Animal Crossing: Decrypted quiz show reveals Tom Nook is even meaner than thought

Tom Nook is probably a lot meaner than we previously thought.

Nintendo loves to incorporate one or the other dark Easter Egg into their sweet and colorful games. It’s no different in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Messages hidden in the game give us a glimpse of the disturbing lore.

There are real people in the AC Universe and they speak our language

You may have seen one of the in-game shows or commercials that flicker across the island’s TV screens. What can be heard here sounds at first like the gibberish of the animals, but on closer listening it turns out to be real language.

YouTuber Komugi Neko played the audio at half speed and found out it’s in Japanese:

link to YouTube content

This is what the TV broadcasts tell us: A quiz show is particularly interesting. The show host promises the winner a ticket to a deserted island and a million stars as a prize. So apparently all of our avatars won one such show before landing on their respective islands. This means that human civilizations as we know them exist in the Animal Crossing universe.

And what about the stars? However, there is no more talk of a million Sternis when we arrive on the island. Where did the money go? The assumption is that Tom Nook is behind the machinations.

After all, the tanuki needs us as work slaves, so our initial wealth would only be a hindrance. In fact, there are fan theories that Tom Nook is a human in a costume. So maybe he’s behind the TV show to lure us to the island and into his arms.

In the trailer you can see the content of the first paid New Horizons DLC:

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Trailer reveals the first paid DLC

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But it gets even worse: In fact, there are some dark theories about what’s happening in Animal Crossing, one of which is that Captain is in the spotlight. Yes, you heard me right. Captain, who takes you to a mysterious island in New Horizons, is supposed to be a nasty kappa demon who is after children (via Reddit).

But that’s not the end of it. Allegedly there is a whole ring that keeps bringing children into the world of AC and behind which, in addition to captains, there are also NPCs like Olli and of course Tom Nook (via Reddit).

What do you think of the ominous lore in Animal Crossing?