Battle For Dream Island (Series)

***Battle for Dream Island*** (***BFDI*** for short) is an American reality TV viewer-voting animated web series created by the Huang Twins named Michael Huang and Cary Huang, who are most known by their YouTube channel name, jacknjellify. The series is about a competition between inanimate, anthropomorphic objects. It premiered on January 1, 2010, and is currently airing its 5th season. The entire series is uploaded on YouTube, on the channel jacknjellify.

Outside of web episodes, the series has expanded into web shorts, web games (such as *BFDIA 5b*), and merchandise (such as plushes and a physical book).

## About

The show's 1st season, simply named *Battle for Dream Island*, ran from January 1, 2010, to January 1, 2012, on the show's 2nd birthday, and tells a story of 20, later 21, inanimate, anthropomorphic objects living in a fictional place called Goiky, where they have known each other their whole lives. They are living peacefully until a mysterious Announcer drops from the sky and announces a competition to win Dream Island, a luxurious island that all the objects lust after. They're split into two teams at first, the Squishy Cherries, and the Squashy Grapes. They competed in challenges each episode, and the losing team's fate is put in the hands of the viewers, who decide in the comments section who they want to be eliminated from the show. The format continued with several plot twists until three contestants were left competing, then a winner out of the three was directly voted. This contestant was declared the winner and got to choose who is to be allowed onto the island with them.

The show's 2nd season, *Battle for Dream Island Again*, ran from 2012 to 2013 and follows a similar format to the first season, but with several new characters, along with most of the original cast. It also expands the lore of the series. It was canceled early due to monetization issues on YouTube. The season resumed after a 10-year hiatus with the release of "Well Rested".

The show returned for a 3rd season in 2016 after a 3-year long hiatus. The season was named *IDFB*, and picked up roughly 1,000 days after the events of the final Season 2 episodes, where the objects are no longer competing and are now living in the fictional Yoyle City. The season was going to add more lore to the show and shows how the objects adapted to their new lives. It currently only has one episode — "Welcome Back". The season was put on hold due to the creators attending college. It is also possible that IDFB was dropped completely in favor of its follow-up season, BFB, as stated by Cary in his BFB 1 reaction video:

> *"Who really liked IDFB? It was pretty good, but it had no direction, no competition. We had some plans for the storyline and the lore to expand, but this is better".*
>
>

The 4th season, the aforementioned *Battle for BFDI*, ran from November 3, 2017, to April 9, 2021, and boasts a cast of 64 (later 65) contestants, both new and old, once again competing for a reward, A BFDI. The art style is more loose and simple, allowing episodes to be released either bi-weekly or tri-weekly, with longer waiting times observed for breaks and holidays. The season was hosted by Four and X until "Four Goes Too Far", when it was hosted by Donut until "This Episode is About Basketball" when X returned. Four also returned in "Enter the Exit". The season split into two, with 40 of the 54 remaining contestants switching to The Power of Two. The season was renamed to *Battle for BFB* and had a cast of 14 (later 15) contestants. After getting to the final three, Announcer replaces Four due to budget cuts, leaving X and the remaining BFB contestants. In the final episode, everyone resolved their conflicts. 30 episodes of this season have been released.

A new 5th season, *Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two*, hosted by Two, was announced in "The Escape from Four" to start on January 9, 2021. However, it was delayed a few hours due to glitches of the intro and ended up being released on January 10, 2021. The season has 43 contestants (the original 40 + 2 debuters and Teardrop joining in "The Worst Day of Black Hole's Life") battling for the Power of Two.

## History

### Pre-BFDI (2008 - 2009)

In 2006, during 3rd grade, Cary Huang was thinking of a game similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors, and he made his own game called Water, Sponge and Fire, which would later evolve into Teardrop, Spongy and Firey.

2 years later, in 2008, he decided to make the characters into his 5th-grade project, but 2 more characters were added, Woody and Match. After his project he decided to make a comic on it on May 2, 2008 with his brother, Michael, which was titled "FIREY to keep our customers happy", which is the first drawing related to *BFDI*.

The first drawing made later evolved as well into the *Firey* comic series made on the same year, which only had 3 books. *Total Firey Island*, made on September 30, 2008, was made as the precursor to the first season, which has over 18 books, and Pencil was the winner of this season, according to the book "Jumbo", which was the finale.

In January 2009, Cary and Michael made an Adobe Flash game called *Firey's Candy Bar Adventure*, which, as the first *BFDI* game in history, featured Firey attempting to open a bar of Himshey's (a parody brand of Hershey's) and mentioned Match. The game was never completed. It also features the first occurence of a character having a voice, as Firey's singular voice clip is by a guy named Anton Woldhek.

On August 11, 2009, the Huang family went to a vacation in Hawaii islands, and a week later (August 18, 2009), the Huang twins had the idea of making a Flash animated cartoon based on their comic series. Later, from August to December 2009, the Battle for Dream Island series goes into production by creating storyboards with *Total Firey Points* and animation, as well as creating the assets.

### Battle for Dream Island (2010 - 2012)

*Battle for Dream Island* was originally going to be uploaded on the carykh channel despite being created in July 16, 2011, but it was instead uploaded to the jacknjellify channel, that was created on February 4, 2008. The first part of "Take the Plunge" premiered on January 1, 2010 at 8:11 AM PST, starting the series, and hours later, jaysillyboy commented on the second part (which showed the formation of the teams known as the Squishy Cherries and the Squashy Grapes), voting for Flower, which was later the first commenter, voter and later recommender and fan. When the contestants were eliminated, they were sent into the Tiny Loser Chamber. Some of the eyes eventually started changing in episodes like Power of Three.

The limbs and the rest of the eyes eventually changed from "Insectophobe's Nightmare", and showed the formation of a new team, Another Name, Bomby first appearing as a recommended character (where you could comment on a sub-reddit a character you could think of), and the rejoining of Blocky, who got eliminated in "Sweet Tooth". The merge was hit on "A Leg Up in the Race", where the teams were dissolved and points were introduced to carry on future episodes, until "Rescission". In "Half a Loaf Is Better Than None", Spongy rejoined the game, after his elimination in "Are You Smarter Than a Snowball?". At the ending of "The Reveal", the Announcer said that a recommended character was going to join the game, which was David, in "Reveal Novum", but got eliminated in "Gardening Hero", where due to budget cuts, the contestants were sent to space.

Flower rejoined later in the game in "The Glistening" after Ice Cube got eliminated until "Insectophobe's Nightmare 2", where the season got canceled due to receiving less votes than the previous episode, and they were eaten by bugs created by the Announcer, but they somehow get revived. Firey eventually received the most votes to win in "Return of the Hang Glider", but on the moment where he was going to let Leafy in Dream Island (as he did with everyone else), Firey refused due to the previous episode, Leafy disliked his ferris wheel. She called the Announcer to give him Dream Island by having a paper slip from Box of Paper Slips by Yellow Face (who made commercials in the previous episodes all the way back in "Puzzling Mysteries") that made him make Leafy the owner of Dream Island, and making it stolen.

A 2nd season was also planned if the voters make the episode have 1,000 votes, but it didn't happen.

On February 2, 2012, \*.pngs of the season's character bodies were released announced on this video.

### Battle for Dream Island Again (2012 - 2013, 2023 - present)

After the 1st season's finale, they made a King Of The Web account that is now deactivated, which if they reached at least 1,000 votes, a 2nd season would occur. They've got 15,332 votes.

On June 29, 2012, "Yeah, Who? I Wanna Know" premiered on YouTube, which began *Battle for Dream Island Again*. It had the formation of 2 teams, Team No-Name and W.O.A.H. Bunch. As the episodes would go on, once the 4th rule in BFDI Game Rules was mentioned before the 1st challenge, contestants should switch teams if they want, members from Team No-Name would go to W.O.A.H. Bunch.

On July 9, 2012, a \*.fla file for the season's assets was released according to this video. Problems would later occur with the file until July 24, 2012, where the problems are fixed.

"BFDIA 5" was different, where it was shown that Golf Ball made promises to her team to never leave, until Pencil's alliance decided to make a new team, FreeSmart. The episode, unlike most of them, was separate to 5 episodes, being "Get in the Van", "BFDIA 5b", "No More Snow!", "It's a Monster" and "The Long-lost Yoyle City". BFDIA 5b was a game instead of an episode. The mouths would change later in the multi-part episode before being reverted in portions of "Welcome Back".

BFDIA 6 was going to be released on September 1, 2013, but after Cary and Michael suffered budget cuts, the season had to be cancelled, and was left dormant as IDFB released it’s first episode in September of 2016, Battle for BFB began in 2017 and finished in 2021, and TPOT began in 2020.

However, on September 1st, 2023, BFDIA 6 finally released, exactly 10 years after the episode was originally supposed to come out. As of present, the season is being continued as a revival season, being listed as *Season 2b*, whilst the original episodes became *Season 2a*.

### Hiatus (2013 - 2016)

On August 2013, it was announced that Michael and Cary were going to get in a hiatus due to junior year high school starting, which they were so busy on the moment. Their Google AdSense account got disabled for 2 years and led to *Battle for Dream Island Again* getting officially cancelled in March 2014.

In January 19, 2016, the 2nd part of "Take the Plunge" was deleted for 3 days for no known reason, which led to the episode being reuploaded. On March 4, 2016, Michael uploaded a reason why their AdSense account was disabled for no reason. A Google Employee would later see the video and enable their account which they can make money and make *BFDI* again, but they started working on a 3rd season and won a Cartoon Food Award.

### dnalsI maerD roF elttaB (2016 - present)

On July 23, 2016, it was announced on a video that *BFDI* has been confirmed to return. A few fans thought that BFDIA 6 would be able to be released while it was not.

*IDFB* would later begin on September 1, 2016 with the release of "Welcome Back". Later, a Reddit thread was created allowing people to recommend a character to be featured in the top 25, and later, appear in IDFB 2, but due to the season's indefinite hiatus, the recommended characters submitted in the thread were instead used on "Lick Your Way to Freedom". IDFB 2 was confirmed to originally release in October 1, 2016, but on September 25, 2016, it was confirmed delayed to December 1, 2016 in Back 2 School Bad News due to Cary Huang reaching his sophomore year of college. It was also confirmed that a folder hosted on Google Drive containing source files for the series' episodes would be released, following with the release of Paper Towel on the same day IDFB 2 was supposed to come out.

The episode would originally end up never releasing, as it was announced on November 23, 2016 that IDFB would be on an indefinite hiatus because the twins want to focus on other stuff like Ten Words of Wisdom.

### Dormant time (2017)

On May 11, 2017, Cary announced that he and Michael's sophomore year of college has ended so that they can work on *IDFB* again, but then they ended up not doing so. A new short called Ballers was uploaded to YouTube on June 22, 2017, which the video would later become a track used in *Battle for BFB*.

### Battle for B.F.D.I. (2017 - 2021)

The Huang Twins started development on BFB in June 2017. Satomi Hinatsu would eventually become part of the jacknjellify crew and release a \*.fla file consisting of 2016-2017 assets in HTwins Central, following with her making Liy and Stapy's assets as well as Nickel and Saw's updated ones.

The season begins in November 3, 2017 with the release of "Getting Teardrop to Talk". This season had a new art-style which, instead of using BFDI assets, the eyes, mouths, and limbs are all hand-drawn. The prisoned *IDFB* characters were freed, all the characters move to the grasslands, and Foldy, Loser, Liy, and Stapy debuted. Needle would stop being called "Needy" as well. This season, rather than hosts being speaker boxes, the hosts were algebralians, those being Four and X, which were used in X Finds Out His Value. The season consisted of 8 teams, those being A Better Name Than That, Beep, , Death P.A.C.T., Free Food, iance, The Losers!, and Team Ice Cube!. Character changes began to spread around the whole series, for example, Saw lost her brown handle due to the lava melting it.

In "Four Goes Too Far", Four disappears and Donut gets to be the temporary host while he's gone. This caused death to be permanent until "Enter the Exit", where Four comes back and reverts everything back to normal. Saw would eventually disappear after "Questions Answered", followed by Clock in "Enter the Exit". In "Get to the Top in 500 Steps", a rejoin happened, making Leafy, who got eliminated in "Why Would You Do This on a Swingset", rejoin and rather than staying in the exact same team as before, join The Losers!.

In "Return of the Rocket Ship", Saw gains a pink handle as a replacement for her now-destroyed brown handle, and Dora changed her hair to avoid copyright issues. Something chaotic would later happen in "Don't Dig Straight Down", as the lava started spreading all around the grasslands and all the characters, except for Coiny, Firey, Four, Naily, Needle, and X, have to avoid touching the ground because if they do, they will be killed by the lava. Flower would later flush away all the lava in "The Four is Lava".

#### Battle for B.F.B. (2020 - 2021)

On February 13, 2020, jacknjellify started hiring people to work for the series. A bunch of people would later become accepted and then become part of the crew.

In "The Escape from Four", the show split into 2 seasons as the twins wanted to make BFB end faster. Due to this, there were now 14 contestants left on the season, but BFB still helped the channel grow by collaborating with 2 famous people and having around 250,000 subscribers in a year due to it's production. After the aforementioned episode, a lot of crew members were hired to work on BFB, making episodes release monthly. BFB ended on April 9, 2021 with the release of Chapter Complete, but it did not stop the subscribers from hitting 1 million.

### Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two (2021 - present)

In "Uprooting Everything", Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two was confirmed to begin in January 9, 2021, but ended up being postponed to next day due to glitches in the intro.

On August of 2021, BFDI was nominated for Cartoon Crave Awards with ending up winning 63% out of the 37% shows.

After "The Worst Day of Black Hole's Life", Satomi Hinatsu was confirmed to be retired from the jacknjellify crew due to "creative differences and efficiency problems", and would later elaborate that she was responsible for longer episode waits and her creative input causing "conflicts". She, however, will still work for TPOT, but only to voice the characters she is currently voicing.

In January 2023, a Spanish-language channel for jacknjellify was officially launched through Unilingo, hosting Spanish dubs for the BFDI series. In July, Jacknjellify opened an office in the Water Garden Business Center in Santa Monica, California. In the same month, the channel started uploading Youtube Shorts which got them 494,000 subscribers in a few weeks. On September 1, 2023, jacknjellify revived the originally cancelled BFDIA, by releasing the season's 6th episode on the 10-year anniversary of the episode's original intended upload date. As of now, BFDIA has 11 episodes and TPOT has 8.

## Future

*Main article: Season 6*
The possibility of a 6th season of *Battle for Dream Island* was first discussed in "The Secret Behind BFB's Split". After Cary Huang states that one year after *Battle for BFB* ends, he would have the opportunity to do a new season that changes something.

Currently, not much is known about this season, except that it may be "a new style of season" or have "a new art form."

Cary Huang had mentioned in "CARY REACTS TO BFB 20" on Humany that he wanted to return to the art style that *Battle for Dream Island*, *Battle for Dream Island Again*, and *IDFB* had. It is possible that this season may return to that kind of art style.

On August 7, 2020, the season was further discussed by Cary Huang on HTwins Central, stating that he wants to work on a 6th season, but nothing has been decided, but likely will when the time comes.

## Trivia

* The first characters shown in BFDI (on YouTube) are Match and Pencil.
	+ Unless one were to count Bubble and Pin on the thumbnail.
* *Battle for Dream Island* is the first object show on YouTube ever created.
* BFDI also stands for Blocky's Funny Doings International, an in-universe prank company.
	+ It also stands for Buried Forest, Deciduously Insulated, a location in BFB.
* BFDI is 13 years old, as of January 1, 2023.
* Each multi-part episode is denoted differently:
	+ BFDI 1 denotes the parts with letters under the same episode number and the same title.
	+ BFDIA 5 denotes the parts with letters under the same episode number, but each with different titles.
	+ BFB 13 and BFB 14 denote the parts with different episode numbers and different titles.
* *Battle for Dream Island* was picked as a nominee for the Cartoon Crave Awards, a hub dedicated to cartoon news, as "Best Web Series" among 3 others. On January 22, 2022, BFDI won the award for "Outstanding Web Series" by a landslide with 63% of the votes.
	+ Jacknjellify made a video regarding this, asking fans if they could vote for BFDI.
	+ BFDI was also voted the 2nd most favorite show in general in the Cartoon Crave Awards, behind *The Owl House* and ahead of *Helluva Boss* and *Amphibia*. Interestingly, the BFDI image for the tweet was an unofficial one. It was the thumbnail to a video called "BFDL 3A / Resign Ups 1" by gopokemon121.
* There are 68 participants in *Battle For Dream Island* so far:
	+ There are 7 contestants who qualified for every season: Coiny, Golf Ball, Ice Cube, Needle, Rocky, Pin and Tennis Ball.
	+ There are 9 contestants who qualified for 4 seasons: Bomby, Book, Firey, Fries, Nickel, Pencil, Spongy, Teardrop and Yellow Face.
	+ There are 11 contestants who qualified for 3 seasons: Bubble, Donut, Eraser, Flower, Gelatin, Leafy, Match, Pen, Puffball, Ruby, Snowball, and Woody.
	+ There are 25 contestants who qualified for 2 seasons: Barf Bag, Basketball, Bell, Black Hole, Blocky, Bottle, Cake, Clock, Cloudy, David, Dora, Eggy, Fanny, Foldy, Gaty, Grassy, Lightning, Marker, Naily, Pie, Pillow, Remote, Robot Flower, Saw, Tree, and TV.
	+ There are 13 contestants who qualified for 1 season: 8-Ball, Balloony, Bracelety, Evil Leafy, Firey Jr., Liy, Lollipop, Loser, Price Tag, Profily, Roboty, Stapy, Taco, and Winner.
* Coiny, Pin, Needle, Golf Ball, Tennis Ball, Rocky, Ice Cube, Yellow Face, Bomby, Book, and Nickel are the only contestants who have competed simultaneously on multiple ongoing seasons.
* BFDI characters have made appearances on national television:
	+ The Marker plush made an appearance on BBC News at 8:53 AM BST on April 8, 2023, brought to an interview by English writer Aston Smith, the 11-year-old author of *Things About Space*. Aston's Marker plush made a 2nd appearance, on ITV News Anglia on April 12, 2023, during the ITV News Regional program at 6:00-6:28 PM BST.
	+ In around June 2023, Pencil became the 2nd BFDI character to appear on national television. She appeared on a Nickelodeon Pakistan promo for Nick Genius 2023. The animation is taken from a green screen video made by Ultrocraze of Pencil saying "You'll pay for that, Donut." in Yeah, Who? I Wanna Know at 4:35.
	+ On the October 20, 2023 episode of NBC's *Today*, a Snowball sticker can be seen alongside a sticker of Nickel from *Inanimate Insanity* on the back of a phone during a report on the impact of screen time on children and teenagers. These stickers are the same ones sold during the 2023 crossover experiences in Los Angeles and New York.
	+ During The Holy Month of Ramadan of 2023, a TV Program called Aareel Bo Adnan (آريل بو عدنان) aired on Kuwait TV Channel 1 (KTV1). Ice Cube appears near the end of the program's opening titles (at 0:25), dancing inside a green-and-white-striped movie theatre soda cup. This is a joke referencing an ice cube dancing around in a cup of cold soda. The animation is taken from a fan-made recreation of the Loser Dance, a popular jacknjellify short, that replaces Loser's asset with Ice Cube's. However, she incorrectly has arms despite being armless in the show.
* Anton Woldhek was the first person to voice someone in BFDI with, Firey's Candy Bar Adventure.

## Gallery

The twenty original protagonists of the show with their host

*Battle for Dream Island* intro

*Battle for Dream Island Again* intro

*IDFB* intro

*Battle for BFDI* intro

**Battle for BFB** intro

*Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two Episode 1* intro

*Battle for Dream Island* logo from BFDI TikTok Compilation