Flash Bomb (BTD5)

"Sometimes throws a flash bomb that stuns bloons in a large radius."

- BTD5 description

Flash Bomb is a Ninja Monkey upgrade released in BTD5 that gives the monkey an additional explosive attack that stuns bloons. Each Flash Bomb can stun and pop up to 60 bloons, including black and zebra bloons. One flash bomb is thrown for approximately every three shurikens.

The Flash Bomb upgrade turns the Ninja Monkey dark grey and gives it a red bandana.

Strategy

 * This upgrade is not recommended for popping camo lead bloons, unless it's the only way on a daily challenge, due to the cheaper cost of the Monkey Apprentice, and the Monkey Apprentice's faster firing speed.
 * Any effects that increase the pierce of the x/3 Ninja Monkey (such as the x/1 upgrade of a Monkey Village or proper Monkey Knowledge in BMC) allows the Flash bomb to explode multiple times, vastly improving this towers popping power and support utility by stunning and popping an incredible amount of bloons at the same time. Tested and confirmed in the steam version of BMC (which is the same as BMC Mobile).
 * The Flash Bomb is especially useful in BTD Battles, as the opponent can send in camo leads on Round 12 (of course, that's just for starters. Other upgrades cost a lot less.)
 * The stun effect is recommended on tracks like Death Valley and Scorched Earth where stalling is of much importance.

Trivia

 * This is the only upgrade for the Ninja Monkey that can allow it to pop Lead Bloons.
 * Flash Bomb is generally considered less powerful than Bloonjitsu; however, Flash Bomb can pop Lead Bloons, which makes it slightly more useful in certain circumstances.
 * Flash Bomb cannot stun as efficiently as Bloon Impact, but Flash Bomb may be more easily purchased and does not need camo support.
 * In Flash, the bomb has a unique sprite. But in the mobile versions, the bomb sprite used for the Bomb Tower is used for this upgrade.
 * In Mobile versions of the Bloons TD series (BTD5 Mobile, BMC Mobile, BTDB Mobile), the Flash Bombs do not look like stun grenades at all, but they look like large 1500s-era-type bombs.
 * In those games, the Flash Bomb upgrade icon also looks almost the same as the Bomb Shooter's Bigger Bombs upgrade icon; the only difference is that the former has a yellow star depicted on it.