is! That's why I'm an orphan!"
  • In both TPOT 2 and 5, Winner accidentally kills Ice Cube (The first time by dropping her in acidic barf shortly after reviving her. The second time by knocking her into the Goiky Canal, causing her to dissolve). Both instances are then followed up by them deliberately reviving and killing Icy on loop (for reasons that are Less Disturbing in Context).
• Designated Villain: Remote has potential to be seen as this. She wants to win the competition, but due to being in a team filled with people who want to prevent death instead of winning, she is seen as in the wrong for caring about winning more than saving people, even though her team should be focused on winning too.
• Elimination Houdini:
  • In episodes 9 and 10 of BFDI, Snowball not only proves useless to his team but even hinders it. He ties up his teammates and drags them along, exhausting himself, making them lose by default, and causing them to fall into a bottomless pit. At the elimination, he gets 18 votes, which is more than everyone else combined. However, the Squishy Cherries choose him to switch to their team, and Ensemble Dark Horse Teardrop is eliminated instead. Needless to say, many fans did not like this decision. Especially since he's very notorious in the show's fanbase, as he has way more haters than fans.
  • Rocky also constantly avoided elimination in the original season despite being next to useless in challenges.
  • Four is unable to absorb Spongy when he is eliminated in BFB 16, and is forced to keep him in the competition as a result. Luckily, his size proved to be of no assistance when it came to evading the BRB, and he was re-eliminated by a landslide the first time his new team was up for voting two episodes later.
    • Spongy has a long history of surviving eliminations in the bottom two despite doing very little to justify his safety, perhaps even more so than Rocky.
  • Flower in BFB constantly made major mistakes such as hurting people for disliking her fashion line, "befriending" Teardrop in a rather toxic manner (which predictably caused TD to hate her) and straight-up lying to Lollipop absolutely no personal gain. Despite all of this, Flower managed to win the entirety of BFB by a large margin.
  • Gelatin has been in the bottom two 5 times in BFB, and ended up coming in second place.
  • Clock's idolism of Winner cost his team the challenge in TPOT 3, yet he still got enough votes to be safe.
  • Pillow's murder spree in Episode 9 resulted in her team being up for elimination, but she managed to avoid being in the bottom two, with Nickel being eliminated instead. His last words before being blipped away are calling out Pillow for causing them to lose, and imploring viewers to get rid of her before it's too late.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Teardrop was eliminated early, yet managed to get the 5th most votes for season 2 without saying a single word.
  • Chronic vomiter and generally silent weirdo Rocky may also be this, considering he was kept for a long time before being eliminated in the first season, and that he received the most votes for joining BFDIA.
  • Yellow Face. Despite not being listed as a character who could join BFDIA, he received so many votes that the creators eventually decided to count all of them, earning him a spot in the series.
  • Out of all the original contestants who didn't make it into BFDIA, Pen sees the most popularity. Perhaps not coincidentally, he was also the closest to making it in. A sizable amount of people were clamoring for his return after IDFB episode 1, and he has remained popular after returning proper in BFB.
  • Naily became very popular in recent episodes because of her silly personality and most of the fans adore her.
  • Pin also became one of the show's most popular characters after she Took a Level in Kindness.
  • Four from BFB gets a lot of fanart for being a completely crazy abomination, especially from fans who know about the animation in which he and X debuted, which the Huang brothers made a couple of years before the first BFDI episode. The same goes to his meek and friendly foil X, but to a slightly lesser extent.
  • Taco gained a lot of popularity in the second episode. Main factors include her being The Woobie and at the same time being quite competent in challenges.
  • After being last place with barely any screentime in the first season, Woody has become this with his cowardice being toned down significantly and eventually developing some degree of proper speech. However, the two times he has dabbed on the show made him border on Base-Breaking Character.
  • Black Hole, due to his intelligence, mellowness, and interesting physics quirks. He placed first on the subreddit poll, and second (not counting Four) on the official poll.
  • For a recommended character example, there's Sotp Sign and Winner. Sotp Sign became popular due to his creator uploading videos showing him in BFB. Winner, on the other hand, exploded seemingly out of nowhere.
  • Nine. Thanks to their cool appearance, personality and voice, pretty much everyone loves them. And they aren't even in the show itself, nor were they created by the production crew.
  • Despite only coming third place in the TPOT debut votes and only being allowed to join due to needing a visible contestant to create a composite number of contestants for TPOT, Price Tag quickly gained a large fan following, mostly for their adorable and unique appearance and friendship with Naily.
  • Despite only being a recommended character seen in the credits of BFB 30, Runner Up has acrewed a big following already, with an interest in their possible dynamic with Loser being the main subject of interest.
  • Despite him playing a role in only one episode and having background roles in the rest of his appearances, Portable Music Player is rather popular, swinging his earpods doesn't help, along with his guest voice role from boyinaband.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Helluva Boss, due to the latter show losing the Cartoon Crave Awards 2021 against BFDI. As a result, many Helluva Boss fans have bashed on BFDI for winning the award, while BFDI fans consider their show to be superior and considers Helluva Boss to be little more than swearing and sex scenes.
• Fandom VIP: Curiously, Rosie O'Donnell is a highly respected figure in the Object Show community, due to her giving BFDI a Colbert Bump through discussing multiple times on TikTok how her daughter, Dakota, is a fan of the series.
• Fan Nickname:
  • When IDFB first premiered, many fans referred to Pin (who was then colored white since her red pigment was used to make her new limbs) as "Alolan Pin" thanks to the hype for Pokémon Sun and Moon at the time.
  • Pen, Blocky and Eraser (and sometimes Snowball) are often called "The Cool Group".
  • Some fans use the term "algebraliens" to describe the math-related characters and their species. The term was later officially used by Cary himself.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Even back then when Coiny and Firey were still enemies in the first two seasons, there is a large following shipping them together.
  • Somewhat downplayed with Four and X because in early episodes of BFB the two were frenemies, shipping them romantically quickly got a huge amount of fans. As BFB slowly reached its conclusion, Four's and X's relationship developed more friendlier and their enemy status has decreased.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Unsurprisingly, most fans of BFDI are also fans of Total Drama and vice-versa, due to the latter being the main inspiration for BFDI. It also helps that both the Announcer and to a lesser extent, Four, are often compared to Chris due to them being sadistic hosts who loves mistreating the contestants.
  • Most fans of The Huang Twins' other projects are also fans of BFDI in general. This is true especially for Algicosathlon, with many Fandom VIPs being involved with, or promoting Algicosathlons.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Surprisingly, Battle for Dream Island (and Object Shows in general) have a whole lot of Russian fans. This popularity is the reason why shows like Contest for Millions of Thousands exist.
  • BFDI also has quite a few Canadian fans too.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In TPOT 2, Pin goes on a long rant about how BFDIA sucked, and tells Coiny to stop pretending it was good. At the time, it seemed like a random Author Tract about BFDIA's quality and it being incomplete, but then BFDIA got Un-Canceled, and in BFDIA 11, in addition to losing her limbs six episodes earlier, Pin loses her face and becomes an immobile, yet still alive husk, which retroactively gives Pin a good reason to hate BFDIA.
• Heartwarming Moments: See here.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the "BFB Intro But..." memes was this. Exactly two months after this video was uploaded, BFB 6 came out, and in it, Four was seemingly killed along with X by Golf Ball's team.
  • Didn't Four used to hang out with the Numberjacks?
  • The subreddit decides to launch a popularity poll of BFB. Before the creators do one in the very next episode.
  • After Blocky rejoins, Coiny complains that he gets a win token for rejoining, despite having been eliminated unlike the rest of the cast. This became a problem in Survivor Edge of Extinction, where Chris Underwood rejoined the game at the final six with an idol, and went on to win the game.
  • After comparisons between BFB 12 and Among Us (it was a coincidence), a short was released featuring the cast in the game.
  • "Zeeky Boogy Doog" has the recommended contestant Good Flower, an exact copy of Flower with a seemingly nicer personality. Flower would later become a lot nicer starting with BFB.
  • A TPOT parody video titled BFDI:TPOT 7: Real Official Canon to Everything (the number 7 has since been dropped from the title to prevent confusion with the real TPOT 7) had the challenge be to fix the thing.^note It's actually referred to as that in-universe. The actual TPOT 7, released a little under a month later, also had the challenge be based around fixing stuff, though it was based around fixing landmarks.
    • Said parody video also poked fun at how every contestant to be eliminated so far has been a Graceful Loser. Queue Lightning (who was even eliminated in the parody) having the exact opposite reaction to being eliminated in the actual TPOT 7.
• Ho Yay: Now has its own page.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: While most ships are referred to with Portmanteau Couple Names, some are more creative.
  • Black Hole/Tree is called Astrobiology by some, probably due to the awkwardness of the alternative "Treehole."
  • Pillow/Book is known as Bookcase, from Book's name + pillowcase. Alternatively, it can be called Bedtime Stories.
  • Those opposed to the name Penisball may refer to Tennis Ball/Pen as 🅱️en Ten, referencing Pen's legal name being 🅱️en as well as the cartoon Ben 10.
• I Knew It!: BFB 13 proved the theories on Saw coming back, Four holding a grudge against Clock, the exploration of Four's insides, and Book's Heel Realization after being ignored, to be correct after all.
• It Was His Sled:
  • It's practically impossible to mention Two or even BFB 16 at all without mentioning the events of said episode and how much they changed the show.
  • This also applies to Return of the Hang Glider. Firey despite ranking first does not win Dream Island, Flower destroys all the recovery centres and kills Bubble off (for real), and Leafy becomes a minor antagonist.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: A character-wise example featuring Woody. While Downplayed, since he had a surprisingly large fanbase, quite a minority of BFDI fans usually complained that the said fanbase has not only made Woody into an unnecessary meme-lord, but they might have made him overstay his welcome a bit too much, up to that point where these fans compare his popularity to the Fortnite fandom or any other toxic fandom that God-praise anything to death in an irritating way. Not to mention that the fans also criticized the fact that the popularity started off with Woody dabbing in BFB 2.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Book, as of BFB 3-onward. She was the butt of jokes, being humiliated and traumatized, so it's justified why Book became a Hate Sink.
  • Spongy in BFB 14, because in BFB 12, he was ignored and lonely, being the fake one-out, justified because his team was up for elimination.
  • Four is one, as the contestants constantly mistreat him and the Announcer even made them leave their own show.
  • Seven from the subscriber specials might be one too, as this video made a lot of people feel bad for them, additionally, in the Counting on Christmas song, Seven wishes for some friends for Christmas.
  • Robot Flower is an abrasive jerk, but they believe that no one (except Basketball) cares about them. She even asks Basketball to upload Flower's memories and personality into her, because she "wants to be wanted". Then she suffers a Death of Personality when a power outage results in her only gaining Flower's Season 1 personality (i.e. pre-Character Development), and it overriding her actual personality
• LGBT Fanbase: Even before the show's first nonbinary characters, BFDI was (and still is) popular among LGBT audiences. The minor amount of Ho Yay and numerous characters with voices not associated with their gender (i.e. Pie) might help.
• Love to Hate:
  • Four, with his sociopathic personality and humorous moments.
  • Fanny, the often rude Jerkass who Hates Everyone Equally, has surprisingly a lot of fans, for berating the extremely-despised Loser, defending Bubble from Match almost like if she was Bubble's mother, and acting like a fearless leader of the BFB veterans who left for TPOT.
• Memetic Loser: Among what small of a following he has, Nonexisty is seen as such. In Season 1, he didn't receive enough votes to join the game, Season 2 saw the same exact outcome with an additional disqualification due to not being present, IDFB was put on indefinite hiatus before it could get off the ground, preventing Nonexisty from getting the chance to be voted in,^note He's also the only contestant disqualified in BFDIA 1 to be trapped in the TLC to begin with. he was then the only contestant previously up for debut to not join BFB aside from Evil Leafy and in TPOT, he receives a double middle finger; first by not receiving enough votes to join the game, and second by him getting another disqualification and being shoved aside for not solving the prime number issue and being replaced by Price Tag. Word of God also states that had Nonexisty gotten the most votes, he would've joined the game. And it's not like it's impossible to do anything with him, as Inanimate Insanity Episode 4 shows him escaping from the Locker of Losers with Nickel.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Moe:
  • Some objects can be seen as lovable and adorable. Bell, Bomby, Bracelety, Bubble, Cake, Grassy, Ice Cube (her mini self also counts), Lightning, Naily, Rocky, Ruby, and Woody are some examples.
  • X is also really, really cute, being by far the kindest (and meekest) of both the show's hosts and any of the numbers seen.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Puffball and her speaker box's voice; it's Michael Huang using a vocoder. The Italian fandub is perhaps even better.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Most fans won't forget about how Eggy was undeservedly rude to Clock in the end of BFB 6 when they lost the challenge, since it was out of place and uncalled for.
  • Even worse, Puffball was in the bottom two during Free Food's elimination, after she threw her team under the bus in BFDIA 5e. She barely survived elimination, as Stapy was voted out instead. Though later episodes show she retained her greedy and traitorous behavior. Though, the votes might've been from assisting Stapy with cheating in the 8th contest.
  • Match was voted out in BFB 12 for her actions in BFB 8, namely bossing and devaluing Bubble for not knowing the answers, even though she hadn't knew them herself. This caused a lot of debate with fans thinking that Match deserved to stay since she apologized, and Snowball and Flower seriously hindered the team.
  • Two is hated by a lot of people because they were the main cause of the show split, not at all helped by their debut episode featuring two of the least popular characters playing Elimination Houdini.
  • In The Stinger for BFB 10, Bell scorns Taco and tells her she will never forgive her. This caused a lot of fans to turn against her.
• Obscure Popularity: The show garners millions of views per episode (with the first episode having over 59 million views after it exploded in popularity around 2014), has spawned countless other series in a similar vein to it, created a wiki popular enough for Wikia to make an official app for it, and led Yoylecake to win Wikia's 2016 Battle of The Fantasy Foods competition. Despite the numerous feats accomplished by the fandom, you'd be hard-pressed to find it mentioned anywhere outside its corner of the internet, and Wikipedia doesn't consider it notable enough to warrant a page.
• Old Guard Versus New Blood: Fans who started watching the show before BFB and fans who started watching after BFB tend to be at odds with each other regarding what sort of direction the writing should take. Pre-BFB fans often prefer the writing styles of Cary, Michael, and to a lesser extent, Sam Thornbury, for being more off the walls, unpredictable, and overall fun. Post-BFB fans, on the other hand, are more keen to Satomi and Pokey's writing styles for giving each individual character their own development and story arcs, as well as seeing some characters and teams as more deserving of screentime than others. Pre-split BFB and the first two episodes of TPOT favored the New Blood, whereas post-split BFB and TPOT following the mass layoffs favor the Old Guard.
• Quirky Work: Let's see... the main cast is a group of anthropomorphic objects who not only battle for a luxurious island, but also suffer various cruel and unusual deaths, there are various Dark Crystal-esque made-up words (Goiky, Yoyleberry, Yoyleland, Non-Slip Shoes So Ha, etc.), the main hosts are speaker boxes and Eldritch Abomination numbers, and the contestants who get eliminated don't get sent home, but rather to either a giant metal box, an eternal algebra class, a big rotating building, or an upside-down city... yeah.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Lollipop, whose first impression was received very negatively by viewers, was then given the role of protecting Taco, earning some respect from the audience (though there's still not few acute Lollipop haters in the fandom).
  • After the first season of her being hated due to being a Jerkass, Flower got herself out of being hated since she matured from her bratty self and became more considerate. In fact, this Reddit poll listed her as one of the top four liked contestants. And if that wasn't enough, she won BFB with a whopping 68% victory margin. That's a lot larger than Firey's 46.7% in BFDI, which notably was only enough because there were 2 other contestants to vote for, while Flower only competed with one.
  • Despite Naily starting off with a rocky reception due to not being as interesting as the other contestants, she gained a lot of fans after BFB 14 because of her showcasing her personality and sacrificing herself to make sure Woody survives the lava.
  • At the time of their debut, Two received massive amounts of vitriol, with people viewing them as a Replacement Scrappy for Four, and hating them for essentially stealing away X and a large portion of the BFB cast. After the initial shock wore off, however, fans started to become more welcoming to Two, as X and Four were reuinited in the next episode, and Two got more time to establish themself as an enjoyable host in their own right.
  • Donut's initial portrayal in BFDIA was very disliked by fans, with him immediately resorting to violence during an argument with Pencil and being a major Jerkass to Coiny for no real reason. In BFB, Donut Took a Level in Kindness, with him having several friends and him helping his team out in many challenges, becoming the favourite of many viewers.
  • During pre-split BFB, Pillow was the least popular member of the already-popular Death P.A.C.T., due to her characterization being rather inconsistent. She showed signs of being a smart aleck, Ax-Crazy, scatterbrained, and at times selfless, but because she never showed more than one side at a time before jumping to another, fans couldn't get a proper read on her character. Starting with TPOT 2, however, Pillow has now become one of the most popular characters on the show due to the writers finally settling on deciding to make her The Sociopath, with fans finding her heartless antics to be utterly hilarious.
  • Snowball was the most despised contestant in BFDI due to being a Barbaric Bully, and wasn't all that popular in BFB either. However, he was better received in TPOT as he became less of a deadweight to his team (best shown in BFB 14 and TPOT 6), Took a Level in Kindness (developed an Odd Friendship with the child-like Grassy and saying that he did a good job after his team lost in TPOT 2), and gained some redeeming qualities (refusing to go after a clearly unwell Teardrop during the balance beam challenge in TPOT 8, especially after learning that a loss on her end would mean instant elimination).
• The Scrappy: Has its own page.
• Shocking Moments: When something was teased to be coming on the first of September 2023, most people predicted it'd be a new TPOT episode, or maybe IDFB 2 thanks to the presence of Yoyleland in the background. Let's just say it'd be an understatement to say that nobody predicted it'd be BFDIA 6, which had been cancelled for the past 10 years.
• Squick:
  • Rocky's constant and near-infinite vomiting capabilities. In BFB 4, his team even makes a cake out of his vomit. Same with TPOT 6 and his teammates on The S! using his vomit for their cereal.
    • In IDFB 1, Rocky barfs an entire path of vomit that Yellow Face rolls in.
  • Pin eating her own sweat, which is also green ooze. Somehow.
  • Liy's plan of getting Teardrop to talk. And the sounds when it is executed.
  • BFDIA 10 has Fries feeding people moldy ice cream that expired over a year ago.
• Strawman Has a Point: In "The Hidden Contestant", Four is extremely quick to disregard Profily and try to get them eliminated, and throughout the rest of the series, he's seen as an uncaring, sociopathic Jerkass, but he somehow manages to raise a good point at how contestants seem to disregard contest rules constantly and are too quick to follow the example of people seen as perfect.
  Four: You... You'll throw them a party?! I tried to get seven of you to throw me a party, and only two of you did! And, yes, Lollipop's party was the best party of all time. [...] YOU'RE NOT HELPING!!! None of you have any respect for me, and I'm fed up with it! Forty of my contestants left for someone they knew for like, five minutes! And the ones that stayed steal Donut's Diary, you don't even help me out of jail until I make it a challenge, and now... UUUGH! You're gonna throw a party for Profily immediately?! You never do these things for me! So, we're going to make this simple! Profily is OUT OF THE GAME!
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Stapy and Marker murder Lollipop in "Lick Your Way To Freedom" when they rescue her instead of one of their friends.
  • Barf Bag's comeback towards Lollipop in "Questions Answered".
    Barf Bag: (speaking to Donut) Sorry, my reflexes are too slow!
    Lollipop: (pops up) It's the barf molecules.
    Barf Bag: Shut it, LolliPOOP!
  • Foldy gets unfolded by Ruby in BFB 12 as payback for her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Book gets it multiple times in BFB 12 and 13 — it's made very clear that no one else couldn't care less about Taco going AWOL.
  • A Message to Loser, a music video insulting Loser, despite him being the creator's favorite character.
  • All the contestants beating up Two at the end of TPOT 1 can be seen as this for those who view them as a Replacement Scrappy.
  • To those who weren't fans of Profily, seeing them get eliminated during TPOT's Cake at Stake song is incredibly satisfying.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: BFB 16 was this to a lot of people. They brought Loser back into the game, they essentially voided Spongy's elimination and brought him back the very episode he was to be eliminated, they split the season in two, cut off just about every ongoing arc (including the arcs held among the characters that were present), derailed many of the characters as well, and the elimination-style changed to a choice of saving rather than eliminating. To say people weren't exactly esteemed with post-split is to understate things. This has since died down a bit once BFB was completed.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Some Recommended Characters can be considered this depending on who you want to see join.
  • Some BFB fans feel this way about a couple of the eliminated contestants, considering them characters with lots of potential who were eliminated way too early.
  • Even Woody, Bubble, and Spongy, due to the fact they were put up for elimination due to the writers towards its fanbase.
  • Firey Jr. being mocked about how getting exactly 10,000 elimination votes is the only thing he has ever accomplished in the competition.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • While IDFB is on an "indefinite hiatus", it's still pretty disappointing to have only one episode made and then switch directly to BFB.
  • Yes, there is a crossover video between BFDI and Inanimate Insanity, but the actual crossover is rather short, and most of the video is just an advertisement for a meet-and-greet with the production crew behind both shows.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Three of BFDI's darkest episodes, "Insectophobe's Nightmare 2", "Return of the Hang Glider", and "No More Snow!", are seen as this to the viewers. It can be undoubtedly impossible for them to pick which character they root for due to the three aforementioned episodes' mean-spirited and violent tone, and how the characters treat each other so drastically.
• Too Quirky to Lose: Rocky, to an extent; despite consistently being put up for elimination, he was never voted out until late in the show. Double Subverted between episodes 10 and 11. He had the most votes to be eliminated, but when the winning team had to choose either Rocky or Golf Ball to be on their team, everyone shot down Golf Ball in favor of Rocky. He also managed to get the most votes to rejoin the second season, even beyond the original BFDI winner Firey.
• Unexpected Character:
  • For nine months, viewers were lead to believe that TPOT would only add one recommended character — that of which being the landslide poll victor Winner. Come the debut of the first episode, it's acknowledged in-universe that the new addition turns the contestant count into a prime number. It then seemed like Nonexisty would finally join a season as he had placed second in the vote, but then he is quickly disqualified due to his value being zero and third placer Price Tag joins the show instead.
  • Nobody expected One (complete with their design from BFB 25) to show up in the stinger of TPOT 9.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Bell. The fanbase should hate her after telling Taco that she'd never trust her after BFB 6, but here's something. If someone used you for their own gain, wouldn't you be mad?
  • While Leafy stole Dream Island and became villainous in BFDIA-IDFB, the reason Firey didn't let her onto Dream Island was because she wanted to get off his Ferris Wheel, one that would kill her with fire and actually did. Firey ignored the fact that fire can kill people and built the Ferris Wheel with no consideration of the fact. Even though they make up in BFDI 25, Firey purposely starts to ignore Leafy just to look good in front of the others, It's not hard to side with Leafy after she learns about Firey's actions.
  • Two at the end of TPOT 1. Their No-Holds-Barred Beatdown at the hands of the contestants is meant to be a Take That, Scrappy! moment as an attempt to acknowledge their Replacement Scrappy status within the fandom. However, In-Universe, Two hadn't done anything to warrant such a mauling outside of being at an elevation where nobody could hear them announce the contest rules. In fact, Four never received such a beating in spite of his sociopathic nature, whereas Two, even though they're not necessarily evil, borders on Affably Evil territories.
  • Announcer qualifies as this after BFB 29 and BFB 30. He didn't want his show to end and thus tried to do it again on his smaller budget, but failed and went home; he was caught off guard by Four and X stealing his show and offering his most valuable possession, the BFDI, the only archive of the original show. If someone stole your life's work, wouldn't you be mad?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • We're supposed to feel bad for Spongy in BFB 14, despite the fact he sabotaged everyone on Team Ice Cube and left them to die in the lava because they couldn't recognize that he was the imposter in BFB 12's challenge.
  • Both Book and Taco. While Book was just unhappy with Taco because she thought she abandoned the team, Taco had no empathy for her team back in BFB 1.
  • We're supposed to feel bad for Four because he wasn't treated well by the contestants near the end, Two cut his show in half, and he felt abandoned, but consider that Four was a Jerkass for most of the early show, so much that the contestants KILLED HIM. He does take a level in kindness, but he's still such a Jerkass that the contestants move on to Two and then Announcer the first chance they get because it was clear Four had no interest in the well-being of the contestants and was letting his narcissistic tendencies hijack the show. Hell, the first time we see Four, he mutilates Pin for fun, refuses to recover her, and then screeches multiple contestants and X.
• Unintentional Period Piece: One of the signs of the show being made in the early 2010s is parodies of the Nintendo DS being given out to characters as an elimination prize. The Nintendo DS line of products is now discontinued.
  • On a less obvious example, a stick figure recommended character based off of Ariana Grande has red hair and white skin, resembling her early 2010's persona instead of her most recent persona.
  • The advertisement in "Take the Tower" for the Flower hoodie is this, since it advertises a limited-edition hoodie that is now not available for purchase.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Spongy and Rocky. Sure, the cast hates them, but they also placed fifth and sixth respectively in the original contest. In addition, when it came to the votes to decide which characters would be participating in the second season, Rocky came in FIRST with over a hundred more votes than the person in second! This has been subverted in BFB, however.
  • Leafy has not been very popular amongst the other objects after she stole Dream Island over a petty grudge.
  • Although the contestants don't like her due to her bossy persona, the Reddit poll shows Golf Ball being in the top three most liked contestants.
  • The most prominent example is Taco. Her teammates (especially Book) loathe her guts due to believing she abandoned them. However, she is loved by the fanbase, due to her being a prominent helper in challenges.
  • Almost all of the Algebraliens find Nine annoying due to his out-of-date "cool" personality, but the fandom loves him for exactly that reason.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Some characters, such as Leafy, are female despite having masculine voices. Lollipop's voice is even deeper than most of the male contestants, and Pie has one of the deepest voices of any character in the series bar Spongy.
  • Golf Ball especially has this issue; despite being female, she has one of the most masculine voices in the entire series. Pen even lampshades this in one episode.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Rocky, Lightning and Cake are frequently assumed to be girls due to their feminine voices.
  • On the side note, none of the female objects are given any Tertiary Sexual Characteristics whatsoever.
  • A meta example: Due to her deep voice, many people are surprised when they learn Satomi Hinatsu is a girl. The fact that many people don't know which Japanese names are feminine or masculine doesn't help.
• Viewer Species Confusion: Some viewers often mistake Woody for a slice of bread due to his shape and color despite Tennis Ball outright stating he is made of balsa in the very first episode.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The long lost Yoyle City looks quite awesome thanks to being rendered in 3D (especially for a city of that size), in contrast to the show's usual 2D.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Despite being a show targeted towards children, there is a whole lot of death (albeit bloodless). Many of the episodes deal upon subjects kids are less likely to understand. After BFB 1 had its comments removed due to COPPA (fortunately, they are back), Cary states that the series is for both kids, and older fans to enjoy.
• The Woobie:
  • Pretty much any contestant who is prone to dying a lot qualifies, but especially Bubble and Ice Cube.
  • Spongy is one of the nicest contestants in the series, but is very sensitive and is constantly bullied by most of the others because of his size and due to being perceived as disgusting. His loneliness is bad enough that even the few people he has a mutual friendship with barely know what he likes to do for fun. Unfortunately, he stops qualifying for this in BFB 14 when he leaves Team Ice Cube and pretty much everyone else to die in the lava for forgetting him in BFB 12.
  • Leafy. She was practically exiled, and has to live with being seen as basically a monster for the rest of her life, being trapped in Yoyleland. Not to mention that, despite a seemingly aggressive outward appearance towards other contestants, she seems to still care about them, given she backed away at Coiny's "deep-fried breaths" in IDFB 1. But she wasn't even able to say a word in preventing this, just out of fear of what'd happen to her. And if you really think about that'd feel, being unable to help old friends that you still care about because they hate you... Her elimination in BFB really sells it, given how she was just trying to be friendly again (even if she came off as rather controlling and pushy). When she rejoins the game and attempts to further her reformation, the rest of BEEP don't want to be associated with her. To top it all off, in Take the Tower, she has a brief panic attack when faced with fighting Firey. She really does not want to fight him and tries to make excuses, but Gelatin and Firey are confused by this and try to push her into fighting. Fortunately, she and Firey buried the hatchet in BFB 22, and her Heroic Sacrifice (or at least her attempt at it) won her 20,000 more votes than Teardrop in voting the next episode based on that act alone (as well as rabid Fireafy shippers who are over the moon that their ship has been refloated).
  • X was this before Four Took a Level in Kindness. He was the subject of verbal abuse and screeching.
  • Barf Bag is subjected to a lot of abuse simply for being filled with barf, particularly from Lollipop.
  • Taco was trapped in a jawbreaker for several weeks, unable to be heard despite being able to hear the others, forced to listen to her teammates mourn over her supposed death/betrayal while she yells at them to free her, and when she finally breaks out, all of her teammates hate her, and it carries on until BFB 7 (save for Book, who still hated her till BFB 14).
  • Four. Sure, he may be a heartless host who kills and tortures the contestants just for fun, but he goes through a lot of hell, particularly in post-split BFB. To elaborate, he lost most of his contestants to Two, tearfully told X to go with Two (which led up to him getting X back he very next episode), was trapped in a cage for most of BFB 23, barely had a party held for him in BFB 24, and finally getting ultimately replaced by Announcer in BFB 28. BFB 30 makes things better for him, however, but that doesn't change all the stuff Four went through.
  • Lollipop in the stinger for Take the Tower. She has to put up with Ruby and Leafy's awful song and it makes her go downright insane.
  • Black Hole in the appropriately titled "The Worst Day of Black Hole's Life". First there is the brief misunderstanding when Marker says "he sucks" (he was talking about sucking up the other team's blocks). Then both Pen and Teardrop take advantage of his pacifism. Pen blocks him from sucking up Are You Okay's tower which, being that he used to be on the same team as Black Hole, hits him hard. As for Teardrop, Black Hole is immune to her laser gun's attacks and he attempts to make her loose by sucking up her blocks. But when he goes for her stack, she goes right in front of him, blocking him from doing so. She then puts on an evil smirk and then chases Black Hole away from her stack, but ultimately trips on a banana peel, causing her to be killed by him anyways. It is then that Black Hole has had enough.
    Black Hole: This is the worst day of my life.
  • It's not hard to feel bad for Pin when she laments the loss of her limbs on several occasions during BFDIA 5 and 6. Things only get worse for her as she loses her face in BFDIA 11.
• Woolseyism: A few from the Spanish dub.
  • In Lofty, Pen's reasoning for choosing Rocky instead of Golf Ball was changed from disliking that Golf Ball sounded like a boy despite being a girl to her sinking in water (this was possibly changed due to concerns about sounding transphobic).
  • W.O.A.H Bunch's name (a pun on "we'll lose a whole bunch) is changed to La Banda R.A.H.B, short for "La Banda Rueda Al Hoyo de Baba" (The band rolls to a pit of slime)
  • Team Death P.A.C.T is "Aniquilacion T.O.T.A.L" (total annihilation) short for "Aniquilación Tóxica Operamos Todos Acorde a la Ley" (toxic annihilation we all operate according to the law)

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