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It's very long.

If you have a Nintendo Gamecube, chances are, you have played Animal Crossing, and if you get through all of the quests Tom Nook sends you on, you will be forced to let the Happy Room Academy, or HRA, go into your house and give it a rating based on how well-designed it is. For most gamers the HRA is nothing more than an annoying group of people who examine your house and then give you a rating. For some gamers, impressing the HRA is an important quest because they want that elusive manor model to finish their re-creation of their town that they have in the basement. However, the HRA is not just this RPG’s “Evil Empire.” The HRA is actually a major symbol in Animal Crossing; the HRA symbolizes the main character’s insecurity. The main character, who we will call Spike for his Viking helmet, pays off tons of Bells to get his house remodeled and re-furnished so that he can get a high HRA score, but as he gets closer to having the required score of 100,000 HRA points needed to earn the respect of the HRA, and of course the manor model, Spike’s insecurity continues to make the HRA stronger. This analytical essay will take you all the way through the inner workings of the HRA and how these villains create the symbol of Spike’s insecurity flawlessly. When a new file is created, the first character in Animal Crossing Spike meets is Totakeke, also known as K.K. Slider. Like the HRA, K.K. Slider is also a symbol, but K.K. Slider is a symbol of a being a free man; he does not play his guitar to look “cool,” and he does not play his guitar to make money, which is demonstrated by the fact that he gives Spike his music for free. He represents an ideal of breaking free from inhibitions and insecurity. However, after Spike meets him and takes the train into town, Spike goes into town where he meets the main villain of Animal Crossing, Tom Nook. When Spike meets him, he has Spike pick one of four houses to live in, and then after Spike selects his house, Nook charges him 19,800 Bells, even though Spike only has 1,000 Bells. As a result, he forces Spike to fall into his trap by making Spike work at his store until he has enough money to pay off 1400 Bells of this huge 18,800-Bell debt. This part of the game makes Tom Nook seem less evil than the rest of the game does because he is the character who is running the “tutorial level” of Animal Crossing, thus gaining Spike’s trust. However, as soon as Spike finishes his part-time job, Tom Nook then waits at his store in ambush, and the next time he goes in to buy something, he forces Spike to represent the town in HRA inspections. This event is a turning point in the plotline of Animal Crossing because as soon as Spike gets his first letter from the HRA, he loses that free personality that is represented by K.K. Slider and then Spike is filled with the insecurity that is represented by Tom Nook and the HRA.

The events of the beginning of Animal Crossing make this game an epic story of insecurity and breaking free of one’s inhibitions. Tom Nook and the HRA dominate Spike’s life for most of the game, as best seen in the mail that Spike receives. Every few days, the HRA sends a letter telling Spike his HRA score, a score based on the appearance of his house. This score raises Spike’s insecurity, especially if the player knows that the house model can be obtained by getting a score of 70,000, and that the manor model awaits for the great gamer who has a house that has a score of 100,000 points. While these letters already portray the HRA very well as a beast of insecurity, another series of annoying letters from Tom Nook himself truly reinforces this portrayal of the HRA as the ultimate symbol of Spike’s insecurity. Sometimes, Tom Nook sends a letter to Spike advertising some furniture that he carries at his store. When the player receives Nook’s letter and the HRA’s letter on the same day, a realization occurs; the HRA tells Spike that his house is nothing more than a smoldering pile of garbage, but then Tom Nook’s letter tells Spike that this problem can all be fixed by spending a few thousand Bells on some piece of furniture that Tom Nook carries, so the HRA and Tom Nook, the masters of Spike’s insecurity, are working together to control Spike. In addition, the mail also continues to be a means of binding Spike’s life to the insecurity that is the HRA through Pelly and Phyllis. Pelly and Phyllis run the counter at the post office, where Spike can pay off his debt on his house, making this house bigger. This relates to the HRA being a representation of Spike’s insecurity in a few ways. Pelly, Phyllis, and Pete, the post office staff, have no intentional connections to the HRA themselves. However, Pete carries the mail, including the letters from Tom Nook and the HRA, and also, in order to pay off his debt, Spike must go to the post office and talk to Pelly and Phyllis. Spike pays off his debt to Tom Nook, and in return, Nook gives Spike a larger house and more debt. Early in the game, Spike gets letters from the HRA telling him that his house is too small to have a high HRA score, so as a result, Spike’s insecurity is made stronger by the mentality that “bigger is always better,” and as a result, Spike gives his hard-earned money to Tom Nook, the master of his insecurity. Because of this, without even realizing it, Pelly, Phyllis, and Pete are actually puppets of evil, working for the HRA despite not being evil themselves.

Like the mail, the very ways of raising one’s HRA score also demonstrate the HRA’s symbolism of Spike’s insecurity. For example, to have a high HRA score, Spike almost absolutely MUST have a theme to at least one floor of his house. This quest for a theme leaves Spike trying to find about ten different pieces of furniture as well as matching flooring and wallpaper. This quest, which can take a gamer a few months to complete without time travel and universal codes, conveys the idea that Spike’s insecurity leads him to always need more. It does not matter if Spike manages to collect every NES game and then the player uses Action Replay to get Spike copies of impossible-to-obtain games like Zelda and Super Mario Bros. The HRA will still tell Spike that he will never have a good gaming-themed house unless he gets his hands on Cyberball for the Sega Genesis (which was NOT put into Animal Crossing, so don’t go and try to use a universal code there). Spike’s insecurity is also seen in the quest for a high HRA score because of the fact that to get the highest possible HRA scores, he must have a theme, and cannot deviate from that theme. Why can’t Spike blast some sweet tracks from his retro stereo in the same room that has cabana flooring? I’ll tell you why. It is because they are from different themes, and Spike’s house can only have one theme; Spike needs to be labeled! Surprisingly, this form of HRA-driven insecurity is not just a form of insecurity that exists exclusively in Animal Crossing; it exists in the real world as well, despite the fact that there is no HRA in the real world. In middle school and high school, while the HRA does not actually exist as a formal organization, the same pressures exist as students try and maintain a label. These students will try to look like punks, goths, jocks, emo kids, skaters, preps, rappers, geeks, nerds, or all-around popular kids, all to gain the acceptance of their school’s HRA, the cliques that are in the school, and as a result, the quest to fit into a clique makes it so that many students give up their individuality to fit a label instead of being themselves, much like Spike is forced by the HRA to abandon his own idea of a house design in order to fit the label of the themes, series, and sets that will give him a high HRA score. The fact that insecurity exists in this form so commonly in the real world is surprising, but the fact that a real form of insecurity that is so remarkably similar to that of the HRA in Animal Crossing exists further strengthens the HRA’s appearance as the embodiment of Spike’s insecurity. Another thing that demonstrates the way the HRA symbolizes Spike’s insecurity is the fact that if Spike designs a wallpaper or floor design himself, he only gets a few HRA points for it, which once again demonstrates the fact that the HRA is forcing Spike to live with a label instead of being an individual. In addition, if in a town there is more than one player, the players in the town may compete with each other to get the highest HRA score, and since HRA scores are given in a measurable unit, Spike may end up competing with other human villagers in town in order to get the highest HRA score, once again giving Spike a “bigger is better mentality” that puts him on a quest to catch as many red snappers, barred knifejaws, and coelacanths and slam his shovel against every money rock in order to get the Bells needed in order to complete those themes and get any other valuable items that can maximize his HRA score. Also, the method by which the HRA looks at Spike’s house also relates to the HRA being a symbol of Spike’s insecurity; the HRA is able to go into Spike’s house at any time, and then they just keep looking at his house to determine a score based on the appearance of the house. The HRA employees are completely invisible to Spike, so there is nothing Spike can do about them coming into his house, rating his house, and then mailing him an HRA score. This further strengthens the HRA’s depiction as a symbol of Spike’s insecurity; the insecurity has complete access to his mind, much like the employees of the HRA having complete access to his house, and because of this, his insecurity could do anything to him. Therefore, the letters from the HRA, a symbol of Spike’s insecurity, represent Spike’s insecurity strengthening itself.

The ideas of labeling one’s character and Tom Nook and the HRA symbolizing Spike’s insecurity are also further extended into Spike’s life in Animal Crossing when Spike leaves his town to go visit another player’s town. Tom Nook exists in every Animal Crossing town, which symbolizes the idea that Spike cannot escape the insecurity that haunts him even as he leaves his town to visit a friend. In addition, sometimes in order to get more furniture to complete a set and ultimately have a higher HRA score, some players choose to take Spike out of town to Animal Island and collect the island furniture, which can only be obtained using a Game Boy Advance. This is a particularly interesting symbol, as the Game Boy Advance costs money in real life. Since you control Spike and you are buying that Game Boy Advance, the act of getting Spike to Animal Island symbolizes Spike’s insecurity becoming so powerful that it reaches out as far as Spike’s Higher Self. However, the biggest example of the idea of labeling one’s character that exists when Spike leaves his town in Animal Crossing actually is related to a character that has absolutely nothing to do with Tom Nook or the HRA. This character is none other than Blanca, the faceless cat. Most of the time when Spike goes to another town, he meets Rover, the cat that he met at the very beginning of the game who he talked to on the train ride into town. However, occasionally on the ride into another town Spike will meet Blanca, a cat who has no face. The symbolism is obvious here. Blanca has Spike draw her a new face, which could be just about anything. In other words, she is letting him force a label onto her, much like Spike is insecure, and is therefore letting the HRA force a label onto his room design. Spike and Blanca have this similarity: they are both insecure characters who let others make their decisions instead of thinking for themselves in order to gain the acceptance of others.

Earlier in this essay, I mentioned how K.K. Slider is a symbol of Spike being a free man. Because of this, I will now elaborate a little more about how he fits into the symbolism of Animal Crossing. K.K. Slider’s appearances in the game are mostly the appearances on Saturday nights to play his guitar at the train station. Saturday night itself is connected to Spike being a free man because Saturday is part of the weekend, so with Spike now enjoying the weekend, he can go to a K.K. Slider concert and enjoy being free from the evils of Tom Nook and the HRA, even if it is only for a little while. As I mentioned before, K.K. Slider has the cool personality of a guy who is just being himself. At the very beginning of the game, K.K. Slider talks to Spike about the beginning of a new life as a free man, and being the first character in Animal Crossing that the player and Spike meet, K.K. Slider takes the appearance as a role model and a hero. Even after K.K. Slider’s message of freedom is destroyed by Spike’s encounters with Tom Nook and the HRA, K.K. Slider still enters the town on Saturday nights, which symbolizes him entering Spike’s mind and reminding Spike that he is a free man and that he should not let the HRA, Tom Nook, or any other forces of evil defeat him and create a new and insecure Spike.

Tom Nook and the HRA are two of the most evil villains in the history of gaming, as well as the ultimate symbols of Spike’s insecurity, Blanca’s insecurity, and even the insecurity of real people. They clash with K.K. Slider, Animal Crossing’s symbol of freedom from inhibitions, so that they can try to control Spike and force him to work in the quest to live under a label, compete with other human villagers to have the best looking home, and throw away individuality, all in the name of one pointless and evil number: Spike’s HRA score. The fact that there is no escape from Tom Nook and the HRA even if Spike goes into a friend’s town or Animal Island as well as the fact that the HRA employees can waltz into Spike’s house at any time demonstrate that Spike has a quest to break free of his inhibitions, but that this quest is very difficult to succeed in. The quest seems impossible, but the fact that Spike is a human villager in a town of animals conveys the idea that Spike is an individual, and that no matter how powerful Tom Nook and the HRA are in Spike’s mind, Spike will not give in to his insecurity and become less of an individual just to please the villains of Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing is not about having a theme for Spike’s house and the quest to get the 100,000 points needed to get the coveted manor model. That is just what the villains of the game are telling Spike so he gives up his individuality and gives in to his insecurity to get a six-digit HRA score. Animal Crossing is a man’s quest to break free of an insecurity that has dominated his life, no matter how far he has to escape to. This symbol is seen most strongly in the fact that whenever Spike listens to K.K. Slider play his guitar; the credits roll, which symbolizes Spike’s victory. Maybe someday in a later game, Spike will have a boss battle with Tom Nook and finally defeat this insecurity that has left players trying to impress the HRA for three games, but until that game is released, just fill Spike’s house with whatever furniture you want, get out an Action Replay, use the C-Stick to grow, and Z-button jump over Tom Nook and the HRA once and for all!

• I've seen this as vandalism on the Animal Crossing Wiki

The villagers are furries, and the player is a closeted furry.

Notice how you are human, yet the others are animals. Over time, as you become more comfortable with your inner furry, you gain more and more animal traits.

• This makes both a lot of sense and no sense at all.
• Traits such as?
  • What animal traits? you interact with the animals the same way from your first day to the last time you turn off the game. Besides, I do not think it's possible to be a "closet furry," you ether like upright animals or you don't, unless you are into the freaky "furry lifestyle" thing or worse... yiff...
    • It's completely possible to be a 'closeted furry,' just as it's possible to be a 'closeted homosexual'-- It doesn't mean you're not a furry, it means you're in denial about or disgusted at relating to/being attracted to anthropomorphic animals.
• See... the truth is a sortof Lighter and Softer version of The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing. Moving to town, you meet a bunch of furry animals. None of them seem to think it's odd that they're all furry animals, or that you're the only human on the island. In fact, they're very friendly and accepting of you! Gradually you become more comfortable around them, helping them out with odd jobs, choosing friends and favorites. Eventually, however, you'll probably stop playing. When you've truly abandoned your town, your character transforms into an animal just like the others, becoming just another animal resident, just another NPC. But as long as you keep playing, you'll stave off the transformation.
• This would sort of tie in with a WMG about Cheburashka.

Your human character is a stranded and lonely schizophrenic with a split personality.

Your human character is actually not living in an animal village; rather, he/she has been lost in the woods for so long, that he/she has begun to hallucinate into thinking that the animals can talk, walk, and interact with each other like humans. The six basic personalities that the animals have are your own split personalities talking to you. The letters; the city; the buildings; the festivals? All figments of your imagination. The other humans that live in your village? That's just the same human you, thinking that you are someone else. The humans that visit your town? Imaginary friends. Whenever an animal moves out; either you killed and ate them or some other animal did. The whole game is just you, lost in the woods, away from society, trying to compensate for your loneliness.

• That would explain why the snowmen can talk.
• And why the Wii version of the game lacks split-screen, despite increased CPU power and resolution vs. the DS. The other humans in your town can't show up at the same time as you because they are you.

The humans in Animal Crossing are just Tom Nook's indentured servants.

Despite being welcomed in as new "residents", they are all quickly put to work. Whether it's delivering mail or various packages for the 'real' residents, handing Tom Nook almost all of your hard-earned cash (there is no way putting in an extra room should run you nearly a cool million) and acting as the town gardener for no compensation, you do it all for very little. Only when Nook feels he's made enough off of you, are you truly free.

• Adding a room might cost a million bells when 1 bell is worth an estimated 0.01 USD.
  • It IS just a leaf with a punch taken out of it, after all. I'd be hard pressed to trade even a dozen leaves for a penny in this economy.
    • Bells == leaf is Jossed since Wild World, let alone City Folk. In Wild World, one can pull coins worth 100 bells out of the wallet, which show up as metallic-looking coins in the inventory. So unless they're made from the leaves of a money tree planted with a golden shovel...
  • Alternatively, bells are real but Nook's bells are leaves. Being a tanuki, he's already messed with physics by changing furniture and stuff into leaves- why not make money from them too? That doesn't mean he can't get free labor from unsuspecting new kids, though. On the subject of 'overpriced' rooms, they ARE based on yen- closer to pennies than dollars.

Animal Crossing is a hallucination of Shinji Ikari.

It had to be done.

• A happy-happy village composed of animals and no human being for a whole mile? Yes, totally Shinji Ikari's dream.
  • Shinji is secretly a furry? *claps slowly* Nice.
    • Not exactly, just suggesting he hates people.

The "glasses cases" you deliver are just carrying cases for a mind-altering drug produced by Nook to compete with the illicit turnip trade.

Have you ever seen anyone who asks for their glasses case actually wear glasses?

• They could wear reading glasses.

Tom Nook is the leader of the mob.

You know it's true.

• Careful. You don't want the raccoon goons to hear you.
  • You mean Timmy and Tommy?

The town of Boondox does not actually exist. All the money you donate to it goes straight to the mayor's pockets.

Repeatedly hinted at in-game, but never quite confirmed. All but confirmed in the Wii game, which replaces the option to donate to Boondox with the option to donate to your own town's civic fund.

Gyroids are Soul Jars

You know those animals that write letters saying they're going away? This is actually some sort of funerary ritual, in which the deceasing member of the community sends a goodbye letter one day before his predicted death. Then their bodies are disposed on the sea, and the natives bury a funerary statue somewhere. And here comes the creepiest part: the soul of the deceased never leave the village! They come back to haunt the same funerary statues that have been buried in honor to them. And that's why the gyroids can move and... boink. Or whatever sound they make.

• To make matters worse, the gyroids look similar to a Haniwa, clay figures which in Japanese rituals, would be buried with the deceased.
  • In the Animal Crossing Movie, they call gyroids Haniwas.
• But in the DS game, they sometimes just move to another person's town (probably one of your "friends"). When you go to their town, he/she will recognize you and say, "Hey I haven't seen you in a while" or something like that.
  • This is also true for the Gamecube game. If you have two memory cards, you can get rid of villagers you don't like (or who don't like you) by visiting your second town. However, sometimes you'll lose well-liked villagers this way.
• This is probably made worse in the DS game. Just before the villager moves out, he/she/it packs up their things, and you can convince them to stay and not move out. Between the vague memories and the above suggestion, the conversations with moving-out villagers sound quite a bit like you just stopped them from commiting suicide.

The player is an artificial human.

• Humans are rare in the animal crossing world and the player's mother and father are some of the last humans left but could not reproduce on their own, so they got the animals to clone one of them, when the player is of age they are shipped of to live in the town. Rover is waiting on the bus to serve as your guide and the reason you have to work for Nook is to understand how to live properly in this world, It also explains why the player dosn't know any emotions besides that smile they have.
  • Why couldn't a clone feel emotions?

Tom Nook is actually a former contractor who founded the island with a partner who perished long ago, and harvests the organs of the residents for his wife Penny to use to replace her own.

• And this is why Chewbot is the man.
• You should also warn people that reading that will probably make you terrified to sleep at night, because you're secretly living in a large, real-world equivalent of Camp and you don't even know it. Or worse—you do.

Adding to the above: Gyroids slowly turn you into an animal.

Which is why it's called "Animal Crossing".

You play a retired secret agent.

• You wake up one day in a mysterious house. You're the only normal person in town. The others seem to come and go at random. The whole place is shut off from the outside world except for a well-guarded exit controlled by the town and a shoreline that has, at most, one active boat, and is the site of odd things, or half-dead people, constantly washing up onto the beach. Both of these routes only take you to another near-identical village, and even then you inevitably return to your home town anyway. The nominal leader is rarely if ever seen and does nothing at all, but the "second" most powerful figure controls absolutely everything, and yet only ever seems to do any business with you, nobody else. The only buildings are oddly decorated houses, a single clothing store, a single other store that sells everything else, a town hall, which does everything, and a museum, which also revolves entirely around you for no apparent reason. There is only one source of news for the town, and it only ever covers local things. Very local things. And personal ads. Violations of the rules are enforced by an unstoppable entity who will attack you at the drop of a hat when summoned. Incredibly often, the whole town breaks out into a random bizarre celebration. And the most popular fashion accessory? Bizarre parasols.

What am I describing: Animal Crossing, or The Prisoner?

• • "Who are you?" - "The new Tom Nook." - "Who is the mayor?" - "You are the player." - "I am not a player, I am a FREE MAN!"

Animal Crossing is Purgatory. (Someone had to say it.)

When you are first taken there, it's dark and rainy outside. You then have to pay the taxi driver, like Charon across the River Styx. Once there, you're forced to perform repetitive tasks to pay off an arbitrary debt. And even after you pay it off in two months, you still can't escape. And have you ever thought why you have to collect Bells? It's a pseudo-reference to the 108 bells that must be tolled before you can enter the cycle of reincarnation in Buddhist mythology.

• Funny you should mention it...

Tortimer is just a puppet ruler

Tortimer is just a figurehead. The real ruler is Tom Nook. He controls the economy, as he is the only one who gives out bells, and he puts all incoming residents to work for him. Nook maintains an iron-fisted stranglehold on the town, no products go in or out of town unless he sells it in his store.

• • This isn't canon?

Gyroids are the worker-slaves of a long dead civilization, singing to ease the pain of eternal life with no meaning.

Golems. Also Ood. Long ago, they Gyroids worked for the civilization that built and knew how to control them. The civilization died out, either by landslide/volcano or by plague. The Gyroids that were inactive simply stayed where they were, and those that were preforming a task when their controllers died either stopped, kept going until the task was complete or the object of the task was destroyed, or still wander the earth to this day. After a few hundred million years, they started singing (either because they're sick of immortality, or the humming is a sort of "check engine light".)

Dung beetles adapted to making use of snowballs in the Animal Crossing world.

Wild World and City Folk have dung beetles. They're dung beetles, so they're found pushing balls of dung, right? Wrong. They always push snowballs and never appear in seasons other than winter due to this. Why is this? Well, take a look around you. Before you moved in, your new hometown was inhabited entirely by sapient animals. Sapient, like you and me. Thus, they are obviously capable of knowing not to do their business out in the open. Dung beetles, being beetles who make balls of dung, will have a hard time finding any dung, so they use snow instead. Apparently it works fine. Oh, and those snowballs you find sitting around your town? Dung beetles made them, because everyone knows that snow doesn't spontaneously form into balls.

• But a dung beetle in a cage/box/whatever pushes a brownish-grey ball of... something that's not snow.
  • Clearly, dirt. It has to be put on the floor of the cage for the insects to live more comfortably!

Tom Nook secretly lives in your house

The animals go inside your house all the time and bring up in conversation that they did some cartwheels on your floor when you weren't home (creepy, yes). Tom Nook doesn't sell any sort of locking mechanism because "he" likes to go in your house. He's just waiting for when you get bored and stop playing. Then he moves in. He keeps the house spic and span while you are gone, except for the cockroaches, which are his primary source of food (he buys your bugs, people!). He wants you to keep expanding your house because he wants more room. He purposely makes the game repetitive so that you will get bored and allow him to move in. If you play for eternity without taking breaks, YOU WIN.

Tom Nook is secretly a superhero!

Sure, he could be a mob boss, but think about it... He owns the most profitable business in town, is never seen at night, is an animal that is primarily associated with shadows (except in Japan, since that's the only place where people know he's a Raccoon Dog), has two kids hanging around with him, and has a well-known symbol as his logo.

Thus, he is.. The Tanuki Avenger, bringer of justice and cheap furniture! He has a "Nook Cave" under his store with a Nook Mobile that drives out of a hidden tunnel entrance, and he only does his crime fighting at night (which is why the player never sees him after closing time). The observatory in the museum doubles as a Nook Signal. Also, Phyllis killed his parents.

• This made my day.

Tom Nook has connections with the Psychonauts

He runs a summer camp and he has you do meaningless tasks and dig up things in exchange for token rewards. No way that's a coincidence.

• Did you mean Holes?
  • New theory! Tom Nook is Ford and your town is Whispering Rock in disguise and Psychonauts is Post-Apocalyptic Holes.
    • This has to be canon.

Tom Nook is a philanthropic magical forger.

He uses the bells to buy things and trade up so he can replenish his mana pool in order to make more bells out of leaves, in order to add to the local economy. He's a creep about it because repeatedly using almost all of your mana while trying to keep your philanthropy a secret tends to do that. If he didn't, the animals would have little modern convenience and be stuck out in the middle of nowhere while the humans live it up in their city of invisible people (...philanthropomorphic?). Going to all this trouble is also why he wants you to help so much: it's either to make at least one human atone by working for the other animals, make himself believe that humans aren't all bad, or (my preferred version) begin bridging the gap between the humans and Animal Crossing species/breeds/races/whatever.

Ruby Quest is canon in the Animal Crossing universe.

Hey, why not?

• A rabbit named Ruby, a cat named Tom, a fox named Red(d), a bird named Ace, and someone named Filbert.

Tom Nook is not the bad guy.

• Most other ideas on Animal Crossing assume that Tom Nook is evil because he's the one in charge of all the money, and the one constantly giving you debt. Not true. There is another force constantly trying to get you to redecorate your house and improve it. The HRA. By the time you've got enough money to pay off your initial debt (which is just Nook being selfish), you've probably got a house the HRA can approve, if reluctantly, and now that they've noticed the town, Nook has to keep upgrading your house and his shop so that he can avoid angering them. If they decide that your house is unsatisfactory, or the town is unsatisfactory, they remove it. Tom Nook is the only thing preventing them from completely destroying the town.

The Gyroids are peace offerings from aliens.

A long time ago, let's say a couple centuries, a race of alien creatures came to Earth hoping to form an alliance, maybe even a friendship, with the people of our planet. They began executing their plan by leaving gifts of small, mechanical statues that sing and dance buried deep within the ground. Eventually, when all the Gyroids are dug up, they will return to Earth and try to directly contact our civilization.

• Alternately the Gyroids are the contact message and once one of every type is assembled the noises they make will play the message with instructions on how to contact the aliens. Or they are pieces of a mathematical equation for faster then light travel that humans will decode when they are ready.
• These aliens may be from the same race as Gulliver, because he also gives tokens of peace between their two planets to the player for helping him.

The villagers speak Japanese with English thrown in

Translation Convention with Gratuitous English. The talking sounds like gibberish in English but you can make out certain words that were changed to sound more En. In JPN it also sounds like gibberish but the syllables make more sense since it's translated JPN.

The Gyroids are controlling everything.

The game was an experiment by the Gyroids to see how animals and/or people would react to living in a situation were they had little to no contact with the rest of society or something similar to that. The Gyroids in the game are actually cameras used to monitor everyone, like the spy dolls in Coraline. The Gyroids are actually planning everything down to the last detail. What? Don't look at me like that, this is a WMG.

The village of Animal Crossing is located in a totalitarian Crap Saccharine World. (Inspired by the previous WMG)

Think about it. Tom Nook (the actual leader of the village) has near-complete control of the village's economy and when he tells the player about the HRA (which is actually a government organization which aims to keep tabs on the town's citizens), he either persuades him/her to join it (if the player says yes) or signs them up anyway (if s/he says no). Tortimer is just a puppet leader so the locals don't get suspicous of what is going on. Boondox is a hoax (as stated in a previous WMG) in an attempt to get citizens to donate to the government, funding the further oppresion of the people and the facade of a Sugar Bowl. Resetti appears so the player does not interfere with the governing of the country by resetting the game. After all, the government can't have citizens being granted god-like powers over the town! Crazy Redd is actually a freedom fighter who sells counterfeit goods to raise money for the anti-goverment resistance.

...And that's about it.

Blathers has narcolepsy.

He gets excited telling people about filling up the museum with exhibits. Then he falls asleep.

• Not narcoleptic, just nocturnal. Visit the museum after the sun has set and he'll be alert.
  • Of course. He is an owl.

Sonic the Hedgehog and Animal Crossing are set in the same world.

Both feature humans living alongside large-headed anthropomorphic animals, with nobody considering this unusual. Sonic is a distant relative of the Able Sisters, but doesn't often visit because he interferes with people's fishing by running everywhere.

• • Or he doesn't because.. everyone is dead. The game may take place thousands of years ago.
    • So based on the in-game calendar, that'd make it a reverse The Village.
      • Maybe Tom Nook led to the city's downfall...

NPC houses are built Welsh style.

In the game, a sign transforms into an NPC villager's house overnight. Such Ridiculously-Fast Construction is plausible even in our world; see Welsh one-night houses.

Brewster is somehow secretly related to Sanae from The World Ends With You

Think about it: they both run coffee shops, have a rather laidback attitude towards life, Brewster is an animal and Sanae can transform into Panthera Cantus.

Rover is God.

Think about it. In City Folk, he's the one you talk to to change the time (without using the system clock that is). If you do it through him, the consequences are far worse than just time traveling using the Wii clock, thus implying that Rover is the cause of all of these things being so much worse. Also, he has the power to destroy your town, kill (delete) another player, and create a whole new town in general. Finally, when your character starts out, Rover is the first thing you see, and by choosing certain reactions in your conversation with him, it affects your character's appearance. Thus, Rover is God!

Animal Crossing, or something similar, exists as a concentration camp for anthros in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe

Run by Eggman, of course. When someone leaves, they either move to a diffrent area of the camp or are killed or Roboticized. These dead anthros are sold as meat. Hence why the only anthros in Sonic's world are all superheroes: the others are being killed.

• That doesn't explain Big. He lives in the middle of a forest and just fishes and chills with frogs.
  • The government probably classifies him like they would normal, non-sapient animals. Also, he does have superpowers.

The game is the most blatant drug trip in the world.

You harvest mushrooms during fall. Some of the shrooms resemble psychedelic mushrooms, and other amanita mushrooms. Your character can eat the mushrooms. There are colourful talking animals. Some are octopi, frogs and birds. You can catch real octopi, frogs and get a real bird in the birdfeeder item. Put them together, and the only conclusion is your character is on a lot of magic mushrooms.

Brewster is being polite when he says 'pigeon milk'.

The reason there is no extra bottle or jug in the coffee-making sequence when you accept some is because he only offers when he needs to go.

Coco is a highly advanced gyroid.

Okay, so we know very little about gyroids. What they are made to do, what they do beyond making music, and if they are still being produced in Animal Crossing's world. So, we don't really know how far the design can be taken. So it's entirely within the realm of possibility that she is some sort of gyroid. A gyroid gynoid, if you will. What is she doing in the town? A rare self-aware type that was given all the rights of the regular animals? A trial test for a new domestic model? Ancient advanced model excavated and now living in the modern day?

Mr. Resetti and Don Resetti are agents/aspects of God or are Gods. And the underground realm is another dimension.

Which is to say, the game's God, or whatever version thereof. Whenever the game resets, only these two—and the player—are aware of it. And they only show up when you start mucking about with the game's equivalent of the Time-Space continuum, with the power of erasing your save files, essentially erasing you from the timeline. And the underground where they come from. Think about it. You never see it, nobody even mentions it. Fossils come from underground. The gyroids come from underground. Tom Nook may think he is in charge, but the real lords of the game world are these moles. Maybe he knows it. Maybe everyone knows it. Maybe nobody talks about it for fear of being erased from existence. Oh, yes. These moles are angry gods. Speak not of them, make no mention, lest ye be FORGOTTEN.

Ankha the cat and Lucky the dog are connected somehow.

For starters, they both seem to be of Egyptian descent. Ankha resembles Cleopatra, while Lucky is wrapped in bandages like a mummy. Plus, both of their houses are decorated like pyramids.

It is also notable that the Egyptian goddess Bastet had a cat's head, and the god Anubis had a dog's head. It is likely that Ankha is a reincarnation of Bastet, and Lucky of Anubis.

• It's also likely that Lucky was Ankha's servant in a past life. Didn't the Egyptians worship cats like royalty?

Rover is being forced to live on the train by Tom Nook.

Whenever Rover convinces another person to live in Tom Nook's debt, some of the debt on his house is paid off. He lives as a stowaway, this is why you see him so commonly. He constantly is in despair that he has not seen much at all except the train, and what little villages he is allowed to visit occasionally.

K.K. Slider once was human/another animal.

Villagers sometimes refer to him as 'dog-faced', not simply dog. This implies that he has the face of a dog but in reality is not one and hints at a demoralizing term when they regard him angrily.

Animal Crossing is Limbo and a Secret Test of Character.

Your character has passed away, but your moral fiber is in doubt. The solution? Wipe your memories a bit and place you in a simulated world. Devoid of any real pressing concerns, your testers assume that your attitudes and actions will be as "true" as attitudes and actions can possibly be. If you prove that you are basically a good person, you are allowed to pass into Heaven. If you fail, into Hell you go! Consider this; the moral content of your actions affects the town in mysterious ways, from the attitude and health of its inhabitants (testers playing a role) to the cleanliness of the environment. This is a visual affirmation/warning of your progresses towards your final destination.