It's been just over a year since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest game in Nintendo's light-hearted village simulation series. As the world of Animal Crossing advances in real-time, this means that players who started in the first month can also celebrate their island's one year anniversary.
An in-game year may seem like a lot of time, but it's still not enough for any player to have met all of New Horizons' 397 potential villagers. While some of these villagers are new for the latest game, others are returning favorites. One of these is Bob, a cat villager with a simple name but an interesting history.
You Only Live Once... Or Nine Times
Bob is a lavender cat villager with the Lazy personality who has appeared in every Animal Crossing game to date. His personality makes him friendly and approachable, mostly due to his laidback lifestyle. Like all Lazy villagers in Animal Crossing, he enjoys simple hobbies and aims to relax and live in comfort as much as possible. Bob often gets along well with other villagers, although Jocks and Snooty villagers may not understand his Lazy outlook.
His Lazy personality is also reflected in his character model, with half-closed eyes, a relaxed smile, and a flowery blossom shirt. Bob also has a rather odd catchphrase, which is "pthhhpth." It's been speculated that this is meant to be the noise of him coughing up a hairball. In every game, Bob's house features the full Kiddie Series, including flooring and wallpaper. His favorite album is K.K. Slider's Neopolitan, which plays on a Kiddie Stereo in his room.
The First Villager
For a long time it was suspected by fans that Bob was the first villager ever to be designed for Animal Crossing. This theory was based on several pieces of evidence: He is born on January 1st (and is therefore a Capricorn), is a well-known, popular animal, has appeared in every Animal Crossing game, and even has the first ID number in Animal Crossing.
In addition, his name is very simple in both the English and Japanese versions of Animal Crossing. His catchphrase in the Japanese version is Neko, which is simply the Japanese word for cat, and is equally straightforward in all other languages. This mountain of evidence made for a popular fan theory, which was finally confirmed this year at the CEDEC 2020 conference by Animal Crossing series director Hisashi Nogami.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.