Audience-Alienating Era: Many have agreed that the franchise has been suffering through this, though where it started is up for debate:
2015 was when the series began releasing match-making titles such as Pop! and Fight!. This year also saw the release of Angry Birds 2, which ended up being divisive for fans due to the free-to-play nature of the game with things such as the lives system. Additionally, older games such as Seasons and Classic got updates that many felt ended up making those games worse than they were beforenote Seasons got all of its older levels locked behind paywalls and Classic's physics got a downgrade.
2016-2018 not only saw a significant increase in match games with games like Blast!, Match and Dream Blast, as the franchise was starting to become more and more freemium, but it was also when the franchise began centering itself more around The Angry Birds Movie, with more games and TV series being made around it, such as Evolution and Action as well as even replacing many of the app icons with the movie designs as well. Many of the games released in 2016-2018 received So Okay, It's Average reception at best. And then 2019 and 2020 would eventually come along and end up being the most controversial years in the entire franchise's history.
Then there's 2019-2020, the two most controversial years in the franchise and generally agreed upon to be when the series officially took a turn for the worst. Problems from previous years were amplified with the franchise becoming more free-to-play than ever, The Angry Birds Movie 2 released to pretty mixed to negative reception from fans, and the infamous purging of the older games happened, beginning the also infamous #BringBack2012 movement. These years are infamous for being the worst years in the franchise and are generally agreed upon to be a major turning point for when it truly went downhill.
Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Whenever you'd fail a level in older versions of the original game and in Seasons, the grinning faces the pigs make at you are rather creepy.
It's not hard to imagine the smallest pigs as children and some levels do look as though the pigs are in houses so you have two large pigs and a few small pigs… Then again, considering how many of them are wearing helmets and barricading themselves in forts, they're probably just very low-ranking mooks.
Annoying Video Game Helper: If you restart a level that you plan on completing normally without the use of power-ups or any "Mighty" characters, the repeated notifications suggesting the use of a power-up (or in the case of Star Wars II, other characters) to pass the level can become this (especially if you're working for the perfect cascade to happen in a level or looking to make a score acceptable in leaderboards). What's worse is there is no way to turn these off.
Overall, the background ambience in many levels is very soothing and calming to listen to, examples include Hogs and Kisses, Go Green, Get Lucky, Summer Pignic, and Cherry Blossoms.
Puzzle Theme from Angry Birds Fight! is an exciting, catchy, brass-heavy theme perfect for trying to make as many matches as you can in the short time limit. FIGHT! is a remix of it for when the birds are actually battling, and sounds more slow-paced and dramatic, perfect for building up tension. The puzzle theme for Dr. Pig's Lab is also worth a listen, being a suspenseful take on the puzzle theme that's heavy on the bass.
The Pig Bang and Cold Cuts boss themes in Angry Birds Reloaded definitely were not expected bangers, even if the original boss theme from the Space title is more iconic.
Series-wide, the crumbling-down of the pigs' structures can be seen as this. In 2, the levels visibly being constructed can rarely randomly topple the structure without launching a bird at it. If RNG is really on your side, it may even lead to Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing.
Pigs falling off the map in 2 has them yelling in fear. This also OHKOs the boss pigs, with all three of them having unique sounds for falling.
In many games, the Mighty Eagle can be seen as this. If you struggled with a level, seeing him come down and annihilate every pig on screen in a flash is satisfying.
Some fans call the Ice Bird from Space "Frosh" or something along those lines as a 'humanized' name, as he is canonically the only member of the Space Flock with No Name Given. Another alternate fan name for him is "Isaac", popularized by the YouTuberGerardtheRedBird.
For starters, Bomb/Matilda is a very popular ship in the fandom. It more or less got a Ship Tease at the end of the Toons episode "Clash of Corns", where Bomb kissed Matilda on the cheek at the end of the episode. And even after Terence and Matilda became an Official Couple in the movie, this ship remains popular in the fandom.
One of the most common complaints about modern Angry Birds is the series going free-to-play. Angry Birds is no stranger to Microtransactions, with the earliest example being the Mighty Eagle in 2011. Some other early examples include Danger Zone in Angry Birds Space and the Power-Ups in Angry Birds Friends (although the latter can be purchased with in-game currency). The series went fully freemium in 2013 when Power-Ups were added to the main games (Classic, Seasons and Rio), but fans didn't see it as a major issue. It wasn't until late 2014 when they were already many games that came out as free-to-play that this become a problem.
The series' main art style using The Angry Birds Movie character designs is another common complaint, especially among fans who dislike the movies. Rovio Entertainment did the same thing with Angry Birds Toons back in the day, with Angry Birds Go! becoming the first game to completely abandon the classic art style in favour of the Toons art style as it was slowly being incorporated into the main games (most notably the Rio 2 update in Angry Birds Rio) and merchandise, Angry Birds 2 becoming an Art-Shifted Sequel. The thing is that the Toons designs remain faithful to the classic designs, explaining why many fans didn't notice or care about the change.
Terence the Big Brother Bird is a pretty powerful bird that can break through wood, glass, and stone pretty easily, but thick structures stop him in his tracks. Combine him with the Super Seeds/Power Potions and the King Sling introduced in Angry Birds Friends and he's pretty much an unstoppable behemoth that can break through ANYTHING with ease, almost making it like a miniature version of the Mighty Eagle. The only real downside is that the Super Seeds/Power Potions and King Slings are limited, meaning if you want more, you either have to get one randomly each day or buy some.
When it comes to hunting for hidden objects that unlock special levels, the purchasable Tusken Raider in Star Wars II works wonders. Simply launch him anywhere, touch the hidden item on the level, and it's yours in an instant.
The (RED) ability from the original game, which was available for a limited time as an in-app purchase. When used, it gives you an extra Red bird that acts as he does in Red's Mighty Feathers — after being launched, he'll fly anywhere you tap on the screen once. Having a free extra bird on every level would be powerful enough, to begin with, but his targeting ability makes landing tough shots a breeze.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Beloved in Spanish-speaking countries, to the point where, in Mexico in 2012, the game did a promotion with Vuela Tazos (the Mexican equivalent of pogs).
Hilarious in Hindsight: Summer Pignic features unique levels set in space, topped off with lower gravity. Fast forward a couple years later, and Angry Birds Space is born.
Ho Yay: Red & Chuck. While this hinted in the first episode of Angry Birds Toons where Red gave Chuck a warm hug after latter rescue him from the fall, the infamous "Miracle of Life" episode took this up to eleven where Foreman Pig kidnap both Red & Chuck and force them to "mate" so they can produce an egg for the pigs. While Red is pretty much annoyed by this, Chuck is rather... flustered by the thought.
Jerkass Woobie: The Pigs. They just want to eat, and get pummeled into the ground as a result.
Les Yay: Stella with Gale in a trailer for the April Fool's "Agri Birds" game. This even hinted on the Angry Birds Stella animated series where Stella misses Gale dearly when she left the flock despite her hatred toward her betrayal, and vice versa with Gale despite she wanted to become the queen of Golden Island. There also some pictures of their moment together on both of their tree home shown in the second episode and in the finale, Stella decide to free Gale from being turned into gold despite her friend & Gale's own minion pigs refuse to do so.
Low-Tier Letdown: Hal, the boomerang bird, to the point where his awkwardness is lampshaded in a cutscene from Seasons. His main gimmick of being able to attack a structure from behind is awkward and doesn't always work as intended, leading to some players skipping over his utility and using him as a lighter Red Bird. Later games in the series give Hal some buffs to make him more worth using — Angry Birds 2 makes him very destructive if you can get him to build up momentum, while Reloaded changes the physics of his boomerang ability to be easier to predict and use.
Memetic Badass: Terence, the giant red bird, is seen as an unstoppable juggernaut by the fandom. Part of this is due to his debut in The Big Setup, where he nigh-singlehandedly takes down the pigs' effort to rebuild their destroyed structures and rescues the other birds as well portrayed as capable to accomplish everything despite rarely seen to move onscreen (with him constantly outrunning Chuck in Toons episode "Run Chuck Run" being the most prominent example). He has since been associated with the song I'm The Biggest Bird in late 2022.
I wanna take a pic with Cardi B. ExplanationThe ad is often paired with a cover of the song “ROCKING A CARDIGAN IN ATLANTA” by lil Shordie Scott.
Gry. ExplanationDuring the start of the Rovio Gaming Discord server, a server emoji called “:gry:” would be spammed in the server. This was the second part of a larger emoji that would form the word “Angry Birds”. This caused a dedicated channel called "#gry-away" to be created solely for the posting of the emoji. Both the emoji and channel were later deleted in April 2022 due to the :gry: spam carrying over into other channels.
Realistic Angry Birds/Angry Birds RTXExplanationA series of realistic Angry Birds art by the artist Sam Spratt was released in 2011. These images have been used in ironic image macros with captions such as "You're either a smart fella or a fart smella".
Yaman. ExplanationIn October 2022, a video surfaced of two Minion Pigs with the Man face from Roblox. The song "Memoir #2" by May Roosevelt plays in the background.
if I roll a twelveExplanationIntro cutscene from a cancelled game Angry Birds Dice ends with Red rolling two dices and landing on 12. In 2022, a gif with a caption "If I roll a twelve, you fucking die" was made, and became a popular meme format next year. Some memes edit one or both dices (usually poorly) either to subvert a message presented by the caption or for comedic value.
The music that plays when you either clear an area (before the December 2011 update), or achieve Total Destruction (three stars in each level of one chapter).
The sound of blocks crashing and breaking very quickly becomes this.
The sounds the trapped birds make when you fail a level in Rio sounds quite unnerving.
If you really want Nightmare Fuel, then try the Halloween levels for Angry Birds Seasons, the ambients sound quite disturbing and look better suited for a horror game, especially Haunted Hogs, which is the most nightmare inducing ambience on par with Video Game/Silent Hill.
Not to mention, the menu theme for Ham O’ Ween starts with a creepy music box version of the Angry Birds theme before shifting to a more fantasizing and creepy theme.
Also, try to exit the Trick or Treat level and you’ll be greeted with a piece of nightmare-inducing music, good luck trying to sleep tonight after listening to that.
Even the birds themselves can be terrifying in the original promotional videos if you're sensitive enough, particularly the birds at the end of the original trailer and the Rio trailer.
Alex Bird, a gray bird created by a young fan in 2014, is often used by fans ironically, due to being outlandishly amateur and for being "normal and legal".
The very frequent ad interruptions on every game, especially the video ones.
Purchasing "The Mighty Eagle" and attempting to get "Total Destruction" on every level of Seasons becomes problematic when you reach the Chinese New Year levels and the Eagle is replaced with a Dragon, which has a completely different pattern of movement.
The marmosets' ability to regain their balance in Angry Birds Rio, sometimes even after you've blown them sky high.
For every time you reach a Wall of Pigs level in Stella (every 12 levels on average), you will see Gale and her Bad Piggies dump a smoke bomb on the wall, causing a large cloud of purple smoke to appear. You must either wait up to 6 hours for the smoke to clear itself or spend some Gold to clear it instantly, the price increasing the further into the game you get.
The life system in Angry Birds 2, requires you to either wait 30 minutes for them to refill or pay up for more.
Self-Imposed Challenge: Try beating the game without using any bird's special ability. It has been proven that the first three chapters of the first game can be beaten without, but some levels require extreme precision to pull off very precise strategies.
Serial Numbers Filed Off: The developers reportedly ganked the physics engine used in Castle Clout and Crush the Castle.
Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: It's easy to get so caught up trying to get the bonus level by hitting the Golden Egg (or any other hidden item) that the actual level has to wait.
Surprise Difficulty: Cute, colourful graphics, a silly premise, and some maddeningly hard levels. At least you have unlimited lives.
That One Level: Just how many times have you wanted to curse the level designers while attempting to get three stars on any, just ANY level that goes into this category? The number of such levels is pretty huge, in fact, and it's a lot easier to lose count than rather list them all.
Particular example. Level 3-5 stands out as being one of the most Googled levels, and that should really say something. Heck, a lot of World 3 counts.
Level 6-15 definitely counts. It contains numerous pigs suspended from balloons, with a tree branch blocking Chuck from being able to snipe them. The only way to take them out is to launch Hal and boomerang him into a trampoline at just the right angle, allowing him to bounce toward them.
In terms of collecting stars, almost all of the levels in "Mine and Dine" (when in some levels, a score of 100,000 still gives you 1-2 stars) and some levels, such as 2-12 and 3-1, are incredibly frustrating.
There's a particularly ludicrous "Mine and Dine" screen where the only way to get a three-star score is to launch Hal backwards off the screen and activate his special action blind. To add insult to injury, it's nearly impossible to get three stars on the Rovio Classics version of the level, due to the different physics on Hal's boomerang ability.
Golden Egg 5 challenges you to blow up three pyramids of pigs with only one Red bird. You have to launch him at a TNT box, then hope that a small stone block launched by it blows up another box, which needs to blow up another in turn. You can go for hours ending up with one pig left every time.
Golden Egg 6 is a similarly frustrating Luck-Based Mission. This time, you have a pit that's filled to the brim with dozens of pigs, and you only get one Red to clear them out. There's nothing you can do except launch him into the pit and hope that the pigs collapse in such a way that they all get defeated. Once again, you could easily go for hours with one pig still remaining.
A very minor example, pertaining to the win screen. In versions before the December 2011 update, the area completion tune played after winning each level. Later updates would change this to a generic win screen similar to Rio, with no music, appearing after completing one level. The area completion tune plays when you beat an episode though. The Xbox 360 version of Trilogy also has the Rio-styled win screen, but the completion tune was also used alongside it.
The greater presence of in-game video advertisements in newer installments of the series would interrupt the game before starting a new level. It also led to games that previously didn't feature these advertisements (Seasons, for example) being filled with them. There is no known way to disable them, even if you previously bought a "paid" version of the game or any in-app purchases.
The series' gradual shift away from bird-flinging gameplay and abandonment of the original games has caused a lot of disillusionment with fans, especially since many of the new gameplay styles that replaced it are generic Match-Three Games or bubble shooters with lots of Microtransactions. It all peaked when Rovio removed the classic Angry Birds titles from stores, including the original game. Fortunately, Rovio moved back to the original gameplay style in 2021 with Angry Birds Reloaded, and started working on bringing back the original games for newer systems—until 2023, when Rovio delisted the remake as well (as it was cutting into the sales of their other games).
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The "Birdday Competition", made for the fifth anniversary of the original game, gives fans a chance to finally make their own levels for the original game. No, this was not a Level Editor, but rather a one-time contest that requires players to create an image describing how they want the level to be built by Rovio's dev team, including said designs being restricted to one of twelve pre-made themes. Any attempts at requesting Rovio through e-mail to create an editor (regardless of what platform the editor would be made for) will be immediately shot down.
Underused Game Mechanic: Rovio Classics: Angry Birds turns Bubbles and Stella into this trope, since they only appear in Birdday Party (and, in Stella's case, only in the second half of the world). In the original, they at least got to appear in Bad Piggies and other episodes added later, but Rovio Classics only includes episodes up to Birdday Party (and Surf & Turf, which doesn't feature them), so the player doesn't get to use them in many levels at all.
Matilda in the older games was easily mistaken as male, but after Tertiary Sexual Characteristics were added onto her, this faded away.
Bubbles is male, despite having a feminine voice and a name associated with females.
Vindicated by History: Angry Birds Trilogy, a Compilation Re-release for consoles that were released towards the tail end of Angry Birds popularity, including the first three games of the series (Classic, Seasons and Rio), initially recieved mixed reviews, ranging from "So Okay, It's Average" to "Who in the hell even asked for this?" as you could easily get the games on a phone. As time went by, the game started gaining recognition from many people who remembered it with nostalgia, as well as the games being deleted from the app store, thinking that it would be a good idea for Rovio to make another Angry Birds for consoles one of these days.
article imagines things from the pigs' point(s) of view.
