BFDI Pin is Autistic: A Character Analysis
Hey, everyone! So I’ve decided to start a new series called “Autistic BFDI Characters”, in which I will take my favorite characters of BFDI and analyze how they could be interpreted as autistic, starting with Pin.
Disclaimer: This is my first attempt at an analysis, so don’t hate me if I screw up.
So I will be using the Autism Spectrum Disorder section of the DSM-5 to help me with this analysis. Here are the sections I am using for reference:
1. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation; to reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect; to failure to initiate or respond to social interactions.
2. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.
3. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers.
1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g., simple motor stereotypies, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases).
2. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat same food every day).
3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus (e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects, excessively circumscribed or perseverative interests).
4. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment (e.g., apparent indifference to pain/temperature, adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or touching of objects, visual fascination with lights or movement).
“Why is making friends so hard?” -Pin, IDFB 1
First of all, let’s talk about Pin’s struggles with friendship. In BFDIA 5A, Bubble is swinging happily when Pin comes up to her. Bubble frowns and switches swings. But Pin, not noticing Bubble’s discomfort, switches swings so she’s closer. She does not realize that she isn’t wanted there. Pin wants to befriend Bubble, but Bubble’s in an alliance. Bubble is hesitant. Pin attempts to relate to her by mentioning that they both hate Leafy. Pin and Bubble later are shown having fun swinging until Bubble suddenly leaves to meet with her alliance. Notably, Pin keeps swinging and saying “Whee!” even after Bubble has stopped. Pin is confused about why Bubble left. Book and Ice Cube then walk by, and Pin invites them to swing with her. They decline and say they are going to Match’s dance party, but Pin insists. She inadvertently starts manipulating Ice Cube until IC yells at her. When IC says she wants to go to Match’s dance party, Pin frowns. This whole scene shows that Pin desires friendship but lacks the social skills necessary to form them.
She also misunderstands what counts as a friend because she thinks Teardrop is her best friend simply because she never said she hated her. The misunderstanding of friendship goes the other way too, such as in BFDIA 21, when Pin didn’t realize that Coiny was her friend; she only saw him as an ally.
Another autistic trait is little interest in peers. In late BFDIA, Pin seemed to have very little interest in cooperating with other contestants. This is shown in her iconic betrayal of Coiny in BFDIA 18, her extreme resistance to allying with Book in BFDIA 20, and her intense hatred of Leafy in BFDIA 21.
Pin is in general just not liked very much by her peers. In early BFDIA, everyone targets her with their limb, face, and size removal prizes. In late BFDIA, everyone calls her ugly and no one wants to be around her. According to Leafy in “You’re A Loser, But…”, Pin is not very high on the popularity scale.
It’s not just making friends that’s hard for Pin, it’s also communication in general.
In the above image, Pin expresses that she would like to be included in the conversation. Not only is this an unusual thing to say, but she said it a beat after the conversation had already ended, highlighting her social awkwardness.
In TPOT 2, when Pin is trying to inform Two about her team cheating, she just stands there for minutes while Gaty and Two talk, not knowing how to insert herself into the conversation.
Pin very clearly has issues with social norms and appropriate social behavior. One example of this is the many times she invades another contestant’s personal space.
Here are more examples of Pin being blunt or displaying socially unacceptable behavior:
In BFDI 1B, she says “I don’t know. They’re all pretty bad,” right in front of the people she’s speaking about
In BFDIA 16, Pin tells Nickel to go away
In BFDIA 18, Pin is blunt when talking to Book, saying her performance was “astonishingly unimpressive”
In BFDIA 20, Pin calls the Recommended Characters “irrelevant”, which offends them
In BFDIA 21, Pin flat-out tells Leafy she doesn’t like her. She also says she stinks like sewage.
In “You’re A Loser, But…”, Pin says that she doubts that Leafy is #1 on the niceness list. This puts her one rank lower
In “You’re A Loser, But…”, Leafy literally has to teach Pin about social norms
In “You’re A Loser, But…”, Pin digs through Cloudy’s belongings without his permission
In “You’re A Loser, But…”, Pin doesn’t realize that asking for an invitation to a party she wasn’t invited to is inappropriate. She also doesn’t realize she should stop talking once Leafy corrects her.
Pin can be extremely oblivious to others’ emotions. In BFDI 1B, Pin doesn’t notice Bubble’s distress when she is about to pop her.
In BFDIA 5A, she inadvertently peer pressures Nickel into being on Coiny’s team, not noticing his discomfort. In BFDIA 10, she does not understand that her unintentional limb puns are making customers uncomfortable. She later laments that she is not a good salesperson. And finally, in BFDIA 19, Pin is completely oblivious to the contestants' obvious signs that they don’t want to be around her.
She also occasionally spaces out, going into her own little world.
Notice how in the above image, Pin is paying no attention to her surroundings. She is the only one in the frame who is smiling, and she’s not looking at either the group or the situation.
Nonverbal communication is a struggle for Pin as well. The first thing I want to talk about in this section is what I’ve lovingly dubbed as the “neutral expression”. In BFDI, when characters aren’t feeling any particular emotion, their eyebrows will not be visible and their mouth will become a straight line. Sometimes, lots of characters in a scene have this expression, simply because the animators don’t want to make a bunch of expressions. But some characters often have a neutral expression when no one else in the scene does. Pin is one of these characters. She consistently sports a neutral expression, even in scenes when it doesn’t match her emotions on the matter at hand, such as in BFDIA 20 when she tells Coiny that she has traveled to space to kill him while having a blank expression. She even does it in the intros of BFDI and BFDIA!
Besides the “neutral expression”, Pin has another abnormality in nonverbal communication: her voice. As you know, Pin has a very distinct voice; she separates her syllables so they are very short and detached. The musical term for this is “staccato”. Many autistic people are described as having a unique voice, with the most common description being “robotic” or “monotone”, but the autism speech difference umbrella also encompasses a staccato tone.
The two main types of autistic stimming are vocal stimming and physical stimming. Pin displays both.
BFDIA 6: Pin repeatedly says “Yay” when feeding people yellow tomatoes
BFDIA 8: Pin repeats the “ee” sound when saying “Why are you being such a meanie to my friendy Coiny lately?”
BFDIA 14: Pin loves her “PointyPointyPointy” song so much, she sings it over and over again even when Coiny wants to sing
BFDIA 19: Pin repeats the word “Egg” each time and egg falls in her basket
BFDIA 21: Pin will not stop yapping about her two Win Tokens! She literally says it like five times in a row
BFB 13: Pin says “What is wrong with this throng? Shouting strong for too long.” Then everyone just gives her a strange look
BFDI 1A: Pin flaps her arms along with Leafy when they are flying through the air (Yes, I will also be making an autistic Leafy analysis)
BFDIA 4: Pin repeatedly snakes the Eiffel Tower
BFDIA 4: Pin flaps her arms when Teardrop is choosing a prize
BFDIA 10: Pin repeatedly jumps up and down when the teams are told they will be making ice cream
BFDIA 23: Pin jumps around and flaps her arms when she gets cutlery limbs
An interesting trait in autism is what we call rigid thinking. Pin displays this trait quite a bit throughout the series. One example of rigid thinking is “stubbornness on opinions”, according to a document I found on the signs of autism. I’m sure you can guess where this is going. Yeah, it’s the “swing vs Match’s dance party” thing. Pin never forgot the time when Ice Cube and Book declined her offer to swing in favor of attending Match’s dance party. She mentions this incident in BFDIA 10, BFDIA 14, BFDIA 15, BFDIA 18, BFDIA 22, and BFB 14. So yeah. Literal years after the seemingly trivial incident, and she still thinks about it. Her other “rigid thinking pattern” is her strong sense of justice.
BFDI 21: Pin votes Spongy to be eliminated because she thinks rejoiners do not deserve to win
BFDIA 6: Pin is disappointed in Freesmart for stealing
BFDIA 9: Pin gets mad at Puffball Speaker Box when she thinks she is being unfair to Coiny
BFDIA 14: Pin gets mad at Fries for stealing
BFDIA 14: Pin gets EXTREMELY angry and Ruby and Book for stealing her song
BFDIA 16: Pin is upset when Needle betrays her and Coiny
BFDIA 18: Pin gets upset when she sees TB flying
BFDIA 22: Pin thinks it’s unfair that she'll never own Dream Island
TPOT 2: Pin gets mad at her team when they cheat. She’s way more passionate about it than Gaty
TPOT 3: Pin doesn’t like that her team is stealing ideas
TPOT 16: Pin gets mad at Yellow Face for stealing
One notable thing about Pin is her obsession with collecting tokens, especially Win Tokens. Despite her danger of being eliminated, she never used a Win Token in Season 1. In BFDIA 21, when Leafy makes an offhand reference to the word “token”, Pin uses it as an opportunity to talk about her Win Tokens. I do this kind of thing sometimes too, immediately connecting the randomest things to my special interests. In BFB 10, Pin is very happy to receive a Gratitude Token, and she adds it to her token collection. In TPOT 2, when a token is presented to Team8s, Pin immediately pushes everyone out of the way so that she can have it. In TPOT 16, when she gets eliminated, it is revealed that Pin still has every token she’s received in the game. When she is forced to give one away, she gives it to Tree, someone she trusts.And finally, in TPOT 17, Pin is seen hanging up one of her Win Tokens.
Another “obsession” Pin has is gardening and biology. In BFDIA 2, when she sees the seeds Coiny won as a prize, Pin immediately knows that they are Yoyle Seeds. In IDFB 1, Pin expresses happiness when she learns that Fries is gardening.
In BFB 1, Pin enters the season wondering where her blueberry seeds are. In TPOT 4, Pin reveals that she is indeed “obsessed” with reading about Yoyle Biology.
Pin’s last obsession isn’t as prolonged as the other two, but it’s still notable: Paprika. In late BFDIA, Pin starts making comments about the spice paprika, and even goes so far as to ignore the discomfort of getting pepper sprayed in BFDIA 19 since the spice in question is paprika. She also seems to like saying the word, which might make it a vocal stim as well.
Pin shows some signs of sensory hyperreactivity, such as showing annoyance and discomfort when Saw yells “CreATE!” in TPOT 3. In BFDIA 17 when Pin lands on the ground point down, she grimaces in pain, indicating that her point may be sensitive.
However, I think most of her sensory differences have to do with hyporeactivity, or sensory seeking behaviors. Pin occasionally enjoys eating non-edible items, such as when she licks a bush in BFDIA 19, or when she mentions liking to eat asbestos in BFDIA 7. Her obsession with paprika might also be a sensory-seeking behavior because it is a spice and therefore has a strong taste. The last sensory issue I can think of for Pin is her lack of spatial awareness. In BFDIA 5E, Pin is startled by Needle even though she was standing right there. In BFDIA 14, Pin thinks she and Coiny are in first place when they’re actually last. And in BFDIA 18, while chastising Book for not being aware of her surroundings, Pin doesn’t notice Book climbing on her, showing that she’s not aware of her surroundings.
There are two tiny signs of autism that are not a part of the main DSM-5 autism criteria. I’ve made a tiny section for them because for each of them, I only found one example that Pin displays in BFDI. The first one is masking. Masking can involve copying others, and that’s what Pin does in BFDIA 18. Four of the final six contestants explain how they are going to win. When it’s Pin’s turn, she says she’s got nothing. Fries says he’s going to murder everyone, and Pin says she’ll do that too. The second small trait is Pathological Demand Avoidance, which Pin shows in BFDIA 21 when Leafy tells Pin to spin the prize wheel and Pin tells her not to tell her what to do.
So yeah, that’s my little analysis on why Pin from BFDI is autistic. I know how much I over-analyzed, don’t jump me. But, yeah, I hope you enjoyed this! Have a great day!
