‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’: 10 Crazy Things You Can Do In-Game That Would Never Fly in Real Life, According to Reddit
For a life simulation game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t very life-like. The newest installment in Nintendo‘s long-running franchise sends players to a deserted island that they can turn into a thriving community. However, instead of people, the community’s residents consist of talking animals. As fans on Reddit have pointed out, there are many things you can do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons that would never be OK in real life — here are just a few.
Hit your neighbors with an axe
The axe in Animal Crossing: New Horizons has many uses — cutting down trees, harvesting wood, breaking rocks, and annoying the heck out of villagers. Many players enjoy hitting their animal neighbors in the back of the head with the axe. Sometimes, it’s out of pure boredom, and other times they’re trying to get the villager to move out.
Needless to say, hitting your neighbor with an axe IRL will yield … very different results.
Set Early Bird/Night Owl ordinances
As your island’s Resident Representative, you have the power to enact certain ordinances in town that everyone must follow. These town ordinances include one that boosts the economy and one that keeps the island clean. Additionally, there are Early Bird and Night Owl ordinances, which dictate when the town wakes up and goes to sleep.
Imagine if the government tried to move everyone’s wake-up and bedtime by an hour. Although, some fans in the Reddit thread pointed out that it’s basically the same as Daylight Savings. Wait a minute …
Use the bathroom in front of company
Privacy? What’s that? That thing doesn’t exist in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If there’s a toilet in the room, villagers will use it right in front of you. And you can use it right in front of them. There are no private bathroom areas. Talk about awkward.
Complain to local government about your neighbor’s fashion sense
Animal Crossing: New Horizons gives players the option to complain about animal villagers’ clothing choices. It’s a handy feature when you’re trying to get rid of, say, an inappropriate T-shirt. However, it’s also totally OK in the game to report a villager’s clothing simply because you don’t like their style. Imagine trying to do that in a real town hall.
Bury money to make more money
Money doesn’t grow on trees! Except it does in Animal Crossing. Every day, you can find a glowing spot in the ground that holds a bag of bells. If you dig up the bells and keep the glowing spot open, you can bury up to 99,000 bells that will act as seeds for a money tree. Once the tree is fully grown, you can collect the profit.
This definitely doesn’t work in real life, but it sure would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Sell bugs, fish, weeds, and trash to the local furniture store
Nook’s Cranny is the town’s one-stop-shop for pretty much everything. That mostly includes furniture, but you can also buy tools, recipes, wallpaper, flooring, and more. You can also sell anything — literally, anything. Timmy and Tommy will accept trash, weeds, dying flowers, bugs, fish, and anything else you can find. And hey, they never sell these things, so what do they do with it all?!
Even the most accepting pawn shops have some boundaries. Certain places might accept certain bugs or fish, maybe, but a clump of feeds from the ground? Never.
Catch giant sharks with a fishing rod made of sticks
These Animal Crossing characters must have super-strength. No matter how big a fish might be, even if it’s a massive shark, you can always catch it with a fishing rod. And not even a high-quality fishing rod, either — sometimes it’s just a bunch of sticks tied together.
Catching sharks for sport or to sell them wouldn’t fly IRL, but it definitely wouldn’t be that easy to catch them in the first place.
Let yourself into someone’s house, unannounced
Remember, there are no boundaries and no privacy in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. So, thanks to Update 2.0, villagers can show up at any time while you’re in your house. They’ll let themselves in, touch all your stuff, and stay awhile. They never let you know in advance that they’re coming over. To be fair, though, you can also do the same thing to villagers.
If you or your neighbors did this in real life, there would probably be a restraining order involved.
Destroy a unique island for resources
Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduces mystery islands as unique areas for players to visit and collect resources. Anything’s fair game — chop down trees, break rocks, take flowers, catch bugs and fish, etc. You can also leave trash or other unwanted items on these islands. Destroying land like this in real life is certainly frowned upon.
Pick up a house and put it somewhere else overnight
As Patrick Star once said on SpongeBob SquarePants, just pick it up and put it somewhere else. Moving an entire house to a new location in real life would take days. It would involve breaking everything down and putting it back together. Not in Animal Crossing! Just pay Tom Nook the appropriate amount of bells, and you’ll see your house in a new spot the very next day, in the same condition as it was the day before.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now on Nintendo Switch.
