Trivia / Angry Birds

• Ascended Fan Nickname: In Angry Birds Seasons, a Distaff Counterpart to Red was officialy given the fan name "Ruby" in a poll on YouTube.
• Author's Saving Throw: In July 2021, Rovio Entertainment wrote an open letter explaining that the original Angry Birds games were removed due to being incompatible with modern technology, and announced that they were working on remaking them for new devices. On March 12, 2022, a remake of the 2012 build of the original game was released after much fan demand, featuring the Mighty Eagle already unlocked due to there being no in-app purchases.
• Breakthrough Hit: Angry Birds helped put Rovio on the map and popularized mobile gaming as we know it today. If Rovio's website is to be believed, Angry Birds actually helped save the company from bankruptcy.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: One billion downloads. And that was when the series only had four games. Plus the console iterations on Wii U, 3DS, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PS4. And a movie that got a sequel. And what about the truckloads of merchandising? Also, Angry Birds 2 reached 20 million downloads in its first week.
• Defictionalization:
  • Among The Merch is "Angry Birds: Knock On Wood", a board game version complete with plastic blocks, pigs, rubber birds and slingshot. The board game was apparently popular enough to get its own sequels, such as "Angry Birds: On Thin Ice". Even more sequels, with two seasonal versions and two store exclusives. Space has two "episodes" of its own too. There are now several physical versions of levels from AB Star Wars available, as well as plushies and "action figures" of the various birds and Lard Vader.
  • There's also a card game.
  • In Barcelona, Spain T-Mobile created a life size version of the game, complete with exploding pigs.
  • Subverted — Neil Patrick Harris joked that they were going to play a live-action version of the game at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards, but PETA complained.
  • Another subversion: a Finnish news outlet had an April Fools article stating that the Formula One drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Räikkönen were given Angry Birds slingshots to start their cars with. Complete with a Photoshop of the slingshot on a car.
• Follow the Leader: To truckloads of artillery games, and followed by plenty of imitators itself.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Many of the early games, including the original game itself, were discontinued and delisted from the iOS/Android stores in 2019 and 2020, making them unavailable to download legitimately on mobile devices. As of right now, the only way you can currently play most of the original games legitimately is through the Angry Birds Trilogy compilation and Angry Birds Star Wars on consoles, or by using the share function on the App Store. Even then though, there are plenty of early games that have been delisted and are simply not accessible in a legit form. Rovio would later announce that they're working on rereleasing some of the original games back onto the store, though they made it clear in the announcement that they'll be rebuilt from the ground up and that the original games will remain delisted and unavailable on smartphones and tablets officially due to compatibility issues and the different mobile landscape since their original release.
• Late Export for You: Angry Birds Evolution was released in pretty much every market except the US and Canada in October 2016, whilst the latter two didn’t release it until June the next year.
• The Merch: In many kinds, but especially the line of plush Angry Birds (which range from keychain-size to softball size), which includes the Rio characters, and several have electronic game sounds. They're safe enough to throw at things!
• Milestone Celebration:
  • The Birdday Party chapter from the original game was created for its 2nd anniversary in 2011. It was later updated for its 3rd anniversary in 2012, its 4th anniversary in 2013, its 6th anniversary in 2015, and its 7th anniversary in 2016. The original game's 5th anniversary in 2014 was celebrated in a separate chapter called Birdday 5. Its levels were later relocated into the Birdday Party episode.
  • Angry Birds Go! was released worldwide on the original game's 4th anniversary.
  • The release of The Angry Birds Movie 2 coincided with the franchise's 10th anniversary.
• No Export for You:
  • Angry Birds Holiday was closed down before 2017 started, meaning it never got a release in the US. The UK did release it in October, though.
  • Angry Birds Football was removed in November 2016, meaning it never got past the soft-launch stage.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • One 5 year old's drawing of a hypothetical level ultimately became the 33rd level of Danger Above. They even added the artist's name as an Easter Egg.
  • In 2013, Ben Levi, a total Angry Birds addict, contacted Rovio, requesting them to create a level consisting of a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, Melissa Swift. They did it in an Angry Birds Friends tournament and Swift accepted the proposal. No, we're not kidding.
  • All of the Birdday 5 levels were created by fans, as part of a competition called "#MakeTheNextLevel" that was held a few months prior.
  • In its later years, Angry Birds Friends has hosted a few tournaments that featured fan-created levels.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Likely the reason for the discontinuation of Angry Birds Rio and the Angry Birds Star Wars games (besides the fact that they haven't received any content updates for years; only bug fixes and optimizations for newer devices) is licensing issues with Disney. Not only do they own the rights to the Star Wars franchise, but they also gained the rights to the Rio franchise following their acquisition of 20th Century Fox, who produced the Rio movies through their Blue Sky Studios division (since shuttered by Disney).
• Short Run in Peru:
  • Angry Birds Go! was released in New Zealand and Australia on November 26 and 27, 2013, respectively, in Brazil on December 3, 2013 and in Mexico on December 9, 2013, before being released worldwide on December 11, 2013.
  • Angry Birds Epic was released in Canada, Australia and New Zealand on March 17, 2014, before being released worldwide three months later.
  • Angry Birds: Transformers was released in Finland, New Zealand, Canada and Australia on September 25, 2014, before being released worldwide a month later.
  • Angry Birds POP! (then known as Angry Birds Stella POP!) was released in Canada on December 22, 2014, before being released worldwide three months later.
  • Angry Birds Fight was released in Canada and Thailand on Janurary 20, 2015 and in Asia Pacific on May 7, 2015, before being released worldwide on June 11, 2015.
  • Angry Birds 2 was released under its original title Angry Birds: Under Pigstruction on March 5, 2015, before being released worldwide four months later.
  • Angry Birds Action was released in New Zealand on February 16, 2016, before being released worldwide two months later.
  • Angry Birds Blast! was released in Australia, New Zealand, Finland and Poland on July 15, 2016, before being released worldwide five months later.
  • Angry Birds Evolution was released in Hong Kong on August 17, 2016, and was released in other countries (excluding Canada and the US) in October 2016. As mentioned in Late Export for You above, it wasn't released in the US and Canada until June 2017.
  • Angry Birds Match was released in Finland, Australia and Canada on November 11, 2016 and wasn't released worldwide until August 31, 2017.
  • Angry Birds Dream Blast was released in the UK on October 3, 2018 before being released worldwide on January 24, 2019.
  • Angry Birds POP Blast (then known as Angry Birds POP 2) was released in various European countries on March 30, 2019, before being released worldwide two months later.
• Port Overdosed: It's probably one of the youngest examples of this trope. By 2017, this game had been released on pretty much every mobile, web-based, desktop and console platform in existence.
• Viral Marketing: A real-life rather than a virtual one, for once. To advertise Space, Rovio hung a giant Red from a slingshot attached to the Space Needle. Seattle residents were encouraged to come by the building and try out the game for free. Images of Red quickly spread across the Internet.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.

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