Pencil 2.O Wikia
Register
Advertisement
Pencil 2.O Wikia

(Return to the previous page here.)

Real-Life BFB
Main infoProduction info

Yearly overviewShow timelines (Timeline of RLBFDIRLBFDIA • RLIDFBRLBFB before and after the split • RLTPOTExtra scouting) • General timelines (pre- and post-1950)

Differences from Pencil 2.OAestheticsMethodology (NamesNationalitiesHeightsAgesColours • AccessoriesTeam portraits) • Beyond the 64

TL;DR: InfoTimeline of the final project (part 1part 2part 3)

The (slightly un)official RLBFB yearbook! (Alternate takes)

This is the (long) methodology page, the page where I describe how I came up with all of the names, all of the properties, even all of the images of the 64 original contestants of RLBFB. But I promised myself that I wouldn't work on it until I started my review of the first episode of TPOT. So in the meantime, much of this page will be empty except for an outline and a timeline and some other "lines".

Note that modern year numbers are used on this page instead of the 48-years-ago numbers found in the rest of the mini-series. Likewise, object names will be used (Pencil, not Penelope) if referring to humanizations by anyone else because this page will reference those which were made by other artists who may not use the same names I do.

Overall process[]

Just like the YouTube series, the creation of RLBFB did not happen in a day; it took a lot of hard work in December 2020 and even before to mould the (YouTubeized) BFB contestants into their 擬人化-passed forms. It wasn't even in an organized order; for various parts of my existence in the BFDI fandom, I had been working…

  • On their human names (since 2014, attempts to be systematized 2016–2018, fully systematized after 2020)
  • On their heights (2016, scrapped later, but redone 2020–2021)
  • On their ages (since 2012, observed and systematized after 2020)
  • On their nationalities and ethnicities (since 2013, attempts to be systematized 2017, fully systematized after 2020)
  • On their hair and eye colours (semi-codified 2017–2018, observed until 2020, fully systematized in 2020)

Names[]

Click here for the NAMES page.

Nationalities and ethnicities[]

At least in the universe of P2O, nearly all contestants of BFB were current or recently-graduated students of the floating international school in Nairobi. Because of the students' origins, BFB was one of the most diverse series in the world. The same is true for the RLBFB universe, although it is a bit more limited because the world of the 1960s was so much different from the world of the 2010s.[1]

The national origins of some contestants were determined very early on, as knowing these things was necessary during the writing of many an episode of P2O.

  • This was absolutely required to be canon no matter what: Pencil and Needle are Kenyan (half-Brazilian), while Match, Pen and Eraser come from Ontario, Canada. The Canadians were of Jewish heritage, with Match having origins in Central Europe and the boys somewhere around the Eastern Mediterranean (preferably Greece). They were thought of as such in 2012, codified with the publishing of "Before BFDI" in 2014, and further explored on Pencil 2.O.
  • Pin is Vietnamese, something I had believed as early as 2013.
  • I knew Gelatin was Argentinian since 2014.
  • Rocky was Kenyan for sure, even though his appearances on P2O were almost minimal.
  • Flower had to be American, as did Blocky. I don't know why; on BFDI, they just had this "I'm American, I can do whatever I want" mindset about them. A couple of the other contestants felt that way too, but I got the vibe most from those two.
    • Snowball was also like this, but because of his advanced age, he couldn't be in what is now the states without being an American Indian; he was thus made English from the Kingdom of Mercia. A history lesson later and he was turned Danish for the first ~300 years of his life.
    • Golf Ball and Tennis Ball are also American; it was alluded to a number of times on P2O. On BFDI, they carried a whole "nice Midwestern couple" schtick with them, especially from TB.[2]
    • As are Firey, Coiny and, by extension to BFDIA, Nickel. If Firey is American, then surely Firey Jr. must be, even if in heritage. As all of them were introduced together in the first BFDI episode, it only made sense (at the time) to include Spongy in that list too.
  • Bubble had been from Yoyleland for some time now, and it was even referenced on TV Tropes.[3] Since Yoyleland is the YT-universe equivalent of Turkey, Bubble was made canonically Turkish c. 2017.
  • Book had unknown origins. I had mentioned on a 2017 blog post that she was Indian, but even with that being said, her nationality was up in the air. Ruby was unknown for a shorter amount of time; I knew that she and her 35 sisters came from Tanzania since 2014, but I had a hard time choosing a specific origin—was she Christian? Muslim? What?
    • Leafy was said to come from everywhere. I'd originally put her as just American (of every ethnicity), but that was narrowed down to her being an American of West Indian descent.
  • It was mentioned on P2O that Marker was related to the Schreiber boys, just living in Denmark. This was carried on to the RLBFB canon.

But in the remaining cases, most BFB contestants appeared in the show as minor characters and had no backstory readily available in what they call the "show bible". By the end of 2020, i.e. the end of the second standardization period, a contestant's nationality was constructed after their name was finalized. This included their first name; their surnames came shortly after. Other details, like their location of birth and their upbringing, were determined after all of that.

  • Those whose origins were determined this way.
    • 8-Ball: Russian, later Portuguese-speaking African, eventually Mozambican.
    • Balloony: Scottish.
    • Barf Bag and Pillow: Canadian.
    • Basketball: Italian (as Pasqualina), revised to Brazilian, later Colombian.
    • Bell: French (as Belle), revised to Syrian, later a Syrian living in West Germany.
    • Black Hole: Muslim from any country, revised to Nigerian.
    • Bomby: Burkinabé (or Upper Voltan in RLBFB times).
    • Book: Norwegian (as Astrid).
    • Bottle, Eggy and Cake: American.
    • Bracelety: Mexican.
    • Clock: Libyan, later Algerian, specifically a half-pied noir.
    • Cloudy and Foldy: French—the former was declared Breton after the way that he speaks his consonants.
    • Donut: South African, formerly of Afrikaans descent, later half-Indian.
    • Fanny: English.
    • Fries: Paraguayan (as Francisco), later Belgian (after I learned where French fries came from).
    • Gaty: Swiss, later Slovenian (or a Yugoslav Italian in RLBFB times).
    • Grassy: Dutch, later Indo (ethnic group of Indonesian people in the Netherlands).
    • Ice Cube: Japanese (even as Isis), later revised as an American of Japanese heritage.
    • Lightning: Irish, later Northern Irish (of different religions before settling on Catholicism).
    • Liy: Swedish.
    • Lollipop: Somewhere English-speaking, later South African.
    • Loser: West German.
    • Naily: Japanese (as Shiori), later revised as an Australian of Japanese heritage.
    • Pie: English, later Anglo-Indian.
    • Remote: Portuguese-speaking African, eventually Angolan.
    • Robot Flower: Of Japanese origin, though American in form and residence.
    • Sana: American (as Jodie), to Irish (as Sinéad), to Swedish (as Sanna), to Palestinian Arab, or Egyptian (as Sana).
    • Stapy: Romanian (as Stefan) per a comment on the TFIL review, but he's only of Romanian descent; he is Namibian (South-West African).
    • Taco: Mexican-American.
    • Teardrop: Belgian (specifically Walloon), later Luxembourgish to fit Fries into Belgium.
    • TV: Somewhere Spanish-speaking, later Korean.
    • Woody: Somewhere English-speaking, later New Zealander.
    • Yellow Face: Israeli (as Yitzhak).
  • Those whose origins were determined another way.
    • Tree is Australian. As the only original speaking cast member with a true non-American accent, he could only be from the Land Down Under.
    • Dora is not Mexican (or Peruvian) as many of thought, but is actually from the U.S. I'm citing the GoAnimate videos, but that she goes to a school where everyone is of different skin colours and speaks American English,[4] not to mention her church being called the "Trinity Christian Center", made me realize that she was a North American this whole time.[5]
    • Puffball, like Leafy, was said to come from every nation on account of her ethereal nature. In 2020, when I had to provide a singular origin, I decided that she should be from the French Caribbean, specifically Guadeloupe.
      • Ditto with David: American all the way—he has doubts on seriousness.
      • And with Roboty: He was made in Kenya, but since he does not communicate using any language but Morse code, he could potentially come from anywhere.

Heights[]

Click here for the HEIGHTS page.

Ages[]

BFDI contestants (2012–2014)[]

This is actually the first human-like quality I thought of during my time as a BFDI fan. I even remember writing down the names of the contestants on a piece of paper and how old I perceived them to be, and that was in 2012—nine years ago now! These ages, though hardly specific as I just wrote down random numbers for the majority of them, have lasted the longest and have also found their way into other fanfictions of mine. At the time, it was just the Pages series, nothing on the Other Other wiki yet.[6]

  • Old range
    • Snowball: Inconceivably old, born in the Year of the Devil, 666.
    • Flower: Very old, she must have stayed in school for many years. I think I wrote down a date from during World War II.
    • Golf Ball, Tennis Ball: A generation above the mains. GB is older than TB by a few years.
  • Slightly old range
    • Blocky: Oldest of his gang (after Snowball), held back for a while.
  • Regular-aged range
    • Eraser: Older than the other mains.
    • Bubble: Not old enough to be in a different age cohort from the mains, but more mature.
    • Pen: Born 2nd July 1989.
    • Pencil: Born 14th February 1990.
    • Match: Born 12th December 1990.
  • Slightly young range
    • Coiny, Firey, Leafy, Needle: A little younger than the mains, protagonists in their own series.
    • Pin: A little younger than the others.[7]
  • Young range
    • Ice Cube: Born in 2001.
    • Teardrop: Born in 2003, the same age and birthday as a big Teardrop fan in real life.
    • Rocky: Born in 2004, the same age and birthday as a big Rocky fan in real life.
    • Spongy: Born in 2006.
    • Woody: The youngest of them all, born in 2007.

P2O characters (2015–2020)[]

Even though BFDIA had been on hiatus for a long time, I didn't bother to assign ages to many of the contestants. The ones I focused on were only those who appeared in P2O. This was a trend that carried over to other seasons from IDFB to BFB up until to a month ago.

  • Regular-aged range
    • Book, Ruby: They attended the same classes as Pencil, Match and Bubble, but at Ibáñez International, it is not the grade level or classes attended that determine one's age.
  • Slightly young range
    • Marker: Younger than his cousins, though by how much we do not know.
    • Gelatin: Also slightly younger.
    • Nickel: The same age as Saye, Pencil's oldest daughter, i.e. born in 1999.

The rest remained unknown, until…

RLBFB Era (2020–2021)[]

There are now ages for all members of the RLBFB cast! Of course there has to be, especially since people age more quickly than most objects do.

I was confused at first because I knew that I would have to add other (somewhat superfluous) things like birthdays and stuff, so what did I do? Took to the Internet for inspiration. I must have found several posts listing the fan-made birth dates or ages of the contestants, and I thought that I looked at them all, but instead I only saw a small sample. In statistics, that's all you need.

Sources used to get the birth dates of the RLBFB contestants
Letter[8] Username Date published Ages or dates?
A, C ReddyHakky1998 1 December 2016, 3 March 2018 Dates (with ages)
B LovelyTeng2002 26 January 2018 Ages
D Insane Leafy V2.5 7 April 2018 Ages
E TheNewBGGAMING 2 June to 7 July 2018 Ages
F ScribbledEggs 16 August 2018 Ages
G Tazelly 29 October 2018 Ages
H Tiger Lilly Cookie 6 November 2018 Ages
I NebraskaSeemsNice 30 January 2019 Ages
J squidwardbfb52 21 March 2019 Ages
K MLPMariolover 23 May 2019 Ages
L Jewels the Bootsie and Chloe Lover 17 January 2020 Dates (with ages)
M–N AnalTuberculosis and NickCannot 1 March 2020 Ages
O Deepestsonicever 7 April 2020 Dates
P Brennanbrew11965 1 June 2020 Dates, ages, school years
Q–R Various redditors 8 September 2020 Age (ranges) or ages
S Mr_Squirrelton 26 September 2020 Ages
T ItsYaBoiMarker 4 December 2020 Age (ranges)

I recorded each date of birth assigned to a contestant; that was the easy part. The difficulty came with the ages. Since people change ages all the time,[9] I decided to set an upper and lower limit in terms of when each person recorded the contestants' birth dates. So a twelve-year-old contestant, as proclaimed on a blog post from 1 July 2019, would have to have been born between 2 July 2006 and 1 July 2007. Strange to see so many contestants younger than I am, but I guess that's what happens when you over-analyse a show that (mainly) children watch.

Here are the average ages of the contestants based on these sources and how they influenced how I chose the ages for the RLBFB contestants.

Fan-made average ages of the BFB contestants
Contestant Avg. age σ of ages Birthdate from this RLBFB date of birth[10] Reasons
8-Ball 20.1 5.1 18 September 1992 8 August 1988 Based on symbolism (What's 8-Ball's least favourite number?)
Balloony 20.2 5.8 31 July 1993 1 January 1990 Unknown
Barf Bag 19.2 4.5 16 September 1994 16 September 1991 Based on the averages (year changed)
Basketball 19.2 4.2 26 March 1995 26 March 1992 Based on the averages (year changed)
Bell 16.4 6.0 17 March 1998 17 March 1994 Based on the averages (year changed)
Black Hole 24.1 8.5 9 January 1989 9 January 1989 Based on the averages
Blocky 17.9 3.1 5 February 1996 6 November 1984 Legacy reasons
Bomby 14.9 6.2 10 September 1998 24 January 1995 Unknown
Book 18.8 4.2 22 February 1996 13 February 1992 Legacy reasons (she was about that age in P2O), also based on the plot (her birthday is eclipsed by Pencil's)
Bottle 15.4 4.9 31 January 1998 31 January 1998 Based on the averages
Bracelety 13.9 4.8 9 December 2000 9 December 2000 Based on the averages
Bubble 15.8 4.5 25 January 1998 10 March 1989 Legacy reasons
Cake 15.0 4.9 25 January 1999 25 January 1999 Based on the averages
Clock 20.6 5.4 25 April 1992 11 May 1989 Unknown
Cloudy 26.7 16.7 6 February 1989 3 May 1985 Unknown
Coiny 18.5 3.8 27 December 1995 12 February 1993 Legacy reasons (year), also for symbolism (day: Abraham Lincoln's birthday)
David 19.5 9.3 11 January 1994 12 July 1993 Unknown
Donut 24.0 6.7 20 April 1988 20 April 1988 Based on the averages (also a terrible coincidence: "88" is a number associated with the Nazis, and whose birthday is on April 20?
Dora 15.6 6.1 25 April 1998 14 August 1993 Based on symbolism (Dora is supposed to be 7 years old; her show premiered in 2000)
Eggy 18.8 6.7 20 July 1995 9 March 1992 Unknown
Eraser 19.6 3.6 15 November 1992 23 May 1987 Legacy reasons
Fanny 17.9 4.7 26 November 1995 30 January 1992 Unknown
Firey 18.0 5.0 17 June 1994 12 February 1993 Based on personality (Coiny's rival is he), also based on symbolism (day, Abraham Lincoln's birthday)
Firey Jr. 10.9 5.6 20 March 2006 25 December 2009 Based on the backstory
Flower 18.9 4.5 17 July 1993 9 February 1946 Legacy reasons
Foldy 17.6 4.4 14 March 1997 14 March 1993 Based on the averages (year changed)
Fries 22.5 9.2 31 January 1991 26 June 1988 Unknown
Gaty 20.9 7.6 17 May 1993 19 July 1993 Based on the averages (day changed)
Gelatin 14.2 5.6 26 December 2002 29 June 1993 Legacy reasons
Golf Ball 19.8 4.1 4 March 1993 9 March 1962 Legacy reasons
Grassy 11.2 5.6 9 March 2005 11 October 2000 Unknown
Ice Cube 13.4 5.3 1 November 2000 23 December 2001 Legacy reasons (year), also based on symbolism (born at the start of winter)
Leafy 17.3 3.8 12 March 1996 20 March 1993 Legacy reasons (year), also based on symbolism (born at the start of spring)
Lightning 16.9 4.4 1 February 1998 1 August 1998 Based on the averages (year), also based on symbolism (if you're born on this date you're of the Leo astrological sign)
Liy 20.4 5.8 11 December 1992 11 December 1992 Based on the averages
Lollipop 19.7 4.0 25 April 1993 25 April 1990 Based on the averages (year changed)
Loser 26.1 15.5 2 October 1985 5 February 1976 Unknown
Marker 14.9 5.3 29 December 1998 23 January 1996 Legacy reasons
Match 17.6 3.3 24 April 1996 12 December 1990 Legacy reasons (cemented in 2012)
Naily 14.9 4.0 30 November 1999 20 February 1999 Based on the averages (day changed)
Needle 17.5 4.4 7 June 1995 14 July 1993 Legacy reasons
Nickel 22.5 10.6 23 April 1992 13 April 1999 Legacy reasons (year), also for symbolism (Thomas Jefferson's birthday)
Pen 18.0 3.5 22 May 1995 2 July 1989 Legacy reasons (cemented in 2012)
Pencil 18.0 3.4 8 October 1995 14 February 1990 Legacy reasons (cemented in 2012)
Pie 21.3 10.0 2 March 1994 30 August 1990 Unknown
Pillow 19.4 4.9 26 October 1994 22 August 1991 Unknown
Pin 17.8 3.0 3 May 1996 28 February 1994 Legacy reasons (finally canonized in January 2021)
Puffball 17.1 4.8 21 July 1996 21 July 1996 Based on the averages
Remote 19.8 9.2 5 February 1995 1 March 2009 Based on the backstory (the person on whom she was modelled was born 18 years before)
Robot Flower 15.6 6.8 28 August 1998 1 September 2008 Based on the backstory
Roboty 20.2 11.0 11 December 1994 1 February 2011 Based on the backstory
Rocky 11.2 6.5 11 December 2003 21 October 2004 Legacy reasons
Ruby 15.0 4.1 22 December 1999 30 July 1992 Legacy reasons (she was about that age in P2O).
Saw 17.4 3.6 23 May 1996 22 August 1993 Unknown
Snowball 26.7 15.7 24 October 1988 20 April 666 Legacy reasons (year), also based on my efforts to troll with the whole 4/20 craze and all
Spongy 27.2 14.3 15 July 1986 9 October 2006 Legacy reasons
Stapy 21.3 9.2 29 May 1993 29 May 1993 Based on the averages
Taco 18.4 4.8 6 September 1995 25 July 1992 Based on symbolism (she was born on Taco Tuesday)
Teardrop 17.6 9.6 17 July 1997 11 May 2003 Legacy reasons
Tennis Ball 20.7 4.0 1 July 1991 3 October 1964 Legacy reasons (cemented in 2015 with Before BFDI)
Tree 21.4 4.6 29 July 1991 24 August 1983 Unknown
TV 22.1 14.3 24 February 1994 27 November 1990 Unknown
Woody 12.9 6.0 11 January 2002 10 February 2007 Legacy reasons
Yellow Face 25.0 8.6 25 February 1988 21 February 1977 Unknown

You'll notice that I have included each contestant's date of birth. This was calculated from the average ages, not by the numbers on each chart, but relative to the standard deviations of each person's individual estimates (since the definition of youthfulness and antiquity are not set in stone). I had done so much to make sure the ages were close to those of the characters on P2O, and rather daftly I flattened the cells in the spreadsheet, so I can't tell you exactly how I got these dates… here they are, though.

I've also removed the outliers from the data. We know that Black Hole must be billions of years old and David is somehow immortal (according to some people)—humans are not.[11]

One last thing that stands out is that if you sort by average age, you'll see people generally think male contestants are older than the females. I don't know what that says about our society or the object show community, but it was still interesting to find.

Colours[]

Click here for the COLOURS page.

Team portraits[]

Click here for the TEAM PORTRAITS page.

Notes[]

  1. Oh yeah, or the 2110s.
  2. What do you think this painting was referring to?
  3. It also means that Leafy was from Yoyleland, but that didn't seem right to me. If anything, she was an eternal tourist (BFDIA 1–IDFB 1).
  4. Except Miss Christina, a British expatriate.
  5. Even on the Nickelodeon show, though, she isn't a resident of Latin America. She just visits there on her own two feet without parental supervision.
  6. There's "Pencil vs. Batman", but we don't talk much about that. I like to think of it as a fanfiction of Pencil 2.O created by a deranged in-universe fan.
  7. I wrote down 1999, but that was really a conjecture and never official, even during the P2O era. The in-universe explanation for her pretending to have the same birthday as Match (but being born in 1999) is that she is a liar!!1
  8. On the spreadsheet.
  9. Citation needed.
  10. Plus 48 years, of course.
  11. They also cannot live over a thousand years, but here's Simon.

(Continue to the next page here.)

Advertisement