Video Game / Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Be the mayor, turn over a New Leaf.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Tobidase Doubutsu no Mori) is the fourth mainline installment of the Animal Crossing series. It was released on the Nintendo 3DS on November 8, 2012 in Japan, with a June 2013 western release following suit.

You move to a new town but are mistaken for the new mayor, and after planting the seed of the soon-to-blossom town tree, you are now in charge of town responsibilities. As the de-facto town mayor, the player has various unique abilities and interactions not found in the other previous entries, such as building Public Work Projects to customize your town with and setting public ordinances (such as letting plants grow for an extended period of not watering them). This is on top of the other gameplay aspects carried over from the previous games in the series; building bridges with (and for) your kooky villagers, sending them gifts, competing in the fishing tourney, picking fruit, customizing your house, and more.

New Leaf was the series' most revolutionary title since 2005's Animal Crossing: Wild World. It boasts a revised art-style, many new characters, and significant changes to the mechanics, all of which introduced many newcomers to the franchise, launching it into mainstream success. Because of this, New Leaf is the second-best selling game in the series, moving 13.4 million units in its lifetime.^note It was beaten by the following game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, though its numbers are an order of magnitude larger due to the releasing right when lockdowns started for the COVID-19 Pandemic; it currently stands at shy of 40 million units.

The game has a spinoff, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, which was released in 2015 and recycles most of its assets and gameplay mechanics from New Leaf. The Wii U spin-off Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival and the mobile game Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp also borrow assets from New Leaf, but otherwise play quite differently.

To everyone's surprise, an update for the game was released in November 2016, titled Animal Crossing: New Leaf: Welcome amiibo (Tobidase Doubutsu no Mori amiibo+), or the "Welcome amiibo" update for short. Newer physical copies of New Leaf have the update built-in, while people who already own the base game can update their copy for free. The update, as the name suggests, adds compatibility with amiibo, both the existing Animal Crossing line and select amiibo from other series. There are also various improvements to the gameplay, like being able to sit on rocks and shake trees without putting away your tool.

In a first for the franchise, there was no direct follow-up for the concurrent home console (the Wii U), so the console versions skipped a generation from the Wii's Animal Crossing: City Folk to the Nintendo Switch's Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The Welcome amiibo update is the closest New Leaf had to a traditional follow-up.

---

This game provides examples of:

A - D

• 20 Bear Asses: Some of the villager requests and MEOW Coupon challenges qualify for this, such as removing all weeds, planting flowers and such. Cyrus also requires three gold pieces and 10,000 bells to make a random piece of Golden Furniture.
• Abandoned Mascot: The popularity of Isabelle caused her to replace K.K. Slider (and, to a lesser extent, Tom Nook) as the series' mascot.
• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: The Nooklings wear traditional aprons, Blathers is nude but for a bowtie. Sheep villagers wear scarves, while other villagers will at least wear a top.
• Achievement System: Badges are handed out by Phineas the sea lion, who will visit your town whenever you qualify for a badge. They're awarded for things like completing a certain percentage of your bug/fish/diving encyclopedia, saving a lot of bells in your bank account, doing a lot of villager side-quests, or just playing the game for long enough, and each category has Badges available in bronze, silver, and gold versions.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The price to maintain your home increases, but the money gotten from the bank or for doing mayoral duties or catching fish/ bugs does not.
• Alertness Blink: The "Shocked emote" allows you to do this, as well as NPC's. Isabelle also does this when she reacts in the same way.
• All Just a Dream: In New Leaf, as is natural with every dream, anything you do and/or any item you pick up in a town you visit through the Dream Suite will not be carried over on either side... except for the patterns Wendell gives you, but that is justified because your character remembers, or rather was inspired because s/he saw it in a dream.
• All or Nothing: During Tortimer's island tours, you must complete the given objective fully to receive Medals.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: When you give your villagers gifts or complete tasks for them, the most common reward from them will be clothing; primarily shirts, trousers or dresses.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Where to begin? It's almost as if the game was designed specifically to address the problem with City Folk not making enough strides in the series or differentiating itself from its predecessors.
  • City Folk introduced the ability to be able to cycle through tools and miscellaneous items with the D-pad, though the inconsistency of putting down a tool, than pressing either left or right, only to be holding something you didn't have equipped previously was an annoyance. In New Leaf, if, for example, you put you shovel back in your pockets, pressing left or right will still have the character holding the tool they were just using before,
  • Already-watered flowers sparkle, so you have an idea as to which flowers need watering. Flower upkeep is also even easier as the silver and gold watering cans also water multiple flowers at once. The game also has the "Keep Your Town Beautiful" ordinance (See below) which relaxes the rules of flower watering.
  • You have the ability to stack fruit (one stack holds nine), cutting the number of trips down to Re-tail considerably.
  • The town ordinances are especially this, allowing players to make the game more convenient for them in certain ways:
    • The "Keep Your Town Beautiful" ordinance makes the town "decay" more slowly (flowers don't wilt, weeds appear less often, no cockroaches, etc.), lessening the pressure to Play Every Day for players who only have time to play, say, twice a week.
    • The "Early Bird" ordinance makes shops open and villagers wake up earlier for players who can only play/prefer to play during the early morning. Shops open and villagers wake up to three hours earlier, although neither of these will happen before 6 AM.
    • The "Night Owl" ordinance makes shops close and villagers go to bed later for players who can only play/prefer to play during nighttime. Shops close and villagers go to sleep three hours later than normal.
    • The "Bell Boom" ordinance increases buying and selling prices by 20%. This one is less for convenience and more for people who just want to earn Bells quickly, and use the bells on things that aren't affected by the price increase such as Public Works Projects.
  • With the re-addition of the "Save and Continue" feature in this game (which was absent from Wild World and City Folk, and something you could only do via a gyroid next to your door in first game), avoiding bees is a lot easier (as they despawn after the save). Not only that, but you can actually pick up their beehives and sell them.
  • Buying an art item from Crazy Redd was a Luck-Based Mission in Wild World and City Folk. You never knew if the item was forged or not until you donated it to the museum. New Leaf makes it semi-easy to tell whether an art item is forged or not, though it takes a keen eye to tell (or more likely, a strategy guide).
  • Having trouble finding a Villager? Don't know where to find the holiday villagers? Don't remember where you built your snowman? Just buy a megaphone from the Nooklings' shop and say someone's name in the 3DS's microphone; you'll find out where they are from their speech bubbles. Keep in mind this only works if the whoever you're looking for is wandering nowhere else but the town.
  • If an animal wants you to deliver a package to another animal who is asleep, they'll say to wait until said animal wakes up, saving you the trouble of going to the animal's house and finding out for yourself.
  • Looking for a specific villager for your village, but none of your friends has them/doesn't want to trade? Don't feel like paying an arm and a leg of Bells to someone online to trade villagers with? Well, the Welcome amiibo update now lets you use amiibo cards of villagers to have them move in whenever you want them to, at which point you can convince them to move into your town. Already have the max amount villagers in your town though? No problem; the update also allows you to evict less than desired villagers in your town for ones you want. No more villagers you're less than happy with taking up spots of villagers you actually want!
  • The Welcome amiibo update also allows you to obtain a slew of items, both new and old (and very hard to find) items. For example, if Pavé is camping in Harvey's campground, not only will he have some Pavé furniture for purchase (normally only available through his frustrating game on Festivale) but he'll also have a Berliner (an item that's only available on New Years in the German version of New Leaf).
    • Welcome amiibo also allows you to get a Wii U and a New Nintendo 3DS as furniture to play all new mini-games. However, these can only be obtained by getting lucky with fortune cookies, which only 2 of a day can be bought and it costs Play Coins... That is, unless you scan an Animal Crossing amiibo (either a figurine, including the Smash Villager, or certain Welcome amiibo cards), invite them to the campground and order the item from them.
  • Welcome Amiibo added the ability to be able to shake trees while holding a tool. Not only does this alleviate the need to put away equipment just to harvest fruit, it makes catching bee's a lot easier, since you can keep your net out and simply use it as soon as the nest hits the ground.
  • Storage space was added in Welcome amiibo to greatly increase the amount of stuff you can hold in storage. It's kept seperate to the dresser storage, however.
• And That's Terrible: Inverted when a Cranky villager buys something in Re-Tail. They say that good deals are good.
• Apathetic Citizens: As with the games before it, Villagers still do the bare minimum to contribute to the betterment of their homes, they donate more to public projects depending on how their friendship level is with the player.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Animals can do a lot of things while outside, like running around, singing, talk to each other, attempt to catch bugs and go fishing. On event days (Fishing Tourney, Bug-Off), many of them will also participate in the event too.
• Artificial Stupidity: NPC's are very prone to Wall Bonking, while Bugs also need to navigate your customized town, and so often have similar struggles, frequently getting stuck against walls or between objects, or falling into rivers and drowning.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Any tarantula will not withstand any cold nights, yet despite this tarantulas can and will appear even in the cold bitter snow during the winter months.
  • Banana plants do not look anything like palm trees, and in fact, aren't even trees! And the fruit grows in a large bunch whose stalk must be hacked up to be split into combs. The biological requirements are also backwards, where planting the fruit on brown soil would cause the sapling to die but planting the fruit in sand would allow the sapling to thrive. In real life, banana plants require brown soil, and will wither and die if you attempt to plant it in beach sand.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Like in past games, at nighttime villagers go to sleep and stores close up, except for the museum and Town Hall, which are open 24/7 (sometimes a villager or two will also be up late with you). In this game in particular, this also means you can't use the Able Sisters' design feature, since it's inside the Able Sisters' shop which is only open from 9 AM to 9 PM. Additionally, after an hour of playing at any time, villagers will mention to the player to take a break if they are talked to.
• The Artifact: The Campsite in New Leaf after the Welcome Amiibo update. The original function of the Campsite was to allow the player to preview possible villagers who could move into their town before they actually do, on top of getting some specific items... Which is something the Welcome Amiibo update does a lot better since the Camp Grounds offers all that with the ability to better control who it is through the Amiibo cards, on top of bypassing the population limit if the town is already at the max population. Since the update didn't remove the Campsite, it's still there after the update, with animals being noticeably rarer to appear in it on top of all that.
• Artistic License – Geography: The summer and winter solstices introduced in New Leaf make no sense. The sun either doesn't set (summer) or doesn't rise (winter) for the whole day... which does happen in real life, but only at the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Needless to say, your town is not located in the tundra.
• Bigger on the Inside:
  • Since your house plot is a fixed size, all the room extensions that gets added on makes your home comically more spacious than what the exterior implies.
  • It's nothing new that the museum in the series tends to be bigger on the inside. However, the exterior usually has some slight girth to its appearance. Here, the museum looks like a single story building from the outside, but then the inside is far bigger, having an upstairs as well as various rooms for the things you've donated. Saying the museum is "spacious" is an understatement.
• Big Fancy Castle: Once you have all of the rooms built in New Leaf, you can remodel your house into a full-blown castle!
• Big "WHAT?!"?!: If a villager hears something shocking or offensive, they may respond with one of these.
• Boring, but Practical: In New Leaf, farming perfect fruit is kinda tedious, especially since perfect trees die after a few harvests — but it only takes a few minutes a day, selling it in a friend's town (with Bell Boom and a different native fruit type) will earn you 3,600 Bells a pop, and the amount of fruit you can harvest per day increases exponentially as you plant more trees.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In this game, the NPCs will regularly break the fourth wall and give the player character tips without trying to adopt it to the game environment, for example blatantly telling the player outright that the Control Pad on the 3DS can be used to quickly change equipment or look up to the sky. Kapp'n will admonish you for pressing B repeatedly while he's singing during the boat ride. Several NPCs will also blatantly tell you that they're connecting your 3DS to the Internet for their desired purposes. There are probably other examples too. Put simply, there is No Fourth Wall in this game.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: With the Welcome amiibo update, you can make your favorite villagers who have left come back by using amiibo and the 3DS amiibo reader (if you have a New 3DS, the reader is built right in). Want a town populated only by villagers you love? Be prepared to splurge money on amiibo (as well as a one-time investment in an amiibo reader if you don't have a New 3DS) if you weren't already actively collecting before and haven't bought a New 3DS or a reader. The game otherwise works fine without them, though. Also, these cards act as the ultimate insurance, in that if a villager you like does leave (again), you can simply use the card to beckon them back. Doesn't sound too bad? Amiibos are sold in blind bags, so you can't be sure about what you're getting until you paid up and open the bag. You can turn to eBay to get specific cards, but if your favorite characters happen to be very popular, expect to pay an arm and a leg for them.
• Breakout Character: Isabelle, to the point where she's considered to be a main character on the same level as veterans like Tom Nook, K.K Slider, and Mr. Resetti. She's a DLC character in Mario Kart 8, an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, while also being one of two of the pack-in amiibo figurine for amiibo Festival. And then she was added to the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster.
• Breakable Weapons: The basic Axe breaks after 32 uses, while the Silver Axe takes 136 uses to break. The Golden Axe averts this entirely.
• Broken Bridge: At first not all of your land can be explored, as wide rivers and cliffs will inevitably isolate certain areas. The player must make more permanent passages, though bridges are one of the first things to be unlocked.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: You can be this, as the mayor. Give all your residents silly catchphrases, and dress as outlandishly as you like—heck, you can wear actual bunny ears if you want—you can still be good at running the town.
• Call-Back: At the beginning of New Leaf, you're on a train for the first time since the original game. Rover will bring this up, saying he hasn't been on a train "since 2002".
• Captain Obvious: The player can sometimes have descriptions like this.
  Player: [investigating a lost item] Someone lost this...
• Cartoonland Time: It is possible to raise small buildings within a day, so most of the construction times are somewhat believable. On the other hand, a full multi-discipline museum, with its 14 rooms, containing 4 galleries, 4 showcase rooms on the top floor, a museum shop, and the rooms linking all that together full of fancy lighting, animal enclosures, and life support equipment. All that going up in a day is not so believable. Of course it's an Acceptable Breaks from Reality because otherwise it would take months to erect something so big and players don't have infinite patience.
• Character Customization: Your basic look is determined on the train when you start a new save via seemingly unrelated questions posed by Rover. Plus the "getting hats and clothes from stores" also further customises your look.
• Chest Monster: Hermit crabs look exactly like inanimate seashells—other than an occasional subtle wiggle—until you walk over to pick up the shell and it jumps up and scurries away. Same goes for the walking leaf, which looks like a piece of furniture that fell out of a tree. They aren't aggressive, but you'll need to equip your net quickly to catch them.
• Cool Big Sis: The Uchi personality type introduced in this game acts like this toward the player.
• Company Cross References:
  • There's an entire furniture set for the Super Mario Bros. series.
  • Some items in the Fortune Cookies also reference Pikmin, Zelda and other Nintendo franchises.
  • The Welcome amiibo Update added various villagers that represent certain franchises; Cece and Viché (Splatoon), and Epona and Wolf Link (The Legend of Zelda).
  • Gulliver mentions that he hasn't had so much help since he visited Ricco Harbor.
• Cosmetic Award: New Leaf introduces badges, which are rewarded for completing certain tasks (like catching a lot of bugs/fish, filling up most of your fish/bug encyclopedia, or just playing the game for a long time).
• Counting Sheep: Luna does this before the player dozes off to a Dream Town.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: As in previous games, getting bitten by a tarantula or stung by a scorpion causes you to "faint", which will cause the game to Iris Out and teleport you back to your home (or to the dock if it happens on a Tour), with no penalty to you.
• Deserted Island: How your town starts out as, though more pertinently, this is the basis of the Animal Crossing: Desert Island Escape minigame.
• Developer's Foresight: Found on the general page here.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Catching tarantulas and scorpions is a dangerous endeavor because they can knock you out with a sting and then run away. But get the technique down, and you'll catch them no problem.
• Dream Land: A new feature in New Leaf is a building that allows players to travel to dream versions of other player's towns. Since it's a dream, anything done to the town is not permanent... but you can't take anything you find back to the real world. But Wendell can give you patterns used in the town.
• Dream Walker: You can use the Dream Suite to share a "dream" version of your town (which serves as a sort of snap-shot of your town at the time and date you made the dream), and visit dreams of other players' towns.

E - Q

• Earn Your Fun: Certain parts of the game are locked behind specific goals one has to reach. For example, the second floor exhibit of the museum, as well as Brewsters Cafe, do not get unlocked until the museum has received enough respective donations.
• Easter Egg: Late at night, TVs normally just play static. But on Saturdays at exactly 3:33 AM, the static is briefly interrupted by some sort of alien saying something unintelligible and showing off a flying saucer.
• Easily Elected: Upon arriving to their town, the first player is instantly named the mayor by Isabelle and the other residents. The dialogue options all express confusion indicating that the player never ran for the position — not to mention that they'd never even been to the town, let alone lived there, prior to that conversation.
• Epic Fail: Your villagers are... not very good fishers or bug catchers to say the least. Their fishing rods lack a bobber and lure when they "cast" it into the rivers of your island, and everytime a contest rolls around, you only se them do related actions, and not actually see them catch any bugs or fish.
• Equipment Upgrade: The initial set of tools the player will be able to buy are basic tools, but better tools present themselves when you further progress in the game, with the endpoint being Golden Tools, which never break.
• Everyone Has Standards: Timmy and Tommy will buy a lot of stuff from the player, including random bugs and fish, but one of the few things they won't buy is garbage and counterfeit art sold by Redd.
• Facepalm: The "Mistaken" emotion, where a star falls on top of the characters' head, stands in this gestures' place.
• Extended Gameplay: As with games gone past, going to Club LOL on Saturday evenings, and you can request a random song for everyone to listen to while the credits roll. There's still many things to do after the credits, of course. As well, you can view this ending scene again every time you request a song from K.K. Slider onwards.
• Fetch Quest:
  • In order for Cyrus to build a random piece of golden furniture, he requires three gold pieces and 10,000 bells.
  • Sometimes villagers will ask the player to catch certain bugs or fish for them. The villager will express their gratitude to the player by giving them a random gift after the delivery is made and there’s no consequences for not accepting the mission. One downside does exist in that if the player does accept the quest and changes their mind about it, they cannot back out of it, although they are still free to talk to said villager about anything else, albeit with the option to ask said villager what bug or fish they wanted being placed at the top of the chat menu until the next day.
• Fishing for Sole: Cans, tires, and even old boots can be reeled in by fishing (curiously, they all act exactly like normal fish until you pull them out of the water). There's no real use for them, so you may as well throw them away.
• Frigid Water Is Harmless: You can swim in the ocean even when it's winter and the snow on the ground indicates that the water must be cold, if not frozen altogether.
• Furry Confusion: You can catch frogs in the game, and some of the villagers you can get are frogs.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Within the compatibility system, Wolf Link and Ganon will have a horrible relationship.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Only one of each kind of insect, fish, and fossil can be donated to the museum, but some of the exhibits show multiples of the same species. Donating a single ant results in an entire herd of them appearing in the insect wing in a massive line.
• Gender-Inclusive Writing: Player characters are almost always referred to in gender-neutral terms, including, but not limited to, the pronouns "they" and "them". The game uses this when NPC villagers refer to one another (e.g., "Thanks [player] for delivering that to [villager], I hope they enjoy it!"). The only real exceptions to this is when buying clothes, as the Able Sisters and Gracie comment what gender it'll look good on (meant for boys, meant for girls, gender-neutral). They'll also be surprised about pulling the look off if you buy a dress as a boy, for example, but they won't admonish you for it. — though in some languages that require it, what gender you are on your Mayor ID does imply grammatical gender. Villagers will also use "they/them" pronouns after you get a new neighbour to move in, likely because they've never met.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item:
  • Villagers may ask to buy or trade for a random furniture/clothing item from your inventory. You can always decline the offer, though.
  • Once again, Pascal the otter appears and has a chance of asking for a scallop whenever you pull one from the ocean. Pascal only appears when you catch a scallop, and won't take more than one per day, so there's no use in stockpiling them for trading purposes.
• Girly Run: Players run with their elbows bent and their hands lifted in the air while wearing what the game considers "feminine", no matter which gender they are. This includes most skirts and dresses, excluding the girl's default skirt and a handful of "dresses" like raincoats that are meant to represent some other kind of long outerwear.
• Global Currency Exception: The island in New Leaf only accepts the medals you earn on tours. Also, fortune cookies can only be bought with Play Coins earned on your 3DS itself. The Welcome amiibo update introduces MEOW Coupons, which are earned by doing various tasks and are spent at Harvey's campground.
• Gotta Catch Them All:
  • The museum has whole wings for bugs, fish, fossils, and art pieces, waiting to be filled with your donations. You can also check the in-game encyclopedia to see your progress on the first two, while you can check all your donations by reading the museum sign.
• The Golden Rule: Alice's picture quote is "Treat others as you would like to be treated."
• Guide Dang It!:
  • It's fairly clear that shovels can hit rocks, but axes also work; this has been possible since the first Animal Crossing, but was never needed nor mentioned. Here, it's basically pointless, as you get the basic tools at the same time from the Nooklings shop, and so you have no motivation to use an axe on anything but trees.
  • Breeding flowers isn't as easy as it sounds, especially when compared to the older titles; as it requires specific actions to be undertaken (which is luck-based anyway).
  • Unless you already figured out the tricky patterns of turnips in previous games, the price fluctuations can seem pretty random. Among other things, you're not told that turnip prices change twice a day (there's one price in the morning, and another from noon to closing time), or that your results last week and the buying price affect the sell-price pattern. How to buy turnips isn't obvious either, since you have to find Joan, who only appears on Sundays before noon; Reese mentions she purchases them, but never when the event starts.
  • The Encyclopedia gives detailed information about which months of the year every bug and fish is available... but only after you catch each one. Just as in previous games, where and when to catch specific bugs and fish you haven't caught yet, you'll either have to guess randomly or look it up online because the game provides no hints. This can be particularly annoying for bugs and fish which require a specific condition to spawn, such as flies and ants only appearing on rotten food.
  • Balloon present spawns are not totally random. They have a chance to spawn whenever the minute digits end in "4" or "9". While only two balloon spawns are guaranteed per hour, spawns can be forced by entering a building and interacting with an NPC, then leaving before the appropriate minute arrives. Different balloon colours will also prioritise different items - for example, silver balloons drops the silver slingshot.
  • Giving the villagers clothing and accessories that match their favorite style and color affects your friendship status. The thing is, there is nothing in-game that tells you what the favorite colors of the villagers are, and the player, should they at all become aware that each villager has two favorites colors and preferred styles, will have to rely on an internet guide to determine what their favorite clothing gifts are. The Able Sisters also don’t have the option in-game to sort clothing by the fashion styles they represent, so from there it becomes even more of a guessing game of what article of clothing fits into a certain category.
  • It's well known that catching scorpions and tarantulas requires you to stop moving when they enter a defensive pose, but what's less well known is that the same technique is needed to catch the rarer horned beetles, as they are sensitive enough to noise that they will fly away even if you creep up to them normally. If they suddenly stop their idle animation as you approach them, freeze and wait for them to move again before moving closer into net range.
  • It's pretty much impossible to learn all the coffee requirements for any and all villagers that may come to Brewsters Cafe, so you may need to have a guide handy to work out the missing ingredients. Similarly, characters like Isabelle only usually gives one hint per visit, so unless you get lucky, you'll have to have Isabelle visit three times to get her full order right, or again, resort to using a guide.
  • Obtaining art from Redd is still a hit-and-miss process unless you happen to knowledgeable about a specific statue or artist.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Isabelle, Lyle, Porter, Harv, and Shrunk directly tell you about real-world controls and for Porter and Harv, what the 3DS's WiFi connection can be used for/ asks you if you want to activate it.
• Hint Dropping: Every time you pay off the mortgage to your home, Tom Nook (sometimes complete with a devious sideways glance) will not-so subtly suggest that your home could be better before (badly) trying to play it off as just him thinking out loud... and then again following up this by telling the player to talk to him if they're interested in what he's thinking.
• Impossible Theft: An inversion. During his concerts, K.K. Slider somehow manages to slip a copy of his music into everyone's pockets while he was playing it right in front of everyone. The most likely explanation is that he passed it into the audience's pockets during the fade to black after a performance, but even then it'd have to happen at ludicrous speed.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests:
  • As in previous games, presents dangling from balloons periodically drift over your island, delivering random items or recipes to anyone who shoots them down. The achievement for balloon-sniping even says that no one knows where they come from.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: The Perfect Fruit. There is a small chance a regular fruit tree will produce one, and their appearance is slightly different from their normal one (Perfect Oranges are larger and a more vibrant color, Perfect Peaches and Pears are golden, etc.). The villagers comment that its flavor is unbeatable and may ask you to find one of them. When you eat one, your character will have a rosy glow for a couple of seconds.
• Instant Costume Change:
  • Holding clothes in your inventory let you swap shirts, pants, dresses, shoes and hats on the fly, though these all have to be applied one by one if you wish to wear a mix of them.
  • You can do this with mannequins that can be bought and place in your home. They can hold clothing, and visually shows them off. You can immediately change into the mannequins' held outfit by going up to it.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: You cannot swim under the bobbing boundary at sea, despite looking like you can.
• Ironic Fear: The way to obtain candy from villagers during Halloween is to wear a mask that scares them, one of them being the Werewolf Hood. Among the villagers afraid of the Werewolf Hood include Chief, Fang, and Lobo...all of whom are actual wolves.
• It's Up to You: The first person to make the save is the "resident representative," who has to do the bulk of all the fund-raising. Certain town improvements, once placed, require a contribution before they can be constructed. While Isabelle implies that the whole town can work together to raise the needed funds, in practice it's up to the player(s) — the NPC villagers will donate only a few hundred Bells a day, when most improvements cost tens of thousands or more.
• Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Besides the standard problem of items being worth less when you sell them back, the Nooklings Shop is only open from 8 AM to 10 PM, and they also impose an additional 20% earnings cut due to "handling fees" in comparison to Re-Tail.
• Kinder and Cleaner:
  • Compared to the original, characters are much nicer this time around. Villagers used to make cruel remarks and force you to play "games" or buy items from them for a random amount of bells (often the exact amount you have on you) and give you junk in return. Aside from them, the snowmen went from outright hostile towards you if you mess up assembling them to forgiving of your mistake, Rover initially being passive aggressive if you refuse to let him sit across from you in the train after he comments about drooling on you, and Phyllis' snark was toned down from being moody and impatient to comments about closing the door when you leave.
  • Resetti is optional here, unlike other games. If the player chooses not to build the Reset Center, Isabelle's "Oh, Mayor? Looks like you forgot to save last time." is much gentler then Resetti's former scoldings.
  • It's also much easier to maintain a cleaner environment than previously because villagers at least make some effort to place plants around those with the same genus and water.
• Leitmotif:
  • Every town can have a unique tune, as the player character can customize it. It plays every time you speak to a character, among other instances.
  • The Nookling stores all have a musical track.
• Limited Wardrobe: Villagers are able to wear your custom designs from the Able Sisters' shop, as well as any clothes you give them, meaning they'll likely never wear their starting clothes for very long.
• Long Song, Short Scene: A different track plays when you're in one of the Nookling stores after it closes... but you're forced into a conversation with whomever is in the store with you and the conversation autoscrolls.
• Mayor Pain: The player can be this if they don't do their Mayoral duties and antagonize Villagers.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: During the April Fool's event, a villager might try to prove their identity by saying how many siblings they have. Some of these families have a very high number of children, up to ten (including the villager in question). Quite a few of them will also claim to be part of a multiple birth, up to quintuplets.
• Mech vs. Beast: One of the possible programs that may appear on television furniture is what appears to be a toku movie of the Robot Hero fighting the Monster (the same as the ones available at the Nook Stop terminal).
• Minigame Zone: The island lets you go on "tours", where you can play various minigames (scavenger hunting, hide-and-seek, etc.) to earn medals, which you can trade for exclusive items. For 50 medals, you can also join Club Tortimer, which lets you play online with players all around the world. (The fee is probably to deter griefers from joining, and while they ended up joining anyway, Nintendo at least added the option to turn the chat feature off in the Welcome amiibo update.)
• Misfortune Cookie: When you eat a fortune cookie from the Nooklings' shop, you'll usually receive a fortune that can be redeemed for a piece of Nintendo memorabilia, but there's a 1 in 10 chance of you receiving a fortune with a pessimistic or nihilistic message, which will give you a low-quality piece of furniture. Likewise, during the Sunday fireworks festivals in August, Redd sells you fortune cookies that can be turned in for one of six exclusive prizes or a firework, but the ratio of winners to duds is inverted.
• Mistaken for Special Guest: In New Leaf, the townsfolk mistake you for the new mayor who was due to arrive that day. Later, you receive a message from the real mayor, who lets you keep the position and wishes you luck.
• Money Sink: The home loans in all the games, and public works projects.
• Money Spider: Each day, one of the rocks on your island will dispense Bells (instead of stones, iron, and clay) when smacked with a shovel, ten non-fruit trees will randomly drop 100 Bells each and two trees will have a piece of furniture everyday. Best not to question who keeps stuffing them in there, or how.
• Mook Chivalry: It sure is nice of those rampaging New Leaf bees to just fly around in circles while you equip your net.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Rover mentions he hasn't ridden the trains much since 2002, referring back to the first game's mode of travel.
  • When discussing your first down payment, Tom Nook mentions how much easier it is to make money on your own than to get low-paying part-time employment, lampshading the errands he would force you to do as part of the tutorial in the older games.
  • Timmy and Tommy sometimes say that their store does not have a points system, referencing the one present in City Folk.
  • Gulliver will occasionally mention that he has a hard time convincing others that he's been to space. In Wild World and City Folk he flew in a spaceship, instead of being washed ashore, as in this game and the first one.
  • Pete says he doesn't fly to deliver letters because someone at his old job would shoot him with a slingshot.
  • Some characters will also talk about the game in terms of trains, like how the train is the fourth generation version and unlike the last two generations, is completely different, and that it had inherited some of the "DNA" of the first generation. New Leaf brought back several elements from the original version of the game, such as trains and the island. It also shook up the series formula after complaints that the last two installments of the series were too similar to each other.
  • TVs in the original Animal Crossing would only play one program based on what the TV was (for example, the Apple TV would have apples rolling across the screen). At certain times in New Leaf, the TV will play a moment of classic programs (the show that plays in this video comes from the Retro TV in the original).
• National Geographic Nudity: Players can never wear anything less than a pair of shorts and undershirt (attempting to strip replaces your clothes with generic grey shorts/ dresses). However, several of Redd's statues — most notably the Gallant Statue and Beautiful Statue — are partly or entirely nude and, er, anatomically correct. The game maintains its kid-friendly rating because these are model replicas of famous real-life sculptures, and to some degree offers an educational benefit to players.
• Nature Abhors a Vacuum Cleaner: When visiting the (human) player's house, villagers (who are all Funny Animals) may occasionally comment on how clean the place is when spoken to. They immediately get worried and ask if the player has "one of those vroom-vroom thingies," stating that "those scare the heck out of me!"
• New Game Plus: After the Welcome amiibo update, this became an option in New Leaf. If the player chooses to start a new town after putting enough effort into their previous town, Tom Nook will offer to buy the old town, depositing a large number of Bells into the new character's bank account to speed things up. Players may choose to receive the money gradually instead of all at once, which includes interest as a bonus for choosing that option.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • As a deterrent to time traveling, turning back your system clock will cause any and all turnips, regardless of where they're stored, to instantly spoil.
• Offscreen Teleportation: This can happen for you when you save and continue. And sometimes, villagers will already be inside a store when you walk in, even if you enter the instant they open.
• Old Save Bonus:
  • Welcome amiibo lets you order giant furniture items if you have Happy Home Designer.
  • Design QR codes are cross-compatible among New Leaf, Happy Home Designer, and (with help from a smartphone, since the Switch has no camera) New Horizons.
• Oxygen Meter: It's not shown, and this being Animal Crossing you don't drown regardless, but you can only dive underwater for a little under 10 seconds before your character will automatically surface for air.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: The island in New Leaf. Selling exotic fruit and nocturnal beetles can net the player hundreds of thousands of a bells in a relative instant, especially if they have the Bell Boom ordinance in effect. Beetle-farming has even been directly recommended as a bell-making method by NoA President Reggie Fils-Aime.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy:
  • The pajamas you wear when visiting dream towns are this, as are the Town Pass Cards, although the latter doesn't really mean all that much.
  • Reese and Cyrus are pink girl and blue boy, respectively.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • Tarantulas and scorpions, the two dangerous bugs which are seasonal counterparts of each other, occasionally appear at night; if you can catch them without getting bit, each one sells for about 8,000 Bells.
  • Less arachnophobia-inducing techniques to get bells quickly include fishing for koi at ponds at night, catching rare fish on the island, or catching lucrative butterflies like peacock or emperor butterflies.
• Podcast: In-Universe. When the player gets an octopus, they say to find more about it on his podcast.
• Player Data Sharing: The Happy Home Academy Showcase and the Dream Suite in New Leaf are implementations of this. The Showcase allows you to buy furniture from the homes of other players you've StreetPassed and the Dream Suite allows you to get new patterns from other players' towns over the Internet.
• Play Every Day: The game encourages this with unlocking Public Work Projects, donating to the museum your found fish and bugs, among other things.
• Pop Quiz: Gulliver will ask you to help identify his original destination by giving you a few factoids about it. Get it right, and he'll send you a souvenir.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: There aren't any restrictions to speak of when it comes to gender and character customization. Both genders can wear any item of clothing, villagers rarely use gendered terms, and the few times they are used; by the Able Sisters and Gracie, neither of them discourage cross-dressing. Really, the only "restrictions" are hairstyles, which need to be unlocked after a certain amount of haircuts, and the pyjamas you wear when visiting the dream suite, and that's about it.

R - Z

• Recurring Riff:
  • Some of the background songs in the game are rearrangements of each of the games' respective title theme (e.g., 8 P.M. for New Leaf).
  • You can create your own recurring riff with the town tune feature. In New Leaf, the town tune plays whenever the clock bell rings, when you talk to a villager, and when you enter a building.
• Regional Bonus: A few holidays are actually specific to different versions of New Leaf. They can be accessed in other versions via Socialization Bonus though. Some of the items obtained on these days are available through the campground, albeit at random.
  • The NTSC version has Groundhog Day (February 2), Earth Day (April 22), Labor Day (the first Monday in September), and Explorer's Day (the second Monday of October).
  • The PAL version has Naughty or Nice Day (December 6).
  • The Japanese version has the Bean Throwing Festival (February 3), Girl's Day (March 3), Children's Day (May 5), Starcrossed Day (July 7), and Obon (August 15 or 16, depending on the year).
  • The Korean version has the lunar new year (late January to early February, year dependent), Daeboreum (the 15th day of the first lunar month), Arbor Day (April 5), and Teachers' Day (May 15).
  • Additionally, each region has unique dates for Weeding Day, Father's and Mother's Day (which, in Korea, is just a singular Parents' Day), and unique presents for the Harvest Moon (the first full moon of autumn) and New Year's Eve (December 31).
• Renovating the Player Headquarters: Exaggerated compared to previous games, with the player able to build up and customize an entire town.
  • In terms of the house itself, it follows a similar progression to Wild World housing, having the base room, three side rooms, second floor, and basement, each having 4x4, 6x6, and 8x8 floor space expansions. After the Welcome amiibo update, you're able to get a Secret Storage extension for more storage space in addition to your storage furnishings. Before you get your house, however, you're stuck with a tiny tent until you pay off the loan for the land claim.
  • For the entire town, you can build public works projects to decorate the land, some of which have functional purposes outside of breathing life to the humble town. When your town achieves the perfect town status, you can even customize the town-hall, where all your mayoral duties are done.
• Replacement Goldfish: This can occur with villagers that move in and out of your town. In New Leaf, the game tries to maintain a mix of all the villager types while cycling out older villagers for newer ones. If a villager of a certain type moves out, the next random move-in will never be the same type as the villager who moved out (unless he or she was invited from the campsite, StreetPass, or another player's town).
• Retcon: Some of the older villagers in the previous games had their personalities changed to the new Smug and Uchi personalities in New Leaf.
• Revenue-Enhancing Devices: New Leaf has the Welcome amiibo update, which allows amiibo cards and figures to be scanned in for items and even exclusive villagers.
• Save Scumming:
  • Mr. Resetti was made an optional feature, resetting the game the first time will prompt him to appear and suggest the Reset Center as a Public Works Project (so you actually need to do this once to get it).
  • There's a form of save scumming known as "The Villager Reset Trick". On a day you think a villager will move in to set up a plot of land, you need to create a new save file (loading an old one will make the game save and lock the location, which may not be ideal). Once you've gone through making a new player character, you can scout around to see if they've set up their plot in a location you like. If they didn't, reset and make a new save file. If they chose a location that you like, you can set up your house location and save the game from there. Then you can delete the save file and the villager will move into the right spot. Of course, there will now be a bare spot...
• Self-Deprecation: In New Leaf, Normal villagers visiting your home may talk about how they've been "playing this one game where you run your own town but also have to keep all these needy animals happy."
• Sizable Snowflakes: Once you build a Snowmam, she will ask you to gather oversized snowflakes with a bug net and bring them to her, as she collects them. They emit a glistening sound when coming near them and hover aimlessly above the ground.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When you first meet Zipper T. Bunny on Bunny Day, he makes sure to let you know he is definitely not a person wearing a rabbit costume. He has a zipper on his back, and will act noticeably irritated if you repeatedly talk to him. Even his own camper van entry gets in on the joke.
• Technical Euphemism: Kapp'n occasionally farts after the first verse of his sea shanties. Sometimes, he'll call it the "wind in [his] southern hemisphere".
• Tech Tree: New Leaf introduces a similar concept in that certain public works or buildings can only be obtained if an existing building has been upgraded to the required level, which usually requires certain criteria to be met. For example, to get The Roost, you need to have your museum upgraded to have a second floor. And for that to happen, you must have met the game's criteria of submitting a certain number of specimens (with at least one in each category).
• Translation Nod: K.K. Slider’s new alter ego for this game is named DJ KK, even in Japan, where the K.K. shortening of Totakeke hadn’t appeared before.
• Villain Decay: New Leaf's Welcome amiibo update allows players to add Ganon to their towns by scanning a Ganondorf or 8-bit Link amiibo. In this game, he's a villager with a Cranky personality instead of being the ultimate evil he is in his home series, despite what the game says when you visit his RV.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The cruel things you could always do to the villagers returns here: whacking them with a net, not curing their flea problem, leading them into pitfalls, ignoring commitments to see their/ your house.
• Video Game Perversity Potential:
  • Despite the measures taken to maintain the kid friendly rating, people have nonetheless gotten very creative when it comes to getting around such measures, such as abusing the Scunthorpe problem when naming a town (like Pen Island), while more ambitious players have abused the pro pattern designer to create topless-nude-suits (pants, thankfully, cannot be customised) paired with shorts, and so one can use the Scenery Censor to appear nude in screenshots.
  • And, as always, the custom designs can be used for any kind of artwork, and can be hung up on the wall for anyone to see.
  • The profanity filter only applies for online interactions with strangers, not for the villagers or players joining that are marked as friends; there isn't one for anything beyond that. Due to this, there have been some hilarious mishaps where islanders have picked up and reiterated inappropriate words used by players. You can also name your town pretty much anything too. And let's not get started on non-English cuss words, romanized from non-Latin alphabet or otherwise, which the game just ignores.
• We Buy Anything: Timmy and Tommy, as well as Re-tail's Reese and Cyrus, will buy everything the player presents to them, with the exception of trash items like boots and tires.
• Welcome to Corneria: Logicially, this is going to happen, as there's only so many phrases a villager tgype has before they end up repeating themselves.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Despite clothing being "gendered", skirts, dresses, pants, shirts, and shoes can be worn by both male and female PCs, and are treated as different kinds of items rather than altering the clothing choices based on sex that past games did. It's possible to start a game as one sex and eventually work your way to the point where the only way to tell the character's true sex is to look at their face (which even then, may not help, as both sexes do share similar eyes) or the color of their ID card (Pink Girl, Blue Boy, naturally). The character's running animation is based what clothes you wear, so putting them in a skirt or dress will most likely give them a Girly Run cycle. Masculine or unisex clothing makes them run as they normally would with the clothes they started off with.
• Wish Upon a Shooting Star: Whenever meteors appear, you can look up at the sky and wish upon a meteor, represented by said meteor glowing brightly when wished upon. The next day, you will get a package in the mail that is space-themed.
• You Have Researched Breathing: You can't use Emote Animations until you unlock Club LOL and meet with Dr. Shrunk and give him fruit to do one of his comedy routines. The saving grace is that he never repeats himself, and only when you've unlocked all the emotes will he repeat the same ones.
• You No Take Candle: As was the case in previous games, Saharah the rug-peddling camel talks in strange broken English, saying things like "Yes, a rug for your purchasing. What size shall be the rug of yours?"

---