BFDI Competition Elements

At the beginning of a season, the contestants are split into teams. The number of teams varies with the size of the starting cast, and they may get rearranged mid-season. Season 2 had a unique gimmick where contestants could freely switch teams between contests, resulting in one big team splitting up over leadership conflicts and some contestants opting to fly solo. After each contest, the members of the losing team(s) are put up for elimination. Once the cast dwindles to a certain size, the teams are disbanded and the contestants compete for individual immunity from elimination.

Contests (also called challenges) come in a wide variety. They can be athletic (e.g. obstacle course, ladder climbing race, dodgeball), more focused on a certain skill (cake baking, test taking, finding the impostor in your team), or created in response to an external influence (build a replacement loser chamber, determine who stole an important item, stop time-traveling recommended characters from destroying the universe). Season 5 in particular tends to use that last type of contest. Season 2's contests were decided by spinning a wheel. Seasons 1 and 4, the only two seasons to have a proper end so far, both ended with a marathon of every challenge from the season in succession, followed by one last elimination and a viewer vote for the winner.

Once an episode's contest ends, the losing contestants are put up for elimination. The host tells the viewers to vote for someone to be eliminated in YouTube comments, and the episode ends. Seasons 1, 3, 4, and part of 5 held voting in plain YouTube comments. Season 2 gave each contestant a video that viewers would like or dislike. The contestant with the most likes wins a prize, and the one with the most dislikes is eliminated. In seasons 4b and 5, the system changed from "vote-to-eliminate" to "vote-to-save," where the contestant with the fewest votes is eliminated. Mid-way through season 5, the voting method changed from comments to a Google form due to people searching comments to predict results and having "voting wars" to sway the results. The following episode begins with a ceremony called Cake at Stake, where the votes are revealed and a contestant is eliminated. Eliminated contestants are placed in an enclosed area where they can't interfere with the competition. Safe contestants get a small prize, typically a slice of cake, but it can really be anything from fish to shovels.

Team Divisibility Calculator