Fortunate Ben

"Fortunate Ben" is the fifth episode of Battle for BFDI and the thirty-sixth episode overall in the Battle for Dream Island series. It was released on January 12, 2018.

It was going to be released on January 5, 2018, but since the script took two weeks to write, Thomas Chick announced on HTwins Central that he had just gotten the script on its original release date.

Before the intro
Match and Ruby are seen playing a hand-clapping version of Spongy Cake with new lyrics. Flower then asks Ruby to do her a favor as she pulls her aside. Ruby needs to convince her "ignorant" friends that she's pretty. Ruby says something is a bit off even though that she recognized her beauty two months ago. Flower questions that Ruby says she's not pretty and threatens to crush Ruby. Ruby finds out Flower's more pretty when she curls her left arm, and she experiments with many factors, such as leg placement, pose, petal placement, younger and eye stretch.

Ruby then asks Match if they can play Spongy-Cake again, but Match reconsiders, stating how she analyzed their "name-calling, Spongy-bashing, verbal-bullying" game, and plays the game with Spongy. Spongy raises his leg in a similar fashion to Four's intro pose, which, just like in the last episode, consequently makes the intro play.

Cake at Stake
When it was time for 's Cake at Stake, Four said they must assemble or they will "tremble". Pie says she would rather tremble instead. Four is now mad, so he tries to come up with something even more threatening, in which X gives him an idea by saying another threatening word that rhymes with the previous statement, so Four threatened to "dismemble" them, but that was a fail due to Black Hole's lack of limbs. After Tree tries to rhyme Four's sentence, Four is truly enraged, so much so that he stuns him by screeching. X points out that screeching doesn't rhyme.

After seeing Tree get screeched, they think that's okay, so the contestants assemble nonetheless. When the seats lifted up, Ice Cube was flung into the air.

At Cake at Stake, Four said that Pen's drawing led them to their elimination. Pen gets mad at Four for saying that his drawing was bad, but Four screeches Pen. X then proceeds to say that Pen's drawing was a "disgrace" to the art community, asking him to never touch a piece of paper ever again. Pen says he'd rather get screeched at, and so Four did, causing Pen to fall in a daze.

Later on, Pillow asked how many votes they got, and Four later responded that they got 20,389 votes. Four says the 7 safe contestants will each get a fortune cookie, while the most voted contestant will be eliminated. Bottle says that they hope that elimination doesn't mean "dying", hoping that they don't get killed. However, Bubble gets popped randomly off-screen; Bottle then says that Bubble is dead.

Later, Four said Pen got the least votes (1093 votes), then X says that Pen was the first fewest voted character that doesn't start with a B. Then, Pen says his legal name is "🅱️en". Pie asks Pen about what his fortune cookie says, so Pen opens it and it says that "one should always hope that life will be full of happiness.. brought by...Ice Cube?" Pie says that that is a weird fortune.

Later on, Four says that Pillow can sleep easily tonight, as she has exactly 1300 votes. Pillow grabs the fortune cookie and reads the fortune cookie. She says that it is odd; Four later tells Pillow she is odd, offending her.



Four then says Tree and Remote are safe at the same time. They both read their fortune cookies aloud and after reading his cookie, Tree asks where Four got these fortune cookies from. Four said they got them from the dumpster.

Later on, Team Ice Cube! - Donut, Spongy, Naily and Barf Bag - proudly patting Gelatin on the top of his head. The next scene shows Liy, Pie, Black Hole and Bottle, who were not safe yet. Four says that the contestants with holes are safe. Black Hole sucks up his cookie; Bottle's fell in her hole, and was "tickled".

Liy and Pie remain. Liy said they were the bottom 2, and stated that she said a pun two episodes ago, and says that the viewers would understand her as a positive light. Pie says that it was fine.

Four shows the votes: Pie is safe, and Liy is eliminated. X later said "Hi Pie, bye Liy!", a sentence Four wanted to say. X said that Four can just screech him instead, but Four later says that he will do something way worse than screeching at X. Four gives a fortune cookie to Pie. Her fortune told her that she needed to listen to Liy.

Liy then says that she heard the message and that the viewers and contestants didn't need Liy. Liy then reveals that when she joined her team, she wanted to put a "traumatic" past behind her, turning to save lives instead of killing, as a slideshow of a happy Liy with Pie and Black Hole, a worried Liy all alone in a dark field, and Liy rescuing Blocky, Fanny and Firey Jr. (Possibly Bomby too) plays.

Liy comes down to the ground and says that they thought they would support her, but Tree says to not feel sad/mad for herself. Liy then flips her switch, then switches to the light from BFDI APPISIOTE 225555555!!!!!, surprising Pen. Tree is horrified, and begs Four to suck her up; Four agrees with Tree and sucks Liy up.

After Cake at Stake
After Cake at Stake, Foldy is about to smile, but Foldy and Stapy decide to do it bigger. Later on, Pie questions why Liy was a switch for; Black Hole responds that he thought she was a regular light switch. Pillow says that she does more than that, according to some research, but Pie dismisses her anyway.

After that, Flower and Gaty were seen as Flower is currently deformed due to following Ruby's "fashion tips". Gaty says what Flower is doing is idiotic; Lollipop agrees with Gaty's statement, and tells Four to screech Flower to get her to stop, but Lollipop forgets that Four screeches anyone who talks to him, and Four screeches Lollipop instead of Flower.

After that, Book asks Four where X was; Four said that X was in the 'limb reattachment center'.

Contest
The challenge takes place at the Cliffside. Four announces that the contest is to fly in a paper airplane and not touch the ground. As he gets on his team's plane, Stapy figures out that the planes are made of paper, and is worried since paper can't support his weight.

Then, the contestants get on their paper planes; Ice Cube lands on her plane from being flung from the Cake at Stake seats. Later on, the contestants fly their paper airplane, with no steering in it, as Tennis Ball points out. Lightning attempts to fly his team's plane up, which leads to Four obliterating him and Black Hole, due to flying not being allowed in the challenge. Fries requests that Puffball is disabled instead of obliterated, and Four obliges, also disabling Cloudy instead of obliterating him.

David pilots 's airplane with the loose part of his outline, but the ride gets bumpier, and Cloudy gets injured. Balloony gets mad that no one feels bad for Cloudy, which Nickel mistakes as a normal quote despite being sarcasm. David then gets sleepy and supposedly does fall asleep, which seems to have caused Beep's plane to fall.

's team falls because of their poor weight distribution throughout the plane, as everyone was on one side, and when the plane starts flipping rapidly, Stapy accidentally stapled the team's plane together, later apologizing and saying that his stapler instincts got a hold of him.

As and  fall rapidly towards the ground, Four comments that it looks like the two teams misunderstood the challenge and believe that it is a race to reach the bottom, rather than staying in the air.

Marker then tells his team to slow the plane down, which makes Stapy spit staples out of him in an effort to slow the descent. The ground breaks apart slightly when a line of staples hit, as continues falling.

Meanwhile, is trying to steer away from the cliff, and they desperately try to steer from the cliff by dabbing, which seems to somewhat work and slows their fall due to the increased air resistance. Rocky vomits on David, causing him to wake up and start steering again.

Unfortunately, the staples split the ground in two, causing to fall between the parts and not hit the ground as quick. Even though the team was going to make it past the cliff, the cliff somehow lurched forward (the ground split did it) and caught before they passed, and X pats the ground thanking it for saving Beep from hitting the ground, so  hit the ground first, putting them up for elimination again. X then tells the rest of the teams in the air to do whatever they want since he doesn't know what to do with them, which results in a very positive reaction from the teams still in the air.

Stinger
X is lying in a field waving his arms around while an amazing song plays, sung by both a low-pitched voice and a vibrato voice at the same time. The lyrics of the song are:

Glad to have 2 legs again! Glad to be an X again!

The song is followed by an applause.

Votes
20389 votes were cast.

Credits

 * Writing- Cary Huang, Michael Huang
 * Animation- Satomi Hinatsu, Michael Huang, Caedmon Johnson
 * Music- Michael Huang

Voice acting

 * Michael Huang: Woody, Donut, Snowball, Coiny, Cloudy, Four, Robot Flower, Puffball, Eraser, Blocky, Bubble, Pen, Firey, Book, Fries, Loser, Yellow Face, Flower, Golf Ball
 * Cary Huang: Spongy, X, Tennis Ball, 8-Ball, Ruby, Pin, Match, Grassy, Marker
 * Satomi Hinatsu: Saw, Bottle, Bomby, Black Hole, Gaty, Balloony, Firey Jr., Basketball, Clock, Fanny
 * Kenzie Bryant: Needle, Taco, Ice Cube, Barf Bag, Cake, Bell
 * Sam Lee: Pie, Stapy, Lollipop
 * Cindy Jiang: Foldy, Pillow
 * Katherine Sun: Eggy, Naily
 * Sabrina Barba: Lightning, Liy
 * Adam Katz: Nickel
 * Graham Taylor: Gelatin
 * Thomas Chick: Tree

Trivia

 * This is the first BFB episode to have a team up for elimination for the second time.
 * This is the first BFB episode to be made by the newest animator, Caedmon Johnson.
 * SuperScratchkat is his Youtube channel, and the animation in BFB 5 and the channel's BFB fan animations have the same art form.
 * When Roboty spoke, he actually said "HIDDEN" in morse code.
 * This is the first time in BFB that a contestant whose name doesn't start with "B" gets the least votes (Bubble, Balloony, Bomby).
 * This was pointed out in the episode, although Pen had an excuse that this fact was incorrect.
 * Pen revealed that his legal name was "🅱️en" although this was most likely just a joke.
 * This is most likely why the episode was named Fortunate Ben, as Pen was the first to get a fortune cookie.
 * Pen's legal name, 🅱️en, is a reference to the 🅱️ meme, which involves replacing a letter (usually the first letter) in a word with the 🅱️ emoji.
 * In Cary's reaction video, he jokingly stated that it's pronounced 'Bwwwen'.
 * This is the fourth time in a row that the record of votes has increased and the votes entirely of the episode.
 * Considering how Ice Cube, Taco, Barf Bag, Cake, Bell, Needle, Eggy, and Naily don't speak in the episode, it is possible their respective voice actresses, Kenzie Bryant and Katherine Sun, weren't available to record any lines. It is also likely that the scripts simply didn't require them to talk.
 * Along with them, Saw, Firey Jr., Basketball, Clock, Fanny, Pin, 8-Ball, Grassy, Eraser, Firey, Yellow Face, Coiny, Blocky, Robot Flower, Puffball, and Loser don't speak in the episode.
 * This is the third episode of season 4 that featured no recommended characters.
 * In Cary's reaction to Today's Very Special Episode, he said that this episode and future episodes of BFB would have more locations.
 * That was indeed the case, for the challenge's setting took place in an area with a cliff and multiple plants around.
 * This is the first episode where all contestants up for elimination have received at least 1000 votes each.
 * Cake was promised to have more spotlight, but this was not the case in the official episode most likely due to the information being leaked and being postponed a week later in order to write a new script.
 * is the first team to be up for elimination twice in BFB, having previously lost in Lick Your Way to Freedom.
 * This may be so another female doesn't get eliminated, as there are no females on.
 * This is the second time a BFB episode came out without a thumbnail.
 * Flower is seen to be on the first, yet unofficial thumbnail.
 * This is the second BFB episode to not have a description. (though this episode will most likely come out with one, since this same situation happened with BFB 4, and the description was later written). And this was apparently the case.
 * Pin and Blocky were seen for a split second during the elimination (When Pillow received her fortune cookie).
 * Just after Pillow opened the cookie, Blocky is seen fallen over.
 * Ruby has developed and has mixed feelings on Flower's beauty. In her view, it depends on Flower’s position.
 * Being 10 minutes and 25 seconds long, this is this third shortest episode of BFB so far, only behind Lick Your Way to Freedom and This Episode Is About Basketball.
 * Liy's previous design (how she looked like in real life (from BFDI APPISIOTE 225555555!!!!!) was shown to be inside Liy.
 * Liy has shown that she has the ability to switch between switches.
 * David has shown that he has the ability to manipulate his unconnected outline on his head.
 * David uses the advantage to steer his team to victory, although failing due to 's unintentional sabotage, led by Stapy.
 * This is the third episode named after a contestant.
 * It is also the third time that the intro plays without Four raising his hand.
 * Again, a contestant substitutes for Four, being Spongy.
 * This is the first time an armless contestant triggers the intro.
 * The number of deaths that have been prevented by (2,763) may reference the number of miles it took from the original location in BFDIA to Yoyle Mountain.
 * This was also the first episode named after a contestant's legal name.
 * Liy is responsible for most death preventions on her team (2,753), although this may be a gag.
 * If this is true however, the rest of her team has only prevented death 10 times altogether.
 * It is the second time Lightning doesn't ask "So, to clarify..." when the challenge starts, the first time being in Today's Very Special Episode.
 * It's the first time didn't place 6th, because all teams won, except.
 * However, might be 7th, as they are shown falling with, in danger of suffering elimination.
 * No characters outside of have a visible walk animation.
 * This episode reveals that Match and Spongy might be friends now.
 * In the stinger with the "Glad To Be An X Again" song, there are bandages wrapped around the bottom-right part of X, meaning that part of his body was removed and turned into a lower-case Y.
 * It was revealed that Cary Huang was the voice behind the strange voice singing in the background of the stinger.
 * There's a unused line when Match and Ruby are playing Spongy Cake, the line can be heard as "5 6 7 8". It can be seen here.
 * Ice Cube falls from quite a height in this episode, yet curiously doesn't shatter.
 * When all of are shown in their plane, Stapy's mouth is shaped liked a staple. This may or may not be intentional.
 * When the teams are getting into their planes, 's theme from Getting Teardrop to Talk is played, only with drums.

Goofs

 * Pen’s drawing should still be stuck in Bottle like Tree and the fortune cookie in the later episodes but it’s removed.
 * The voting screen lists the end of voting as "Jan 14, 2017", despite the episode being released in 2018. This is corrected in the video description.
 * In the scene where Pie is walking to her podium, she stays in place with her walk cycle for a few frames before the Cake at Stake intro plays.
 * The Cake at Stake Intro stayed black for almost the whole time.
 * This may or may not be intentional, for that we are not sure for now. It probably was because of an editing error.
 * When Flower turns her petals, her head isn't attached to her body.
 * When X moves a paper plane a little,the bandages aren't seen,even after four "sliced" one of his legs.
 * However, the reason might be that four "sliced" one of his legs after the contest started.
 * When Beep falls down and loses the challenge, the contestants twitch to the left.
 * Near the end of the intro, Pencil’s face is upside down.
 * At the end of the video, the contestants aren't seen on their planes.
 * However, it could be the planes being viewed underside.
 * When Lightning gets obliterated, Snowball is missing an arm.
 * When Free Food's plane was wobbling, Stapy's facial expression did not change when the plane was flying in and out of view.
 * When Flower asks that she needs Ruby for a sec, she and Match say ’5. 6. 7.’ But It’s not lip synced.
 * When Stapy was talking, Fries' limbs are missing.
 * When everyone is about to take flight in their planes, Flower is missing her face.
 * In some scenes, Four and X can be seen talking with their mouths not moving.
 * During Liy's flashback, Bomby is missing his arms, legs, and face.
 * In 7:08, Book doesn’t have a mouth.

Continuity references

 * Ruby and Match play Spongy Cake like it is played in BFDIA 5d.
 * Foldy was about to twitch her mouth like Ice Cube and Firey in the previous episodes, but instead, Foldy and Stapy changed their mind and decided to show off huge smiles instead.
 * Stapy's agreement to Foldy saying "Yeah!" is the same one used in Getting Teardrop to Talk when Marker asks him to play Toss The Dirt.
 * For their team to avoid touching the ground, Woody dabs, which is a reference to Lick Your Way to Freedom, where Woody also dabs.
 * Ice Cube being flung away from the Cake at Stake is a reference to how she appears at Cake at Stakes in Sweet Tooth and Power of Three only to be flung away by the Announcer.
 * When Four said X was in the "Limb Reattachment center", it was a reference to when he said X was in "burn center" in Why Would You Do This on a Swingset.
 * It may also be a reference to Pin losing her limbs in Get in the Van.
 * The Emergency Button from Rescission may have been used to obliterate Lightning and Black Hole.
 * Gelatin wanting to use Bomby for the challenge is a reference to Getting Teardrop to Talk.
 * Bubble died after Bottle said "preventing death", which is another reference to Why Would You Do This on a Swingset - A total of 3 deaths overall.
 * At Cake at Stake, Pin can be seen angry at Blocky. A little bit later, Blocky is seen knocked over. This is most likely a reference to Take the Plunge: Part 1, where Pin knocks Blocky over when he was grabbing her.
 * Remote saying that Death P.A.C.T. has prevented 2763 deaths is a reference to the number of miles from Yoyleland.
 * Just before Stapy staples his team's plane closed, all Free Food members except Stapy and Fries were in the same poses they are in the intro.
 * When Blocky was on A Better Name Than That's paper plane, he was making a pose similar to the one in Take the Plunge: Part 1, Welcome Back and Why Would You Do This on a Swingset.
 * When Four was showing the votes, it used the same thing in Why Would You Do This on a Swingset.
 * The same remote used by Firey before to obliterate Bubble is used by Four in this episode to obliterate Lighting and Black Hole.

Controversy

 * After the release of the new episode, some fans were confused or upset about the episode's "changed artstyle" from the new animator Caedmon Johnson, with most of the attention being drawn to Four and X. Some had stated it was terrible, while others defended it and said it was more expressive.


 * Fans have been complaining about being up for elimination again because most people wanted all the teams to actually lose before being put up for elimination twice
 * Cake was going to have more of a role, but he did not receive any.
 * There was also criticism about the "short" challenge, although this issue more likely comes from the pacing of the episode.
 * Jacknjellify claimed that they wanted to "spark worldwide discussion of the aerodynamics of dabbing" in their tweet.
 * Some people also started the voting of Woody because of the fact that he started the dabbing solution. Nevertheless, he was still safe in Four Goes Too Far.

Deaths

 * Total: 3
 * Bubble pops off-screen.
 * Lightning and Black Hole are obliterated by Four.