YMMV / Bloons Tower Defense

A-L

• Accidental Innuendo: This line that occasionally plays when you use Pat's Big squeeze ability:
  Pat Fusty: Shhhhh... Don't fight it!
• Anti-Climax Boss: In BTD6, the "boss rounds" which contain only a single blimp are often considered to be much easier than what comes before them, considering the number of towers (MOAB Assassin, Monkey Pirates/Pirate Lord, First Strike Capability, MOAB Glue) that trivialize them. This especially applies to rounds 60 and 80 (final bosses of the Medium and Hard difficulties), since the Round 40 MOAB can catch you off-guard if you haven't focused enough on MOAB damage, and Round 100 has the BAD, which is more resistant to most of these things (though most setups that can survive Rounds 98 and 99 have a good chance of surviving 100).
• Awesome Music:
  • Primal One, Bloonarius the Inflator's theme, is a fast-paced and oppressive tune featuring heavy use of electric guitar and violin, making it clear that the bloon you're battling is nothing like those you've seen so far.
  • Lych's theme, Onslaught, is a vastly different remix of Primal One with a more driving feel.
    • A variation of Onslaught, The Reality Warper, is used as the boss theme for Phayze. While at first glance and indeed for sections it is a clone of Onslaught, The Reality Warper incorporates glitches into its soundtrack and even implements a section of music from Bloons Super Monkey 2 Mobile to really tie into the whole "glitchiness" aspect of this boss, since it is in essence a glitch in reality.
  • Of course, Street Party is the fan favorite among the community, although some prefer other themes like Primal One or BTD5 House Party.
• Base-Breaking Character: Often with one faction declaring a tower serviceable and fun and the other side preferring to avoid that same tower like the plague due to their weaknesses.
  • Comanche Commander in Bloons TD 6's popularity has been split between "okay with supports that can affect its Comanche entourage" and "avoid like the plague, Apache Prime is superior in every way". Part of the division is fueled by Comanche Defense, the stepping-stone tier 4 upgrade, being often reviled for its unreliability of the Comanche summons. Due to Comanche Defense's poor reputation, the Commander gets tarnished as well. Additionally, whenever a support buff was nerfed, both Commander and Defense (which relied on them for usefulness) were often hit four times as hard. On the other hand, a few buffs (like Gwendolin's Heat it up) still remain useful for assisting the summoned Comanches, and it has been consistently buffed over numerous patches to make it a viable option.
  • Adora, to her fans, is a cool Hero Unit capitalizing on her Light 'em Up aesthetic, good pierce, powerful laser, sacrifice mechanics allowing her to level herself up obscenely quickly, and innate ability to see past obstacles (making her a popular Hero on Flooded Valley Primary Only). On the other hand, others tend to ignore or deride her as the worst hero in Bloons TD 6 due to her damage output for an offense-oriented hero relying a lot on pierce over damage, making her especially vulnerable against blimps (she takes 15 levels to do more damage to blimps outside her Ball of Light) only having great damage at her maximum level (20), and offering little else.
  • Archmage is well-liked among casual players for its many nifty skills for general popping power, incorporating the layer-destroying Arcane Spike, Dragon's Breath, and the camo-removing Shimmer all at once. On the other hand, it is a perennial target for "Stop Having Fun" Guys who view it as outclassed and a tower that can be done without.
  • The Dartling Gunner is an interesting case, as the divide stems from its fun factor rather than usefulness. Its unique aiming gimmick has its fans, as it gives the gunner theoretically infinite and controllable range, but the increased level of control can feel annoying to constantly track.
• Breather Level:
  • In terms of rounds in BTD6, Round 97 is much easier than other rounds in the 90s. While other rounds throw hordes of BFBs, ZOMGs, or the dreaded DDTs, round 97 only consists of two fortified ZOMGs. While tough, they're nothing a good anti-MOAB defense can't handle. Take a breath, because the next round, 98, is widely considered to be the hardest round in the game.
  • In BTD6, rounds 41 to 49 all consist of only regular Bloons, with no MOAB-class Bloons in sight. Not only that, they give plenty of cash so you have ample money to upgrade your towers. The MOAB in Round 40 can be a problem, but rarely does anyone have problems with the two MOABs in Round 50.
  • All the Hard sub-modes are pretty difficult except Magic Monkeys Only and Double HP MOABs. Magic Monkeys Only doesn't really make much of a difference since all of them are pretty powerful (and you'd be using a lot of them in a normal game anyways), only mattering on maps like Flooded Valley and Peninsula. Double HP MOABs's gimmick only kicks in halfway through, and the game has so many powerful anti-MOAB towers and upgrades that you just need to invest a bit more money into them for an easy win.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Happens quite often when playing more advanced tracks.
  • In BTD5, a 4/2 ninja, 3/2 ice tower, and a bunch of 2/3 bomb shooters under the influence of a 2/3 Monkey Village was the strategy of not only 5, but the Monkey City spinoff.
  • In BTD6, prior to patch 6.0, most players ended up using the combo of a top-path Alchemist buffing a bottom-path Super Monkey and a top-path Ninja. Even after the nerf that causes top-path alchemist buffs to expire after a specific amount of attacks and bottom-path Super Monkeys got nerfed as well, several towers attacked slow enough to still be extensively paired with top-path alchemists, such as top-path ninjas (still being the most popular one by far), bottom path submarines, and top path wizards. And then come Update 17, the bottom path Super Monkey got Darkshift, which then proceeded to bring this strategy back a bit.
  • Since Co-op uses money-dividing mechanics, it's rare to see a match that doesn't include at least one player using Benjamin the Money Multiplier to increase their overall income. For similar reasons, Benjamin is also a very popular hero for Half Cash mode.
  • Freeplay ventures in the fifth generation always used Temples of the Monkey God due to being heavily boosted by their sacrifices on top of their base power, allowing them to handle the gradually stronger blimps that Freeplay almost solely consists of. The Vengeful True Sun God Bloons TD 6 is the go-to tower for freeplay attempts as well for the same reason, though with the introduction of Paragons, they're no longer the de-facto best freeplay tower.
  • The BAD on round 100 of CHIMPS is usually shot down by a submarine with a First Strike Capability on any map that contains water on it. This is due to the ability's 10,000 damage being able to kill not only the BAD layer, but its descendant bloons as well in one hit if used against a BAD that is sufficiently softened up beforehand.
  • For users of Total Transformation alchemists, the universally-preferred towers to transform with that ability are Druids of Wrath or Shinobi ninjas, since the transformed druids and ninjas can be buffed by external Poplusts or shinobis respectively (however, Poplusts themselves cannot be transformed).
  • Since the buff of the dumb sniper, the 0-2-5 Elite Defender became the most used tower in Deflation Mode, as it is just cheap enough to squeeze into the 20,000$ budget if discounted by a village which is then sold, has global map coverage, and can pop anything. Version 28.0 finally shut down this strategy by taking away its ability to pop lead bloons.
  • Flooded Valley commonly has players make a beeline for the Carrier Flagship and then place a middle path Ice Monkey on the highest platform of the ship, allowing land towers to be placed on the water to the right of the dam with no line of sight restrictions.
  • When it comes to Boss Bloons, the Tack Zone and MAD are very commonly used by players for both Bloonarius and Lych. The Tack Zone has great damage for its price and can handle the first few rounds with some support for Bloonarius's ceramics, and the maps where bosses appear usually play to its strengths. Meanwhile, the MAD has excellent MOAB damage and doesn't rely on buffs, making it useful against Lych, while still being able to benefit from buffs greatly when fighting Bloonarius. The MAD in particular also has powerful advantages against the later-introduced Boss Bloons: global range lets it barrage Vortex from outside of stun range, the same range lets it keep up with Phayze's teleportation while having innate Camo detection to counter Radar Jam, and its tremendous damage per hit and ability to bypass immunities neutralizes Dreadbloon's armor as long as it has another defense to handle the Military-immune phase.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • In BTD2, it was the black bloons who fit in here— they were the only bloons to be immune to Bomb Shooters, and since the strongest bloon was the rainbow bloon, Bomb Shooters were used a lot. The only option against a frozen black bloon was the upgraded boomerangs, which fired in a rather strange pattern. Later installments gave Bomb Shooters shrapnel to deal with black bloons.
  • BTD2 introduced the Lead Bloon, which is somewhat slow but has the ability to shrug off any piercing damage. In its home game, the only tower that could destroy it was the Bomb Tower, making it incredibly difficult to take care of them since they produce Black Bloons on death, which are immune to the Bomb Tower. While they're not as bad in later games, they can still be a massive pain if you weren't expecting them, and they're also a huge threat when given the Camo status since a lot of their counters can't naturally see Camos (in fact, with the exception of Ezili in BTD6, no tower can damage Camo Lead Bloons unupgraded).
  • Ceramic Bloons, introduced in BTD3. They are deceptively fast and are protected by an outer shell that allows them to absorb 10 attacks before popping, meaning they can take significantly more punishment than your average bloon. What's worse is that they can No-Sell glue, almost One-Hit Kill you if they get through, and contain two Rainbow Bloons, which are plenty annoying on their own. But the problem arises when the game decides to spam them in huge droves...
  • BTD3 also introduced the MOAB. Not much to say about them except they are slow, extremely bulky, and at the time could No-Sell any effects that could normally slow down or hinder a Bloon's progress. They contain four Ceramics, and if one gets through it almost guarantees a Game Over. Unlike its later-added parents, the BFB and the ZOMG, what really drives them into this territory is that they tend to be spammed, even in non-freeplay levels. They aren't as much of a threat in BTD6, thankfully, due to the increased power level of tier 5 towers, but the round 40 MOAB can still be a threat.
  • The DDT from Bloons Monkey City returns in BTD6, and it's just as awful. While it's slightly slower than it was before, and "only" contains 4 Camo Regen Ceramics rather than 6, it's still fast as hell, and was given additional HP so that it now has twice the health of a MOAB. It's immune to explosives and piercing damage, and is camouflaged on top of that, forcing all towers to get through three levels of immunities to even hurt the thing, leaving few towers that can take down a DDT without a lot of external help. Combine their myriad of immunities with their blazing speed and significant HP, and a group of DDT's can easily spell the end of your game. And like the MOAB, they tend to come in groups (although they usually aren't spammed) and are usually spaced far apart to mitigate Splash Damage Abuse used on them.
  • Camo bloons in BTD5. In BTD4, Camo Bloons were a single type of bloon (like blacks and whites), and towers could accidentally hit them by targeting a bloon near them, so if one in a stream of them was popped, it could start a chain reaction. In BTD5, Camo Bloons are, not only completely invulnerable to attacks made by a tower that cannot detect Camo Bloon, but Camo is more like a "trait", similar to Regenerators - and yes, as a trait, it stacks with all other ones. Every bloon they contain is a camo bloon in itself. Add that to the fact that only a few towers can spot camos, and well, prepare to lose a lot of lives, especially if the Camo status is on something like a Lead or Ceramic.
  • BTD6 adds Fortified Bloons to the lineup of special bloon types. Fortification can be applied to Ceramics, Leads, and MOAB-class bloons to give them double health, significantly boosting their survivability. Even if you can handle normal blimps, one fortified blimp could throw you for a curve, especially if it's given to some of the tougher ones like ZOMGs, DDTs, or heaven forbid the BAD. Worse still, as the only "trait" that can be applied to a blimp, if a MOAB-class bloon has fortification, then every bloon it spawns up to Ceramics will also be fortified, including any blimps.
  • The sixth game also introduces purple bloons. While many were expecting purples to be a tier above pink and below black and white, they're a tier above black and white, surprisingly fast, and are immune to energy-based attacks (eg. magic, lasers, fire, and plasma), which is a problem since many of the stronger towers and upgrades tend to use said attacks. Your horde of Plasma Dark Knights? One purple can pass through them without any problems.
  • In BTD6, in late freeplay rounds the game replaces Ceramics with Super Ceramics. They're much, much tougher than regular Ceramics (60 HP vs regular ceramic's 10 HP), move just as fast, and are spammed in similarly large numbers. They're so tough that towers focusing on popping a lot of Bloons at once, like Ultra-Juggernaut or Glaive Lord, become way less effective at their job. Furthermore, as regular bloons, they can have Camo, Regen, or Fortified properties (the latter of which will double their already sturdy HP), with Super Ceramics in later waves often having all three. On the bright side, all of their descendants will only spawn one child Bloon when popped, but at that point, all Bloons below Ceramics are non-issues anyway.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception:
  • Insinuating in any way that BTD6 is "pay to win" and requires paying with real money to progress like many Allegedly Free Games will get you blasted to smithereens by the fandom. While there are in-app purchases in the game, none of these are necessary to progress, and you can unlock everything simply by playing the game. In fact, the hardest game mode, CHIMPS, disables most perks from in-app purchases. The only paywalled content is Double Cash mode, which makes the game laughably easy (and is also banned in CHIMPS, anyway).
  • Although Psi's gender is not addressed within the game, Ninja Kiwi consistently uses they/them pronouns when referring to them. Fans who get this wrong and refer to them with a gender are swiftly called out, as it can easily come across as non-binary erasure.
• Fan Nickname: From Bloons TD 6 alone:
  • The completion of CHIMPS mode on certain expert maps have nicknames to their own: for Quad, it's called either Quimps, Qimps, or Cuad; Muddy Puddles has "Cuddles" and #Ouch has "#Couch"; Bloody Puddles becomes "Bloodles", and the (extremely difficult) feat of getting its black CHIMPS medal is "Bbloodles".
  • Quad, Muddy Puddles, #OUCH, Bloody Puddles, Dark Dungeons and Ravine are known together as the "True Experts" because they are a vast step-up in difficulty compared to the lesser expert maps such as Workshop, Flooded Valley, Dark Castle and Infernal. Geared is sometimes added to the list, as despite merely being Advanced, it is much harder than the other advanced maps, and its difficulty in CHIMPS mode is comparable to the others.
  • Certain crosspaths have now-memetic nicknames, such as "ANGERY sub" for the 3-2-0 submarine (since its window literally Turns Red while in possession of this crosspath) and "Dumb Sniper" for a bottom-path sniper with a middle crosspath due to its poor layer damage and general inability to pop lead bloons. The name became The Artifact, yet sticked, after the crosspath became viable, arguably even more than the 2-0-3+ sniper. In general, choosing the inferior crosspath for a tower is known as a "dumb crosspath".
  • The 0-3-2 Super Monkey has been called the ISAB Monkey after a couple of videos by the YouTuber ISAB failing several times to have this upgrade beat CHIMPS with two million pops.
  • Monkeys affected by the Alchemist's Transforming Tonic or Total Transformation abilities are known as "cookie monsters" due to their blue fur.
  • The Flying Fortress upgrade for the Monkey Ace has been dubbed the "Big Plane" due to its upgrade description memetically solely consisting of a single sentence calling the Flying Fortress a "BIG plane". It is also sometimes known as the "ISAB Plane" due to the YouTuber ISAB using it as an avatar.
  • In BTD6, obtaining all medals for a map and completing CHIMPS in that map without quitting midway gives a black border around the map in the map selection screen. Because of this, players call completing CHIMPS without quitting a Black Border run, because it's the most difficult requirement for getting the black border. This is used even though said player may not have obtained all the other medals. For the same reason, a CHIMPS run without this restriction is called a Gold Border run.
  • Some specific combos have been nicknamed by the community, as such using Pat Fusty along with the Tack Zone is known as the "Pat Zone" strategy.
  • Fanbases for certain towers are known as "gamings", a corruption of "gangs". So for example, Etienne fans would be known as the "Etienne gaming", Plasma Monkey Fan Club fans known as the "PMFC gaming", fans of Special Poperations (which has the ability to deploy a Marine soldier) would be known as the "Marine gaming", and so on.
  • Etienne's skin ETn, introduced in 25.0, is frequently nicknamed "Alienne".
  • Sauda is sometimes (affectionately) misnamed "Soda" or "Souda" as a joke.
  • Geraldo's Rare Quincy Action Figure is often called the "Quincy NFT" (or even just "the NFT") since it's a goofy-looking, rotating 3D model that has no purpose but to be sold at a very inflated price, similar to non-fungible tokens.
  • Difficult Advanced Challenges that are held on Fridays are still called Friday Stingers, even when NK ceased to officially use the term.
• Fanon: Fans often depict Ezili and Adora as sisters, because of their similar expressions and hairstyle. They also make a good Sibling Yin-Yang team, as Ezili is a dark-themed magic user while Adora is a light-themed magic user. Both heroes also have three abilities, the second of which have sacrificial themes, making them similar. However, this is purely fanon, and nothing in canon suggests the two are related in any way.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The fact that MOAB-class Bloons look like bombs, since they essentially act as a nuke if they bypass your defenses.
  • Also, as of 29.0, Bloontonium reactor no longer pops lead bloons on its own. While from a gameplay standpoint, this gives some use to the infamous Angry Sub crosspath, in Real Life, lead is used to block radiation
  • Cyber-Quincy's description makes sense when you realize that Quincy absolutely can't do anything to DDTs on his own^note Quincy's attacks are Sharp via his regular arrows and Explosion via his Explosive Arrows, both properties which DDTs are immune to.
• Fridge Horror: Several maps have removable obstacles (such as the statues in Chutes or the skull in Streambed). Generally, you have to pay some money for some engineer or chinook helicopter to come and grab it/destroy it. On the already somewhat ominously named map Bloody Puddles however, the car is a Schmuck Bait: if you try to remove it, the chinook fails and crashes, creating another obstacle that you can remove, along with the car, for real this time. As no monkey is seen going out, combined with the "Bloody" part of the name, it is implied that they might have died.
  • Though Ninja Kiwi themselves have confirmed that the pilot was fine and is actually doing ok now.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Super-Wide Funnel upgrade for the Bloonchipper in BTD5. It can destroy a MOAB after two attacks and can bring a ZOMG down to BFBs very easily. However, its most powerful feature is its ability to permanently stunlock any single bloon, including ZOMGs. It was so overpowered that Ninja Kiwi themselves stated that they refused to feature the Bloonchipper in any future generations of the series, and have stuck to this position, as it does not return in BTD6.
  • There's a premium upgrade in the previous entry BTD4 called "Double Cash", which doubles how much money you begin with, and how much you get from the bloons. Already extremely powerful by itself, but there's also a premium upgrade called "Healthy Bananas", which allows Banana Farms to give you more lives. Buying both will give you enough money to buy a Banana Farm from the beginning, with a little extra to buy one more cheap tower. Once the farm gets a few upgrades, it becomes ridiculously easy to rack up staggering amounts of money and lives.
  • In BTD6, the Spike Factory's bottom-path Perma-Spike upgrade causes its spikes to last for three rounds (originally four) instead of vanishing at the end of the round as well as greatly increasing their power. When the game first launched, it was absurdly overpowered; it only cost $22,000, much less than most tier 5 upgrades, despite being able to block entire late-game rounds with the help of a support tower. Various nerfs (increased price, lower spike duration, slower production speed) reduced it from the level of "the most practical tower in the game" to "incredibly useful, but won't win the game on its own".
  • Also from BTD6, the Alchemist used to be able to break the game in two ways:
    • The top upgrade path, specifically the Berserker Brew and Stronger Stimulant upgrades. These gave a major boost to nearby towers' range, pierce, attack speed, and, most importantly, added one point of damage to their attack. Taking into account how most towers in this game use fast but weak attacks, this more than doubled the popping power of a few nearby towers, all for a very reasonable price. Patch 6.0 nerfed this by making the buffs last for a set number of attacks before expiring, meaning that the fast-attacking towers this strategy was most effective with would rapidly burn through the charges unless you used the final upgrade of the path, Perma-Brew, which makes the buff permanent but is extremely expensive.
    • The middle path's final upgrade, "Total Transformation", turns the Alchemist and multiple nearby monkeys into monsters with powerful and fast Eye Beams. Not game-breaking on its own, but combined with the Dart Monkey's final middle path upgrade, Plasma Monkey Fan Club, which turns several Dart Monkeys into Plasma Monkeys, the effects would stack, and the result was an army of transformed Dart Monkeys whose attacks are fast and powerful enough to destroy multiple fortified BADs in seconds. This was removed in patch 11.0 as Total Transformation no longer stacks with other buffs. However, the combination of Total Transformation with the lesser middle path Dart Monkey upgrade, the Super Monkey Fan Club, survived until 12.0 to provide a similar effect.
  • When the Engineer was finally introduced in version 12.0 of BTD6, its activated ability, Overclock, proved to be massively overpowered. For a duration, it doubles the attack speed of one tower. The thing is, the duration is an entire minute, while its cooldown is only 45 seconds. It's possible to permanently or almost permanently double another tower's attack speed with Overclock, including the already powerful Tier 5 towers. Add in the fact that an average Tier 5 tower costs $40,000, while Overclock costs less than $20,000. It's considered so strong expert players are modifying the tier lists based on how good a tower's synergy with Overclock is. 21.0 Nerfed it by making it buff towers for an amount of time-based on their tier and not their price, making it less overpowering when used on T4 and T5 towers.
  • The Dartling Gunner is generally considered a powerful tower, but its Rocket Storm ability becomes ridiculous once you obtain the Gorgon Storm Monkey Knowledge. The base ability is already a powerful Macross Missile Massacre that can do significant damage to both grouped bloons and single targets, but Gorgon Storm makes it so any bloon that isn't wiped out instantly gets stunned by the rockets. What makes this broken is that Rocket Storm is only a Tier 4 upgrade, meaning that you can buy as many of them as will fit on the map, and it's also very cheap by the time you get to the late game, so you can have loads and loads of stunning rockets massively stalling the bloons. The 29.0 update massively nerfed it by reducing the stun time to 0.1 seconds from its earlier 0.5, with Ninja Kiwi officially acknowledging in the patch notes that it was massively overpowered.
  • Psi has an infinite range, doesn't need line of sight, can passively hit camo, and if placed from your first round, gains the ability to hit lead and ceramic bloons quick enough to be effective when they first show up. Their level 3 ability is a stun with a large area of effect and long stun time, which pulses multiple times at high levels to hit more bloons. Though their relatively slow One-Hit Kill attack limits their ability to take on large waves of bloons at first, combining Psi with a free Dart Monkey can get you through a lot of the early game and free up your resources to develop your own setup. Later on, Psi's Psionic Scream attack can easily destroy huge hordes of bloons, especially since they gain the ability to target MOABs at level 14 and BFBs at level 16 — countering the notorious round 98 in particular very well. Psi's base cost was later increased from $800 to $1000 so that you can't place them down from the get-go, but their late-game power is still exceptional, especially on higher map difficulties where they level up faster.
  • Geraldo's wares make him so stupidly versatile that he's a borderline Master of All. Early game? His Shooty Darts are very efficient, copy most of the buffs Geraldo gets, and even scale well late game, and Geraldo himself is a decent attacking tower who's very cheap and has an unusually high amount of pierce. Bloons getting through your defences? Use a tub of Amaz-o-Glue or Creepy Idol to slow them down, or use his placeable Road Spikes to take out any that make it past your other towers. Need mid-game power? He can give your towers camo detection, damage, or sharp damage pierce for several rounds for really cheap, Worn Hero's Cape turns your free Dart Monkey into a Super Monkey for less than 2/3 the cost, Gerry's Fire adds Dragon's Breath to a tower for even less, and once you get the Killer Rabbit, that thing can pretty much solo the mid-game. Struggling with tower DPS? Blade Trap lets you Blade Maelstrom anywhere and Genie in a Bottle will absolutely demolish blimps, and they're even better late game (you get a Super Maelstrom for around $500). Want lots of cash? Invest in an early Rare Quincy Action Figure and sell them for a huge lump sum of cash mid or late-game, buy some Banana Farms and power them up with Fertilizer, then get several cash-generating abilities and use his Rejuv Potion to make that money again for just $1000! The only thing that's preventing Geraldo from clearing CHIMPS by himself is that he has no way to pop leads on round 28, and even that was solved thanks to the Scrapyard map and its Crusher trap, which (with careful use of Geraldo's Creepy Idol and Glue) eliminated his only weakness and allowed him to perform the second-ever 1TC after pre-nerf Sauda. Geraldo did get a nerf in the next major patch on some of his items' uptime and price, but Ninja Kiwi does state Geraldo is supposed to be a rewarding hero for those who know the game mechanics well, which is why he's so versatile.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Yellow Bloons from BTD and the stronger Pink Bloons from BTD4 are obnoxiously fast and moderately durable, and unlike many other annoying Bloons in the game, they come extremely early. At that stage of the game, most towers are extremely liable to miss them entirely, although they will slow down as you remove their layers. In some strategies, it's even more advantageous to leave the slower Blacks and Whites alone instead of popping them to Pinks.
  • From BTD5, regrowth bloons. Note that this is a "trait", which means that any bloon that isn't a MOAB-class can have it. It isn't so bad for weaker Bloons, but for stronger Bloons that have more than one children, both children will regrow back into the original Bloon if left too long. For example, if a Regrow Rainbow gets popped, you end up with two Regrow Zebra Bloons, both of which will regrow, leaving you with two Regrow Rainbow Bloons. Fortunately, their threat level falls off quickly once the player gets enough firepower to take them down before they can be left alone, but they can still be a serious threat if they appear at a stage where your initial defenses aren't enough to take them out.
• Good Bad Bugs: A few.
  • Hypersonic Tack Shooters. In the first two games, by upgrading via the tab key, you could boost upgrades way beyond their normal capability. Most of them, however, didn't work. One exception, though, was the fire rate of a Tack Shooter. Using the tab key, a player can create one that fires as fast as a Super Monkey! This was fixed by BTD3.
  • While not exactly a "bug", it is possible to set up a strategy that allows players to repeatedly pop regrowth bloons (of at least black/white level) for an infinite amount of time in BTD5. To do this, place a 3/0 Monkey Apprentice and 1-4 Glue Gunners in a location where the wizard can blow the bloons to the start and the gunner can slow them down. The thing is, it'll require a good defense to keep the bloons from overwhelming the player (a Ray of Doom placed so that it covers most of the exit will suffice, as will a Quadruple Spiked Mines set up if the bloons in question are rainbow bloons). Unfortunately, on the flash version, it's been nerfed in later updates, but it's still possible to gain unlimited money with the use of the Supply Drop ability.
  • The Flash-only Hypersonic Juggernauts. To pull this off, build a 0/4 dart monkey and any number of other dart monkeys (up to 9) to 2/0. Activate the ability, upgrade the 2/0's to 4/0, and enjoy the 10-second streams of giant Spike Balls of Doom!
    • There is another, cheaper way to double Super Monkey Fan Club firing speed (also Flash-only) that may also be a bug. Simply activate two SMFC abilities right next to each other. The above two can be combined for even more Juggernaut insanity (max speed Juggernauts!).
    • The Mobile and Steam versions, instead of Hypersonic Juggernauts, have a bug where Juggernaut monkeys gain the rapid-fire darts of the Super Monkey; this is the only time when it's a good idea to get the pierce upgrades for a Juggernaut because the darts can still do a lot more damage with 4 pierce than with 1.
  • With the 9.0 update to BTD6 came a rather... unique bug. For some ungodly reason, certain people reported that every portrait in the menus had been replaced by... Quincy. Cue the jokes.
  • The Infinite Stacking glitch in version 11.0 of 6. The Carrier Flagship upgrade of the Buccaneer allows you to place two land-based towers on top of it. But because the game is a 2D game pretending to be 3D and height is not considered in a tower's position, the spots' positions are actually slightly north of the flagship's position instead of being on top of it. Even if a spot's actual position overlaps with the track, an obstacle, or another tower, the flagship allows you to place towers there. The fun begins when you use this trait with the Support Chinook's ability to move towers. Place a Carrier Flagship just slightly below a track, move a tower to a spot provided by the flagship, then sell the flagship while the Chinook is still moving. Tada! Now you have a tower in the middle of the track. This process is repeatable. Build another flagship in the same place, move a tower, and sell the flagship, and now you have two towers in the same position. Repeat until you're satisfied. Here's a demonstration.
  • The 23.0 update to BTD6 accidentally boosted the MOAB damage on Plasma Accelerator's beam massively, turning the already-decent tower into a powerhouse.
  • During the first Contested Territory event in BTD6, you were allowed to pick seven relics instead of the four you're supposed to. Players had fun loading up on powerful relics to make grinding out territories easier. Sadly, this was patched near the end of the event.
  • When the Beast Handler was first released in 36.0 the third tier and onwards for the top path had an attack speed cooldown that was far shorter than it was supposed to be making them incredibly strong for their prices. The 36.1 patch that was released about two days later fixed this issue by increasing the cooldown to its intended value.
  • The 38.3 update made the Total Transformation bugged by allowing you to link some transformable towers to whatever you want. If you link something to a dart monkey they become compatible with both Fan Club abilities, which allows you to greatly enhance the attack speed of the tower (Plasma Monkey Fan Club gives most projectiles the texture of the plasma balls, but this is only visual). You can also link almost anything to a bugged Wizard lord Phoenix and have the tower use its ability indefinitely, even if it is an income-based ability where they cut money-generating abilities after 3 minutes from the start of the round. In addition to that, this post on Reddit shows that you can link the monkey to the boss bloon and then sell the tower to instantly defeat the boss. Finally, the bug also has an effect where linking a True Sun God to a tower and then upgrading that tower enhances the sacrifice power of the True Sun God, potentially allowing it access to damage levels that make the Paragons look like base towers. This bug would be fixed in the 39.0 update.
• Growing the Beard: The first four games are relatively solid, but simple, tower defense classics. BTD5, on the other hand, offered dramatic changes to the formula, including more complex tracks, a completely revamped tech tree, beloved towers like the Sniper and Ninja Monkeys, and a massive amount of content. It's telling that BTD5 is the point where the games branched out of their restrictive Macromedia Flash format, and into actual games being sold on storefronts like Steam and Consoles.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • In the first game, Super Monkeys had little value. Several basic dart monkeys with the price could destroy far more bloons in the same timeframe.
  • The fifth generation had Viral Frost, the upgrade immediately after Arctic Wind. It's supposed to freeze incoming closely-spaced chains of bloons even beyond the range of the Arctic Wind, but unfortunately for it, Arctic Wind had infinite pierce at the time and could fight off any non-blimp rush with a Monkey Intelligence Bureau assisting it, making Viral Frost completely useless by comparison.
  • IMF Loan was disliked when it was released. The upgrade costed $12,000, for an ability that gives you $10000, which needs to be paid back, taking a percentage of your income until it's fully repaid. It gave you zero net cash gain. Even if the ability was used right away, players were actually in a worse position than if they hadn't purchased the upgrade in the first place ($12000 available cash vs $10000 available cash with debt). It was fortunately made cheaper in a patch, but even then, people generally avoided the loan ability itself and bought the upgrade either for its expanded bank capacity or as a stepping stone to the much more profitable Monkey-nomics.
  • Striker Jones in BTD6 was at one point being much weaker than the other heroes. Before buffs, he was the only hero who couldn't pop a bloon that was immune to his attacks, whereas Quincy gets explosive arrows to deal with Leads, Gwendolin becomes able to pop Purples at level 17, Obyn's Brambles can pop Purple bloons, and Churchill's Armor Piercing Shells can pop black and zebra bloons. Striker Jones had nothing that could pop blacks or zebras. Even beyond that, he couldn't do anything against MOAB bloons, due to his slow fire rate and low damage. He was only really usable with lots of Bomb Shooters to support. After being the butt of jokes in the community for a while, he received heavy buffs to pull him out of this status.
  • After Striker Jones was buffed, Quincy gained notoriety as the weakest Hero Unit. His main issue is that he's completely outclassed in the game's later rounds required on Impoppable and CHIMPS runs since he's not very effective against large amounts of blimps or super ceramics. He may become a strong attacker as he levels up, but attacking is all he focuses on with no buffing or support powers, so once he gets outclassed he can't provide much else. Later patches have, fortunately, significantly buffed Quincy, making him far more effective early-game while still being able to contribute later on with Storm of Arrows.
  • Similarly, once Quincy got buffed to become a relevant hero, the fandom shifted to making fun of Obyn. Once considered the best hero in the game, Obyn was done in by a combination of nerfs and Power Creep — in addition to his increased cost making him unable to be placed as a starting tower, his buffs applying to fewer tower types, and the slowing ability of his totems getting weaker, other support options were added or buffed to make them far more powerful, even with the bottom-path Druids he works best with. Gwendolin, Pat, and Geraldo are all much better options for buffing magic towers, and regular support towers like Alchemists will support the Avatar of Wrath fine without taking up your hero slot. As a result, Obyn is a Skill Gate Character who's easy to use, but hopeless for beating CHIMPS on the hardest maps. Tellingly, the tier lists for CHIMPS place Obyn in the D-tier — just barely above towers which are completely useless in CHIMPS, like bottom-path Buccaneers, and below Ben, whose money-generating abilities not only don't work in CHIMPS, but also lose the player money.
  • Many fifth-tier upgrades in BTD6 are considered underwhelming for their status:
    • The Bomb Shooter's Bomb Blitz and the Sniper Monkey's Elite Defender have strong powers that trigger when a bloon escapes. They're considered situational at best since by the time you can afford them, the only thing that's still threatening is MOAB-class bloons and ceramics, which deal enough damage to be an almost-guaranteed One-Hit Kill; they're also unusable in Impoppable and CHIMPS modes (where you only have one life). Updates have tried to fix the problem by giving the towers additional buffs: Bomb Blitz deals much more damage, always fires recursive cluster shots instead of alternating, and damages explosion-resistant bloons, and Elite Defender deals much more MOAB damage and shoots faster as bloons get closer to the exit. Ezili's Sacrificial Totem can now also trigger the powers when it's used.
    • The Wizard Monkey's final bottom-path upgrade was originally Soulbind, which suffered the worst from the leak requirement. It allowed you to bind towers to your soul, which would cause them to be sold instantly when you run out of lives, then converting every $100 earned from the sale into an extra life. Even if selling the tower for lives did manage to save you, you just sacrificed an important part of your defense strategy, meaning that although you survived one bloon, the rest will be able to get through your defenses even more easily than before. This led to it being reworked into the more practical Prince of Darkness, which just upgrades the necromancer's zombie bloons... though the Prince of Darkness was still considered to be an extremely weak T5 tower, at least until the 21.0 update buffed it.
    • MOAB Domination for the Boomerang Monkey was considered nearly unusable prior to patch 19.0, due to being insanely overpriced yet having a weak effect. At over $60,000, all it really did was inflict weak knockback on MOAB-class bloons, with a special attack that didn't even affect BADs. In comparison, some borderline Game Breakers such as Perma-Spike, Archmage, and Avatar of Wrath were much cheaper and more powerful. The 19.0 patch, fortunately, significantly buffed it by letting it target BADs and making its second boomerang explode on hit, dealing massive damage to MOABs and setting Bloons on fire. While still considered a little overpriced, it's far more viable than it once was.
  • In stark contrast to BTD5, where the Monkey Engineer's Sentries were quite effective, the path with them is considered to be the weakest one for the BTD6 Engineer, due to not providing nearly as much utility as Cleansing Foam, Bloon Traps, or especially Overclock for its price. Sentry Champion in particular is weak for its cost of $37,800. It doesn't compare well to the Sun Avatar, and while it synergizes unusually well with towers that boost its attack speed, the nerf of Overclock was yet another blow to this tower's viability. Finally, its gimmick that turrets explode when timed out or sold is considered to be too unreliable to be of any use. Some of the top path's infamy began to subside in 23.0, when top path engineers' sentries are now affected by the Deconstruction crosspath upgrade, which allows them to do an extra point of damage to blimps and fortified bloons. While Sentry Champion is now considered viable, however, the previous upgrades were still disliked. Thankfully, another buff that allows the sentries to be upgraded to stun bloons turned them into a better-liked Disc-One Nuke.
  • The Ray of Doom, the maximum-tier Dartling Gun upgrade, has seen little to no respect in both the Bloons TD 5 and Bloons TD 6 generations. In the flash games of the Bloons TD 5 generation, it had horrific pierce for a $60,000 tower (just 100!), rotated very slowly, and had little to no niches as a result. In Bloons TD 6, it now has ten times its old pierce but its price was doubled, continuing to drive away players for similar reasons to Super Mines. A price slash of that doubled price didn't attract as many fans of the upgrade as expected, either, and even after it got a buff letting it deal significantly higher damage to the first target hit (mitigating its single-target DPS problems), it's still held back by its exorbitant price tag.
  • Several Contested Territory relics are generally considered complete wastes of relic slots:
    • Tech Bot (which automatically activates a linked ability as soon as it cools down) as a Contested Territory relic is considered virtually useless as it serves as merely a convenience power that does absolutely nothing that cannot be done by the player themselves, unlike literally all other relics out there.
    • El Dorado serves no in-tile use, only increasing team trophy rewards from capturing a tile. The relic slot is always better spent on another relic that would help you actually beat the tile with the best score possible. The team trophy rewards at the end of an event tend to dwarf any bonuses the team gets from El Dorado, as well.
    • Deep Heat is considered an awful relic simply because ice-type attacks are almost completely restricted to Ice Monkeys, which are poor at Least Tiers tiles due to paltry damage output, and for the same reason always require another white-popping tower assisting them when used in Least Cash tiles.
    • Heartless is another very useless relic, only reducing regrow rates by 50%. Most defenses can kill regrow rushes before they regrow to any unmanageable level regardless, making Heartless a waste of a relic slot. Even those few defenses that choke on regrows (namely top path Super Monkeys) are better off with Broken Heart (an anti-regrow damage bonus), which allows them more DPS directly against regrows.

M-Z

• Memetic Badass:
  • The Super Monkey is an elite monkey if there ever was one. He fires faster than a machine gun and can switch to laser blasts when the going gets tough... and then plasma vision when it gets even tougher. He is capable of targeting enemies from far away & can gain even more targeting range. As of the sixth game, he can turn either into a Physical God that can annihilate bloons when given the right sacrifices, a Humongous Mecha that is more than capable of holding its own against massive armies, and a Batman-esque superhero with strong bloon knockback that can eventually create a black hole at the exit of the map.
  • 0/0 Dart Monkeys, reputed to be able to destroy anything. ^Explanation0/0 Dart Monkeys are very weak with them being able to pop only one layer off one bloon per attack, making them only usable for the first rounds. So some players thought it was funny to empower it to cheer them up, in a similar vein to Magikarp and its Splash being treated as a Memetic Badass.
  • Camgrow reds. ^ExplanationFor much the same reasons as 0/0 Dart Monkeys. By the way, camo regrow reds cannot regrow. With the sixth game, this meme has evolved further, into fortified camgrow reds (even though red bloons can't be fortified). A single camgrow red is also spawned at the end of round 5 in Alternate Bloon Rounds in reference to this meme. Some who played the spinoffs have came up with a fortified shielded camo regrow red, a bloon reported to be multiple times as strong as the Elite Boss Bloons.
  • The Glue Storm. Once widely considered the worst tier 5 upgrade in BTD6, it is nearly worshipped by fans who, for example, might make a tier list with the Glue Storm in every tier at the same time, even the mutually exclusive ones. Granted, the fun did die out once Glue Storm got a buff that made it legitimately useful: bloons under its effect now take +1 damage, in a manner similar to Embrittlement, only this affects ALL bloons. His wiggly hoses also get a few jokes thrown at it, with ISAB calling it a “wacky inflatable glue man”.
  • The Cave Monkey in Frozen Over. Some joked that he had to be freed so players could harness his powers, others joked he had to be frozen in to seal away his power, either way, he was considered powerful. And as of Update 17, you can free him—and he can stun MOAB class Bloons up to a ZOMG!
  • The Glue Rat pet in Bloons TD 6 is jokingly reputed to be the most overpowered thing in the game, despite in reality it having zero effect on the gameplay at all. Ninja Kiwi decided to acknowledge this by "nerfing" the Glue Rat in 31.0.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Among the Hero Units:
    • Striker Jones was the subject of mockery in the early months of BTD6 due to being the weakest Hero Unit and a generally outclassed tower. He's since been pulled out of this status thanks to being buffed into usefulness and getting a well-liked alternate skin.
    • Once Striker Jones freed himself from this status, the fans took to making fun of Quincy instead, for being rather outclassed as a hero, his eternal memetic feud against the DDTs, and his voice clips. However, Quincy is now liked for his usefulness in CHIMPS mode.
  • Dumb Sniper, or the 0/2/3 Sniper. It can shoot extremely fast, but for almost no damage. For its cost, it is severely outclassed to the point where any bloon rush above pinks will overwhelm it. Alongside, it cannot even pop leads. Made even more fun of due to previously being the only 3rd-tier insta-monkey that could be obtained in the daily chest. Instantly turned around once the 17.0 update changed Shrapnel Shots to activate whenever any layer of a bloon is popped, causing the so-called "Elite Dumbfender" (Elite Defender with a middle crosspath) to tear through anything except regrowth swarms and the B.A.D. due to the amount of shrapnel it produces.
  • The memetic Player 3 is a bad teammate who constantly requests money to farm, yet never gives back any, which inevitably causes a disaster during one of the tougher rounds.
  • The MOAB Mauler got this reputation after the several nerfs it got at dealing damage to Ceramics (started out with none, got buffed to +5 in the 12.0 update, and by the 30.0 update, that bonus damage is gone). The community has even started to joke that the next balance change for the Mauler will make them start healing Ceramics instead.
  • Among players of Advanced Challenges, Primary Expertise and Bloon Solver are considered the mascots of lazy and unoriginal challenges. The Bloon Solver is also mocked by other players for its Crippling Overspecialization at clearing Super Ceramics.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Bloons was originally a series of puzzle games, which have been completely abandoned in favor of the more successful Tower Defense games.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The sound MOAB-Class bloons make when you pop one.
  • The sounds that play when you win in BTD5 and BTD6.
  • The heroes when they reach Level 20.
    Quincy: I am the best!
    Gwendolin: Doesn't get hotter than this!
    Striker Jones: Maximum firepower!
    Obyn: I AM ONE WITH THE WILDS!
    Benjamin: There's smart, and there's me smart!
    Ezili: I have never felt stronger!
    Pat Fusty: Oh, I am the biggest and the BEST!
    Adora: Elevate me to the kingdom of the sun!
    Brickell: I look good in dress whites!
    Etienne: That's some serious damage!
    Sauda: My blades are legendary!
    Psi: From knowledge... to understanding...
    Geraldo: At last - my shop is complete!
    Corvus: Ah... the final inscription.
• Play-Along Meme: Camo Bloons can't be attacked by towers that can't detect them, despite being just as colorful as regular towers, just with camo patterns on. Players like to joke they really can't see pictures of Camo Bloons. This is usually followed by a variation of "wearing the red wristbands", since the upgrade that lets Dart Monkeys see Camo is depicted in-game as a pair of red wristbands.
• Popular with Furries: Thanks to the series focusing on monkeys that get increasingly anthropomorphic with each installment, a decent amount of the game's fans are also furries. Especially 6, were all sorts of interesting and colorful characters were introduced into the game.
• Porting Disaster: The DSiWare version of 4 was panned for its horrendous performance even by the standards of this series (less than 1 frame per second is the norm later on) that makes selecting towers during rounds nigh impossible and playing the game much less enjoyable. It's telling that 5 didn't receive a release on the Nintendo 3DS or even the New 3DS and instead waited until the Nintendo Switch to ensure it fares well.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Balance changes happen relatively often, and thus many weak towers have been buffed to be usable.
  • Striker Jones went from a Memetic Loser and Low-Tier Letdown to being one of the most popular CHIMPS heroes for Expert tracks. First, he gained a new leveling bonus that lets him and other explosive towers to pop explosive-resistant bloons 50% of the time, and allows explosives to hit black bloons and DDTs every shot at level 19. Then, his Concussive Shells were buffed to stun bloons many times longer than they originally did, making them much more usable against both the blimp-infested rounds in the late-game and normal bloon rushes earlier. Additionally, his level 20 Artillery Command ability also was buffed to double MOAB Mauler damage when it is activated. Combined with MOAB Mauler spam, Striker Jones became a mainstay in CHIMPS strategies, with very difficult maps like Quad and Bloody Puddles not immune to his wrath.
  • Glue Storm was widely considered the worst Tier 5 upgrade in the game. It doesn't give any powerup, and its ability was basically the same as the Tier 4 Glue Strike that just lasts longer. Version 8.0 of the game buffed it by making its glue have a weakening effect during the entire duration of the ability, making it capable of supporting other towers offensively.
  • The Biggest One was pretty underwhelming when it was introduced, doing only 10 damage, twice as strong as The Big One, while costing four times the price. As of version 11.0, its area of effect covers roughly half the entire screen, and it deals 40 damage (it was previously buffed in 9.0 to do 60 damage, becoming so powerful that NK toned it down in 11.0), making it one of the best towers to destroy Super Ceramics.
  • Quincy was the butt of jokes among the heroes because he lost his effectiveness pretty fast. Anything he could do, Obyn Greenfoot could do better (and more). Version 10.0 buffed Quincy by reducing his price so that he can be purchased in the first round in any game mode, finally letting him be the early-game hero he's supposed to be. Version 11.0 buffed him further indirectly by increasing Obyn's price. Quincy is now considered a viable hero, to the point of arguably outclassing Obyn.
  • Prince of Darkness was known as the worst tower in the game before its buff in version 21.0. It's now a powerful, cost-efficient tower that can even synergize with Ezili.
  • Shrapnel Shot went from a Useless Useful Spell to a cornerstone of Sniper Monkey use from version 17.0 onwards. Before that update, it only released shrapnel in a full circle if the bloon shot by the sniper died in one hit. This extremely restrictive condition made shrapnel spawn too rarely to be useful, and many pieces of shrapnel fail to hit any bloons at all due to its circular area of effect. But with the 17.0 rework, the shrapnel now flies in a cone in the same direction in which the sniper was shooting, and most critically spawns when the sniper shot hits any bloon. Elite Defenders crosspathed with shrapnel (formerly a Memetic Loser crosspath) in addition to Elite Snipers saw greatly increased use as a result.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • BTD4 is the only game in the series without separated upgrades, as each tower only has a single path to purchase. This forces players to buy upgrades they don't necessarily need (such as Sonic Boom for a Boomerang Monkey that is nowhere near an Ice Tower, or White Hot Spikes for a Spike Factory when anti-lead damage is already accounted for) just to reach stronger upgrades, which can add up to a lost of wasted cash. Later games would stick with having separated upgrade paths like BTD3.
  • The Engineer's turrets can make tower placement annoying, as you can't control where and when they appear. You can sell them to get rid of them, but it's still annoying. Obyn Greenfoot's totem in BTD6 used to suffer from this issue too (where it was even worse in CHIMPS mode since you're not able to sell them) until patch 5.0 changed them to spawn directly on the track. The Engineer in BTD6 thankfully averts this, as the Sentries they spawn have no footprint, so you can build towers directly on top of them.
  • Temple insta-monkeys inability to accept sacrifices has led to many players groaning upon receiving them since much of its damage comes from the sacrifices. Hence, preventing them from sacrificing towers is viewed as an undesirable gimp.
  • Before version 26.0, whenever a Co-op challenge appears, players were forced to shut off their internet connections to play the Advanced Challenge of the day. This mutual exclusivity was met with universal confusion and criticism.
  • Apopalypse Advanced Challenges can irritate mobile players due to forcing players to read a warning sign before starting or restarting them. When you press the button to close the sign, the bloons start coming immediately. But the game doesn't let you do anything until the sign completely disappears, meaning that for a few precious seconds, bloons can get a significant head start through no fault of the player's own.
  • The Golden Bloon, surprisingly, isn't very well-liked among BTD6's fanbase. The concept is good enough; a fast, hard-to-pop Bloon appears several times throughout a game, and you can pop it to be rewarded with free Monkey Money. However, the Bloon is way too hard to pop for how little of a reward it gives you. It has lots of HP and immunities, becomes intangible briefly after being damaged, and can teleport around the track to evade your strongest towers... yet popping it gives you a single-digit amount of Monkey Money, when finishing a track can give you hundreds. Considering how easy Monkey Money is to get by other means, the Golden Bloon does basically nothing besides distract your towers briefly.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Trying to do a game NLL.^note No Lives Lost
  • Alternatively, doing a game NAPS.^note No (Special) Agents, Premium (Upgrade)s, Specialty (Buildings)
    • Taken a small step forward with NAPS NLL.
    • Take a HUGE step forward with NAPSFRILLS!^note No Agents, Premiums, Specialties, Farming, Road Items, Lives Lost, Selling
  • A popular challenge in 6 is 2TC, or two tower CHIMPS. It's a challenge where you only restrict yourself to two towers in CHIMPS mode. Some variations exist, such as 3TC-ABR or 3TC-Magic Only, although you may need to create a custom challenge for them. This challenge became official with the aptly-named 2TC achievement.
    • If you're feeling particularly masochistic, BTD6's answer to NAPSFRILLS is CHAMPIONS, in which, in addition to the regular CHIMPS mode, you have to play in Alternate bloon rounds with no Op towers (all tier 5) and no Narcissists (heroes). Good luck.
    • If that wasn't enough, then there's CCHHIIMMPPSS mode. On top of the standard CHIMPS ruleset and the no tier-5 or hero restrictions from CHAMPIONS, there are no camo reveals, incentives^note This was mostly added to fill out the acronym. (no rewards upon completing), pausing, or stalling (no stuns, slows, or knockbacks).
  • Trying to complete round 100 of a daily challenge or advanced challenge, even if it ends before that round. This is popular due to being rewarded with an insta-monkey any time that round 100 is passed by any means unless it is an Advanced Challenge that specifically disables that insta-monkey reward.
  • Variants of the 2MPC^note On CHIMPS, have a tower pop count of 2 million (out of approximately 2,045,000). achievement include the All Pops Challenge, where only one tower is allowed to pop anything, and the 2.6MP-ABR, where a tower must achieve 2.6 million pops in an Alternate Bloon Rounds game under CHIMPS rules.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • The first two games are Nintendo Hard due to not having a lot of towers and upgrades to choose from, and money being hard to come by (especially in the early game). BTD3 tones the difficulty down compared to BTD2, despite being the first game to have MOABs. Towers have more powerful upgrades than before, while the Bloon waves aren't strengthened as much by comparison.
  • BTD5 is an even bigger difficulty drop, thanks to having even more towers to choose from and very powerful upgrades for each of them, allowing for a wider variety of viable strategies, and a much bigger selection of maps meaning more content for less experienced players to enjoy.
  • The three basic difficulty modes from Bloons TD 5 are toned down a notch in Bloons TD 6 by removing several rounds from each mode.
    • Easy used to extend until round 50. BTD6 made it much easier by cutting it down to round 40 (moving the lone introductory MOAB from 46 to 40 in the process).
    • Medium used to last until round 65 before BTD6. BTD6 ends the mode at 60 instead.
    • Hard was shaved from round 85 to round 80. Round 80 was reduced from dozens of MOABs to a lone ZOMG, which used to appear alone on 85.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: BTD2 is harder on its Normal mode than BTD1, due to introducing stronger Bloon types and rushing with them in massive quantities.
• Shipping: The sixth game introduced heroes, which, unlike the generic towers, have distinct characters and personalities. Naturally, fans began shipping them with each other. That said, since the game has a near nonexistent story, all ships count as Ships That Pass in the Night. The closest two heroes ever speak to each other is in Co-op mode, and even then they don't interact with each other nor behave differently than in the single-player modes.
• Take That, Scrappy!: The Bloonchipper is a notorious Creator's Pest, and the devs stated it would not return for BTD6. Eventually, it did return in update 31... broken down in a junkyard.
• That One Achievement:
  • Steeley, an achievement on the Steam and mobile version of BTD5, requires you to pop 250,000 Lead bloons - but there are no bloons that contain Lead bloons, so Leads are much rarer than any other bloon. With only 277 Leads appearing in an 85-round game, you could play a map on Hard mode over 900 times and still not have enough to get the achievement. The only easy way is relying on Random Missions or the Wizard Lord mission. The latter method can be done with the aforementioned Regrowth Farming trick, not only by popping tons more leads than by playing normal maps, but also by raking in the cash because the regen farming patch in the Flash version doesn't apply here. Just make sure to get a Ray of Doom quickly to minimize lag compared to the defense you start the farm with.
  • Sapper in BTD6, which requires popping a whopping five million Fortified or MOAB class Bloons. Unless you're willing to go for extremely high freeplay rounds, it will take over a thousand 100-round games to reach that number. Even worse, upgrades that remove Fortified status, such as the Mortar's Shattering Shells, don't count towards this achievement. It's often one of the last achievements obtained for players and by far the hardest achievement that gives an MK point to obtain.
  • Super BAD, also in BTD6, requires you to pop 1000 BAD bloons. In a normal 100-round game, only a single BAD appears in round 100. In Alternate Bloons Round mode, only two BADs appear, one in round 99 and a fortified one in round 100. Like Sapper, going into high freeplay rounds is pretty much required unless you want to play a thousand games just for this achievement. This achievement became much more feasible with the addition of Bloonarius boss events, as the Inflator's higher tiers spew out lots of BADs which count for the achievement.
  • Bloontona 500 requires you to join 500 races. You get a free entry every three hours, and races run for three days a week. You can pay 100 Monkey Money to join a race again, but you get only 250 for the achievement, so it's definitely not worth it. You could also use free race passes to enter and exit a specific race event any amount of times for free, but you have to wait 50 days straight to get a free race pass and it still remains tedious to join, quit, and rejoin the 500 races needed.
  • Otherworldy from BTD5 was actually removed due to its nigh impossibility even when compared to other harder-viewed achievements. Its requirement? That the player wins 365 daily challenges consecutively! In other words, if you were to miss even one day, you would've had to play for another whole year!^note Interestingly, the achievement was removed a few months after the game's launch, meaning it was impossible for someone to achieve it legitimately anyway.
  • Glorious Gold from "BTD6" is an exercise in tedium. The achievement requires the player to pop 500 golden bloons in total and given that only 8 spawn per game at most, and coupled with how difficult it is to pop them without very specific setups designed to counter golden bloons' abilities specifically and that they only spawn on specific days of the week, it will take a lot of grinding to unlock the rewards tied into it.
• That One Boss:
  • In Bloons Monkey City, Blastapopoulos was widely considered to be the most difficult boss of the original set, and for good reason. Its fireballs are repeatedly launched at the most expensive towers (which are also usually the strongest towers), stunning them and effectively wasting all that cash. Blastapopoulos will also throw fireballs regardless if you attempt to sell a tower, which can wear down a defense even more. On higher levels, Blastapopoulos can permanently stunlock multiple expensive towers. And to top it all off, it had the same HP as Bloonarius, which is not good when your DPS is already being slashed by its stunning effect.
  • Lych, introduced in BTD6, is shaping up to be the strongest boss, especially its Elite variant. While its normal variant isn't too much trouble, Lych's rules automatically negate most of the popular strategies for dealing with its fellow boss Bloonarius; Lych saps applied buffs to restore HP, which rules out the use of Alchemist and Overclock, and heals every time a tower is sold! Additionally, Lych's ability to drain lives directly from the player can end a run if the Lych Soul it spawns isn't shot down fast enough, which is a problem in Elite where it has much more health and drains a drastic amount of lives per tick. To top it all off, Lych resurrects blimps at HP intervals which have huge HP and speed buffs, turning even a humble round 40 MOAB into a devastating Lightning Bruiser!
• That One Level: It has its own article now! Ninja Kiwi loves to dish out challenges, and it shows.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Monkeyopolis's income per crate being cut to two-thirds in version 32.0 has already been a disappointment to the fandom, but the one down below tops the cake.
  • When version 33.0 added a limit to the amount of Paragons you can have and set it to 3, a massive uproar happened on Reddit. Because of this Ninja Kiwi would later undo this change for every mode aside from Boss Battles as it was the one mode where the Paragon limit could be justified.
  • Multiple people have been upset about Perma-Spike's big nerf from version 36.0.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • In BTD6, the Engineer's Sentry Expert upgrade allows the Engineer to build four types of sentries: laser, bomb, cold, and spiked balls; each with their own stats and damage types. It's also unique in that the Engineer will take into account what Bloons are on the screen to determine which sentry type to spawn. However, the next upgrade, Sentry Champion, scraps all that and returns to only building one type of sentry, albeit a more powerful one. Many players have suggested Sentry Champion be changed to build more powerful versions of the Expert sentries instead of only building plasma sentries as it currently does.
  • The Legend of the Night, a Super Monkey upgrade, spawns a unique rechargeable black hole attack that serves as a One-Hit Kill any sort of leak for 7.5 seconds upon escaping, recharging every two minutes. Not even BADs, normally having Contractual Boss Immunity to this sort of thing, are immune. Sadly, it sees virtually no use except in very few custom challenges specifically centered around this ability for two principal reasons. First, it is too expensive (costing over $200,000 on Easy Mode) for non-freeplay rounds. Second, it is a required sacrifice for the powerful Avatar of the Vengeful Monkey, a tower essential to deep freeplay runs, and if you build such an Avatar, you cannot use the black hole ability ever again unless the Avatar is sold (which is obviously ill-advised). With the Legend of the Night being nigh-unusable in both freeplay and non-freeplay rounds, the black hole (an interesting anti-leak mechanic) goes underused. This became more so after Ninja Kiwi imposed various nerfs to the black hole (to prevent players from using ability cooldown modifiers to sit back and achieve massively high rounds so long as they didn't close their game out).
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Because of her lack of an established or obvious feminine given name (given her military background, "Brickell" may as well be her surname), her male-dominated profession, and her lack of Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, many players mistook Admiral Brickell as a guy, especially if you're playing with hero voices turned off. It doesn't help that the fur underneath her chin looks like a beard (nearly every monkey in the game has it, including other female characters such as Gwendolyn and Ezili, but on Brickell, it looks darker and thicker, making it more noticeable).
  • Etienne was thought to be a girl at first after his reveal. This is probably caused by his aviator hat, which brings to mind Amelia Earhart. To people not familiar with the French language, "Etienne" can also sound like a feminine name despite being exclusively male.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Geraldo's name is explicitly pronounced in a Spanish-like fashion in-game. Though Ninja Kiwi has said that "jer-al-doh" is acceptable, the proper pronunciation still isn't very well-known among the player base.

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