- For the first season, see Battle for Dream Island.
- For other uses, see BFDI (disambiguation).
- Not to be confused with Bottle For Dream Island.
Battle for Dream Island (BFDI for short) is an American animated viewer-voting comedy web series created by the Huang twins, Cary and Michael. The series is about a competition between inanimate, anthropomorphic objects, competing for a grand prize at the end of the season. It first premiered on January 1, 2010, and since then has amassed 5 seasons. The series is uploaded to YouTube, on the channel jacknjellify.
Outside of web episodes, the series has expanded into web shorts, web games (such as BFDIA 5b), a music album, and merchandise, such as plushies, figurines, a vinyl record, and a book.
About[]
The first season, simply named Battle for Dream Island, ran from January 1, 2010, to January 1, 2012, and tells a story of 20 (later 21) inanimate, anthropomorphic objects living in a fictional place called Goiky. They are living peacefully until a mysterious speaker box drops from the sky and holds 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 compete in challenges each episode, and the losing team's fate is put in the hands of the viewers, who decide in the comment section who they want to be eliminated from the show. This continued until three contestants were left, when a winner was voted on. This contestant was declared the winner and got to choose who is to be allowed onto the island with them. 25 episodes of this season were released.
The show's second season, Battle for Dream Island Again, ran from 2012 to 2013 (first run), and since 2023 (second run). It follows a similar format as the first season, though with likes and dislikes instead of with comments. It introduced several new characters, with most of the original cast returning. It was canceled early due to monetization issues on YouTube, but the season resumed after a 10-year hiatus with the release of "Well Rested". It currently has 22 episodes.
After a 3-year long hiatus, the series returned with a third season named IDFB, and picked up roughly 1,000 days after the events of "The Long-lost Yoyle City." The objects are no longer competing and are now living in Yoyle City. Despite this, viewers would vote for which contestant from the LOL could join the show. The season was going to add more lore to the show and show how the objects would adapt to their new lives, but IDFB was dropped completely in favor of its follow-up season 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".
Despite this, at the BFDI x II tour meetup on June 29, 2024, a fan would ask if IDFB would continue after BFDIA ends. Cary's response: "I feel like, pretty much, yeah".[1]
The season currently only has one episode — "Welcome Back".
The fourth season, Battle for BFDI, ran from November 3, 2017, to April 9, 2021. It boasts a record cast of 64 contestants, both new and old, competing for A BFDI. It has a messy, hand-drawn art style (unlike the previous seasons which were animated using assets) and a lax, fun-forward writing style, allowing episodes to be released quicker and with less stress. The season was hosted by Four and X (and later Donut and Announcer), two mysterious creatures known as Algebraliens. In episode 16, "The Escape from Four", Two came and persuaded 40 of the remaining contestants to compete in his own show, The Power of Two. Starting in "X Marks the Spot", the season was renamed to Battle for BFB (often referred to as "post-split" by fans), switched to a vote to save format, and had a cast of 14 (later 15) contestants. 30 episodes of this season were released.
A fifth season, Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two, was announced in "The Escape from Four", and released on January 10, 2021. It follows the objects Two persuaded to join his show back in season 4's "The Escape from Four" battling for limitless power. This season uses the vote to save format and, starting in "Gardening Zero", eliminates 2 contestants per episode. It currently has 20 episodes.
History[]
Pre-BFDI (2006 - 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 as the first 3 characters related to BFDI.
2 years later, in 2008, he decided to make the characters into his 5th-grade project, DangerousWay Catalog, 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 occurrence 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 in development 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 premiered on January 1, 2010 at 8:11 AM PST with The first part of "Take the Plunge". 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 character recommender and fan. When the contestants were eliminated, they were sent into the Tiny Loser Chamber.
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, 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 100,000 votes, a 2nd season would occur. This goal was originally not reached, so it was lowered down to 10,000, which was eventually reached, according to a future video.
A voting for a Second Season was opened on February 12, 2012, letting viewers vote for which characters they wanted to see compete in Season 2. It received 15,532 votes.
On June 30, 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 parts, 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 its first episode in September of 2016, Battle for BFB begun in 2017 and finished in 2021, and TPOT began in 2021.
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)[]
In 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.
On 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)[]
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 (it was later).
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 on 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 on 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 aliens based off algebraic symbols called "Algebraliens", 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 also began to spread around the whole series, for example, Saw lost her brown handle off-screen due to the lava melting it during the first episode.
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. 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, around the same time when the channel hit 1 million subscribers.
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 on January 9, 2021, but ended up being postponed to next day due to glitches in the intro. In August 2021, BFDI was a nominee for the Cartoon Crave Awards with ending up winning by 63%.
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, still voices her respective characters to this day. Following that, Sam Thornbury took over writing duties, having written every TPOT episode since then (with exception of "Gardening Zero").
In January 2023, a Spanish dub was launched through Unilingo, hosting Spanish dubs for the BFDI series. Currently, the latest dubbed episode is BFB 23.
On April 15, 2023, a video titled "TWO OF THEM!? - BFDI X Inanimate Insanity 2023 Event" was released, announcing the first ever episode of Battle for Dream Island that was screened in a theater in front of an audience early, that being "The Great Goikian Bake-Off", being screened on June 25, 2023 and July 8, 2023, before being released on YouTube on July 9, 2023. It also marked the return of Four and X in TPOT. Currently, this event has happened two mores times, once in 2024 and once in 2025. This time, they go to six different cities, airing both an episode of BFDI:TPOT at the first three cities, and an episode of BFDIA at the last three cities.
In July 2023, 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 ~500,000 subscribers in a few weeks.
On June 14, 2024, Michael released his BFDI music in the music album Battle for BFDI (Original Soundtrack).
Future[]
- Main article: Season 6
A hypothetical sixth season of BFDI was first discussed in March 2020 after the release of "The Escape from Four" in the video "The Secret Behind BFB's Split". It was also alluded to at the end of "Chapter Complete".
Currently, not much is known about this season, except that it may be "a new style of season" or have "a new art form".
On August 7, 2020, the season was further discussed by Cary Huang on HTwins Central, stating that he wants to work on a sixth season, but nothing has been decided, but likely will when the time comes.[2]
At a meetup in July 2024, Cary stated that all five seasons need to be finished before the sixth season could begin production.
On July 24, 2025, during a stream on FlipaClip’s YouTube channel starring Michael Huang, a stream commenter asked about 5 minutes in what Season 6’s actual title might be. Michael said it was a secret, and that viewers may "find out pretty soon".[3] This is the first ever direct confirmation that a sixth season is at least in development.
Votes[]
- Main article: Battle for Dream Island (series)/Voting table
Trivia[]
- Battle for Dream Island is the first object show on YouTube ever created.
- 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"[4] by a landslide with 63% of the votes.[5]
- 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.[6] 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 8 contestants who qualified for every season: Coiny, Golf Ball, Ice Cube, Needle, Pencil, Pin, Rocky and Tennis Ball.
- There are 8 contestants who qualified for 4 seasons: Bomby, Book, Firey, Fries, Nickel, Spongy, Teardrop and Yellow Face.
- There are 12 contestants who qualified for 3 seasons: Bubble, Donut, Eraser, Flower, Gelatin, Leafy, Match, Pen, Puffball, Ruby, Snowball, and Woody.
- There are 27 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, Liy, Marker, Naily, Pie, Pillow, Remote, Robot Flower, Saw, Tree, and TV.
- There are 12 contestants who qualified for 1 season: 8-Ball, Balloony, Bracelety, Evil Leafy, Firey Jr., Lollipop, Loser, Price Tag, Profily, Roboty, Stapy, Taco, and Winner.
- If Evil Leafy is not counted as a contestant since IDFB is not a competition season, then there are 67 contestants so far.
- 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.[7][8] 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.[9]
- 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.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12]
- BFDI has appeared in independent news articles (outside of those paid for by jacknjellify):
- On September 25, 2024, a Business Insider article covered the BFDI & Inanimate Insanity 2024 Tour.[13]
- On April 22, 2025, Business Insider interviewed Cary Huang about the tariffs on plushes, including a photo of him with Four and X plushes.[14]
- General:
- The contestants seemed to have developed intellectually, since in Battle for Dream Island, they just acted on impulse and didn't have much critical thinking. However, in Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two, they seemed to have more experience being alive for longer, similar to how an adult may have more experience then a kid in The Real World. This is also due to them having much more character development in the later series.
Gallery[]
.png "TPOT 13 (487).png (3.18 MB)")
See also[]
External Links[]
References[]
- ↑ https://youtu.be/FVdl1QyKxW8?si=GCnJkMO4mwqioNXr
- ↑
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/live/q4nan4Ty9g0?si=UiuGW3dpVm5WfSv6
- ↑ https://twitter.com/thecartooncrave/status/1485061721760825344
- ↑ https://cartooncrave.wordpress.com/cartoon-crave-awards-2021/
- ↑ https://twitter.com/thecartooncrave/status/1485076688996376583
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3Ktpo2sXs0
- ↑ Northampton boy relaunches space book for other autistic children
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4A7dZwY67E
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH67GjQg7wQ
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLV4G06WlkE&t=153s
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRcl32ovUKw&t=25
- ↑ Influencers are shepherding their online followers to IRL events as they look to build communities and make money (Archive)
- ↑ The trade war is coming for influencer plushies (Archive)
| Seasons of Battle for Dream Island (template) |
|---|
| Main series: Battle for Dream Island • Battle for Dream Island Again • IDFB • Battle for BFB • Battle for Dream Island: The Power of Two • Season 6
BFDI Mini: BFDI Mini • BFDI Mini Again • BFDI Mini Deluxe • BFDI Mini, Seriously! • BFDI Mini Delicious • BFDI Mini Replicas • BFDI Mini Natural • BFDI Mini Resort • BFDI Mini Season 9
Spin-offs: ABCDEFG • B.A.G.U.E.T.T.E. • BFDI Mini-Season - "Marbles" • Ten Words of Wisdom • Eleven Words of Wisdom • Grandfather Clock and Metronome
Imaginary: Season 43
Milestone celebration: Anniversary videos • Subscriber specials
Non-canon: Who's The Real Firey? • Battle for Permission to Meet 10 • Leafy and Evil Leafy as They Battle to Become the Sole Survivor of That Dryer |