Get to the Top in 500 Steps

Get to the Top in 500 Steps is the 11th episode of Battle for BFDI, and the 42nd episode overall of the Battle for Dream Island series. It was released on May 27, 2018.

Cold open
The first scene shows Liy talking to Pencil about the contestants in EXIT never opening the door behind Pencil's seat that had been in the EXIT for months. Stapy starts to tease Liy for being "too scared" to see what's beyond. Liy hits Stapy and tells him it's locked, and Pencil says she's never seen Four with a key for the door, to which Liy agrees. Stapy continues to tease Liy, but she gets hits him, causing a staple to come out, and then turns it into a lockpick. Just when Liy is about to unlock the door, Four comes in, yelling for the contestants in EXIT to get back to their seats for Cake at Stake.

Cake at Stake
The intro plays on the class' screen. Four announces that 32,543 votes were cast, and recaps that the eliminated contestant will compete in BFB again, as well as getting the entire cake. Roboty, 8-Ball, David, Stapy, and Liy are consecutively declared not rejoining. Bracelety also loses the voting and asks Four to give Ice Cube her drawing of the latter, which he refuses to do. Four then calls out Pencil, who is happy at first but is told that she does not rejoin, and she needs to stop drawing on her desk. Leafy tells Loser that she'll be happy if either of them joins, which Loser, obviously, does not hear. Four says that Leafy rejoins, and Leafy starts crying tears of joy. Bracelety tries to get Leafy to pass the drawing to Ice Cube, but Leafy uses it as a tissue.

Post-Cake-at-Stake
8-Ball asks Liy whether she is sad she didn't rejoin, but she denies it and claims that she found her "next adventure" in what lies beyond the unlocked backdoor out of EXIT. Meanwhile, in the outer world, Balloony is listening to the sounds inside Four. X comes in, claiming what Balloony does is unsafe, and dragging him out. Four announces to everyone that an eliminated contestant is about to rejoin, and after some speculating from the contestants (Match and Foldy hoped for Pencil and Stapy, respectively) he emits Leafy.

BEEP slowly backs away, not wanting her back. Leafy is saddened by this, but she is instead placed on The Losers! in exchange for Pin's Gratitude Token. Leafy socializes with her new teammates and gives Needle her cake, which she eats, horrifying Cake. Meanwhile, Firey still doesn't remember Leafy.

Challenge
Eraser asks what the contest is. X floats up in the sky like he did in "Getting Teardrop to Talk". Golf Ball tells Four to hurry up. Four says the sixth contest is, but X corrects him, saying that it is the 11th contest and tells him he missed a lot. The eleventh contest is to pick one of your teammates to climb upstairs and press a button. The last team to do so loses. Four also remarks that flying isn't allowed in this challenge.

Flower volunteers for iance, and Snowball is upset that he wasn't picked. Fanny tries to reassure him, but gets killed. Coiny picks Needle to be The Losers!' representative, being the fastest runner, with Firey being upset over not being chosen.

Book tells Lollipop that Taco will surely not be chosen, but the way she says it causes confusion. Gaty then intervenes and chooses Dora, since Book wants to learn more about her from the first episode. When all the contestants start, Flower is pushed down by accident by Tennis Ball. Needle is the fastest and completes the challenge in around 5 seconds. Dora, however, stays still, but goes into a stance shortly after. Flower meanwhile tries to get past Tennis Ball, but he refuses to let her.

Match and Bubble
Bubble finally confronts Match about her being a hypocrite and for not knowing the question answers and her general harsh treatment. Match reveals she was trying to act like Pencil for the sake of leadership, but Bubble argues that doing so only hurts everybody. Ultimately, Match apologizes, but Bubble says she will need time to forgive her, to which Match reluctantly accepts.

Challenge (continued)
To solve her problem, Flower unleashes her Non-Slip Shoes So Ha and runs close to the top while pushing out Tennis Ball and Bomby, killing Pie and launching her above Balloony, but is stopped by Foldy, who wants to avenge Stapy, who was eliminated in BFB 9. The two then try to push against each other.

While Tennis Ball and Bomby falls due to being pushed off earlier, Tennis Ball bounces off the ground and Bomby is flung back up by Black Hole to prevent death. Tree tells Bottle to take him to Four to ask him to recover Pie.

While Flower and Foldy try to push against each other, Foldy momentarily gets the chance to push Flower off. Flower nearly falls, but her shoes keep her on. (Lollipop and Yellow Face have a short interrupting commentary over this.) Flower still pushes off Foldy, but before she presses the button, Dora blasts from the bottom of the stairs to press the button, also pushing her off.

Foldy flies back up, then she, along with Balloony, Bomby, and Tennis Ball press the button. At the bottom, by Death P.A.C.T.'s request, Four recovers Pie, who takes an unexpected strategy as she starts to walk very slowly, while Flower frantically runs back up. Remote and Black Hole have an argument over this, with the latter saying Pie is not trying, but the former saying that it is a way of preventing death. The turning point for Death P.A.C.T. is when Pie intentionally falls over, only for her to be flung back up by Black Hole and press the button, leaving iance up for their second elimination.

Stinger
Teardrop, Needle, and Pin are sitting on some grass at night when Needle suddenly becomes CGI. This could be due to her eating the CGI cake that Leafy gave to her. The others look at her concerned.

Votes (to rejoin)
32,543 votes were cast.

Credits

 * Written by:
 * Satomi Hinatsu
 * Kenzie Bryant
 * Animation:
 * Satomi Hinatsu
 * Kenzie Bryant
 * Caedmon Johnson
 * CGI Animation: Maroue Reus
 * Video Editing: Satomi Hinatsu
 * Sound Design and Editing:
 * Amor Boretto
 * Maroue Reus
 * Music: Michael Huang

Cast

 * Cary Huang as X, Spongy, Tennis Ball, 8-Ball, Grassy, Bracelety, Ruby, Pin, Match, and Marker
 * Michael Huang as Four, Robot Flower, Woody, Snowball, Donut, Eraser, Firey, Yellow Face, Coiny, Cloudy, Blocky, Book, Flower, Pencil, Pen, Bubble, Fries, Golf Ball, Loser, Puffball, and Leafy
 * Satomi Hinatsu as Black Hole, Basketball, Fanny, Saw, Bottle, Bomby, Balloony, Firey Jr., Gaty, and Clock
 * Kenzie Bryant as Taco, Barf Bag, Bell, Ice Cube, Cake, and Needle
 * Sam Lee as Pie, Lollipop, and Stapy
 * Cindy Jiang as Foldy and Pillow
 * Sabrina Barba as Lightning and Liy
 * Katherine Sun as Eggy and Naily (no lines)
 * Thomas Chick as Tree
 * Graham Taylor as Gelatin (no lines)
 * Adam Katz as Nickel (no lines)

Goofs

 * When Leafy goes to give Needle the cake, Leafy’s leg disconnects from her body.
 * When Cake sees Needle eat the cake, his leg disconnects from his body too.

Trivia

 * This is the first episode to have numerals in the title that is not considered a continuation.
 * Leafy is the third contestant to receive over 10,000 votes.
 * In addition, she is the first contestant to rejoin with over 10,000 votes.
 * Leafy is also the first female contestant to receive over 10,000 votes.
 * Leafy has gotten the most votes ever, at 13,835, surpassing Loser's elimination with 12,062 votes in BFB 7.
 * This is the first rejoin in BFB.
 * It is also the first rejoin since "The Glistening" (and technically IDFB 2).
 * The characters not present are Clock, Pen, Pillow, Bell, Puffball, Marker, Fries, Basketball, Grassy, Robot Flower, TV, Saw, Taco, Ice Cube, Naily, Gelatin, Firey Jr., Donut, Spongy and Barf Bag.
 * Liy triggers the intro in this episode, making her the second eliminated contestant to do so after Stapy.
 * Liy is also the second female to trigger the intro, with the first one being Barf Bag.
 * This is the third time Four mistakes A Better Name Than That’s name with “Another Name Than That,” the other two being BFB 2 and BFB 4.
 * Due to Leafy joining The Losers!, they are back to 8 members again.
 * This is the first BFB episode where Donut has no lines.
 * Balloony's body was a straight line for 2 scenes, presumably as a stylistic reference to his BFDI 18 design.
 * Recommended characters were supposed to appear in this episode, however, they didn't.
 * This is the first time Dora is seen in any pose apart from the default (other than the BFB intro, where she is briefly seen in the default pose but from below).
 * Despite all of The Losers! being important in the plot to welcome Leafy, Clock is absent throughout the entire episode.
 * This could be a result of what happened in Enter the Exit, where Four wrote down a reminder to kill Clock on his checklist.
 * If this is true, then Clock is most likely dead.
 * This is the first episode to use the new voting screen.
 * Although it's a minor issue, the boxes don't fill the entire screen, leaving a little bit of space at the bottom.
 * It is also the fourth time they changed the voting screen. (As Getting Teardrop to Talk, Lick Your Way to Freedom, and Enter the Exit had different voting screens).
 * This episode marks the third time Cloudy's Collection appears, along with Flower's Non-Slip Shoes So Ha (at least this season).
 * This is the third time Flower appeared on an episode thumbnail.
 * The gender balance of The Losers! became equal after Leafy joined.
 * This is the second episode in Battle for BFDI to be under 10 minutes in length, with the first being This Episode Is About Basketball.
 * This is the second time iance lost a challenge, the first being in Getting Teardrop to Talk.
 * Coincidentally, both episode titles start with “get.”
 * Firey still hasn’t remembered Leafy.
 * In the ending credits screen, the 'I' in "video", the 'S' in "is", and the 'O' and 'S' in "hours" are uppercase, instead of lowercase.
 * When Flower takes out her shoes, the mystery box sound effect from the Mario Kart games is used.

Continuity references

 * When Pencil moved closer to her desk, it was the same scene used in Enter the Exit.
 * When she drew on her desk, it referenced how she doodled previously in BFDI.
 * Four holds his remote and says "No flyers allowed", which references Fortunate Ben.
 * The back of Loser's seat has "Grupheetie" drawn on it, similar to other structures.
 * Liy says "I found my next adventure!" just like in BFB 4.
 * Flower says "Out of my way, I need my space!" just like in BFDI 1a and BFDI 23.
 * X floats up before Four announces the contest just like he did in BFB 1.
 * Flower using Non-Slip Shoes So Ha is a reference to BFDI 1a.
 * Yellow Face saying "You don't know anything" is a reference to what he said to Purple Face when he called Non-Slip Shoes So Ha! out of fashion.
 * Lollipop saying that the shoes are so 8 years ago, is a reference to Purple Face saying that was 2 years ago. Coincidentally, they are both the color purple.
 * It also refers to how BFDI 1 was made 8 years ago.
 * When Eraser and Golf Ball asked what the next challenge is, it could be a reference to Getting Teardrop to Talk, when Eraser and Golf Ball ask what the first challenge is.
 * Leafy saying "Pin. Alliance, remember?" is a reference to BFDI 1a, which means she still remembers their alliance.
 * Tennis Ball falling off the stairs is a reference to BFDI 11 when he failed to climb the stairs.
 * Needle's CGI effect after eating the realistic-looking cake is a possible reference to the Yoyle Metal effect after eating Yoyleberries.
 * Firey mentions how Coiny said he was slow, which was said in Cycle of Life.
 * Snowball saying “why her, why not me” is a reference to Insectophobe's Nightmare
 * The episode name "Get to the Top in 500 Steps" may be a reference to the htwins.net game "Get To The Top Although There Is No Top".
 * When Coiny states that Needle is a fast runner, it is a reference to Barriers and Pitfalls, where Ice Cube says "Needle is such a fast runner."
 * When Gaty recommends to Book that Dora should do the challenge, she says “you wanted to learn more about her” which is a reference to BFB 1 when Book said “I wonder how Dora was able to communicate with Four so well, I’m curious to learn more”.
 * Tree is now halfway out of Bottle.
 * When Dora hits the button, she used a pose similar to hers in the intro sequence.
 * The iance's voting screen used the same order (from [A] to [G]) from BFB 8, where iance were up for elimination first, but later safe after Match Shows the evidence.
 * Some characters still retain their changes:
 * Bomby is still half-exploded from BFB 3;
 * The Fortune Cookie and Tree are still stuck in Bottle from BFB 5 and BFB 7;
 * All BEEP members besides Balloony are still orange from BFB 6.