Trivia / Bloons Tower Defense

• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Spectres and Flying Fortresses have had a poor reputation for missing bloons that do not move directly into their streams of darts and bombs. Update 23.0 has tried to remedy this by not only increasing their projectile size, but also granting the darts slight homing capabilities.
  • In an attempt to stop people from abusing Blade Maelstrom in races, leading to them being banned in most of them, version 24.0 capped its pierce to 100 bloons per blade so that it could no longer pop infinite bloons. The cap was soon doubled after complaints of players struggling to beat rounds 63, 76, and 78 with the cap.
  • In version 27.0, Tech Terror had not only its ability damage more than doubled, but also became capable of Critical Hits with its arm attacks, making it a pretty good endgame option able to vaporize hordes of BFBs at once. This was in response to Tech Terror's poor reputation of being a Master of None path for the Super Monkey.
  • The first Contested Territory event lasted for nearly two weeks. Fans quickly tired of it, realizing that once you're behind, it's very hard to catch up, and repeatedly renewing tiles was too much of a time sink. CT events were changed to now last a week
  • 33.0's preview announcement made public the controversial change to impose a 3-Paragon limit to promote creativity in choosing Paragons. After feedback from the community, this limit was changed to 4 Paragons while an additional Content Browser editor function allows players to set higher limits or unrestricted in player-made Content Browser games. This was followed by NK announcing that they would like to backpedal further by removing the limit entirely outside of bosses and Contested Territory.
• Creator's Pest:
  • The Bloonchipper tower. Despite being a fan favorite, Ninja Kiwi has outright stated that they regret making this tower due to it being difficult to balance and that it won't be returning in BTD6. This backlash got to the point that one BTD6 map, Scrapyard, has the Bloonchipper make a cameo as literal garbage. In BTD Battles, for instance, the tower was very overpowered due to its ability to near infinitely stall MOAB-class Bloons, but when nerfed to no longer affect ZOMGs, it instantly became one of the worst towers in the game.
  • They have also said they regret making the Arctic Wind in BTD6 capable of making land towers placeable on water. It always seem to produce bugs one after another every update, especially when used together with Carrier Flagship's platforms or the Support Chinook's ability to move towers around.
• Dummied Out:
  • The first game has an unused tower called the "Spikey Ball Tower", which is a tower that shoots spiky balls in all four cardinal directions. The only graphic this tower has is a green circle serving as a placeholder. The placeholder is also present in the second, third and fourth game's files.
  • Bloons Tower Defense 5 has unused graphics for a pile of monkeys, a spider, a Venus flytrap and Super Monkey Junior from Bloons Super Monkey 2.
  • In BTD6, all the bloons have fortified sprites, despite the fact that only Leads, Ceramics and MOAB-class bloons can have them in-game.
• Meme Acknowledgment:
  • The infamous Slons Map submission is added as an emoticon in the official Ninja Kiwi Discord server. It was later added to the Challenge Editor under the name "Blons".
  • The patch notes for 21.0 reference the Transforming Tonic Alchemist being known as a "Cookie Monster."
  • Version 31.0 featured a "nerf" to the Glue Rat pet in reference to memes claiming it to be the most powerful thing in the game.
    • Glue Rat's memetic power was referenced again in the version 34.2 patch notes where it states that it was the one that added visual damage states to the Rock Bloons.
• The Merch: Starting in September of 2021, plushes of the characters started being made. With Dart Monkey being the first. A year later, an official MOAB plush was made as well. Jumbo-sized to boot.
• Milestone Celebration:
  • After being out of Ninja Kiwi's focus for about 5 years and only receiving minor map updates every once a while, Bloons TD 5 received its 10th Anniversary update on November 15th, 2022, adding a new mode called "Ten" where the player beats a game with the original towers from BTD1 and new towers from BTD5, retro skins for some towers and a new Ninja Kiwi Agent.
  • The 37.0 update of Bloons TD 6 would have its first anniversary collection event to celebrate its 5th Anniversary, along with anniversary-themed quests.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • Daily Challenges and Advanced Challenges are player-submitted, and each day in Bloons TD 6 one of each is selected. In Bloons TD 5 only one Daily Challenge was submitted.
  • To celebrate 50k subscribers in the BTD6 subreddit, Ninja Kiwi held a map contest, where users would post their ideas and one would make it into the game. Five finalists were chosen (Fireside Trail, Bazaar, Weak Ice, Cherry Blossoms, Geared), and fans got to vote on which one they wanted most. Geared ended up winning and was later added in the 16.0 update. Surprisingly, Bazaar also made it in for the 18.0 update.
  • Another contest was held for the 100k subscriber milestone. This time, fans submitted their concepts and ideas for avatar profile pictures, with multiple winners. They were added in-game over multiple updates.
  • 150k subreddit subscribers led to a user-created banner contest. As with the profile picture one, fan-submitted ones would later make it into the game.
• Orphaned Reference: The DSiWare version of BTD3 did not change its post-round messages from the browser version. One of the most obvious indications of this is that several hints refer to the Free Play mode after Round 50 - an aspect that was completely removed from this version, as all stages end on completing Round 50.
• Refitted for Sequel: The idea of a tower shotting spiky balls was planned since the the first game, which has an unused tower called "Spikey Ball Tower". It took until the third game for players to be able to use a tower shooting spiky balls with the Spike-o-pult.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There was a stage called "Monkeys in Space" that was planned but scrapped, allegedly because Ninja Kiwi's founder, Stephen Harris, disliked the concept of space maps.
  • An unused support tower, the Monkey Academy, was discovered in the game files, and it received a few changes throughout updates, yet remaining unreleased. When, if at all, this tower will be released, is unknown. This tower would have been a support tower that would give various bonuses to military, magic, and hero towers respectively.
  • Admiral Brickell's Lifeguard Brickell skin originally sported a Red Cross flag in previews, but this was changed before release due to fans recognizing an... unfortunate implication with the skin, and thus it was edited.^ExplanationUnder the Geneva Convention, having people under the Red Cross flag fight enemies in war constitutes a war crime.

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