Game Theory: Animal Crossing's Scary Bunny unZIPPED! (Animal Crossing New Horizons)

why hippity skippity hoppity ho now that you found me I'll say a warm hello I know what you're thinking no this is not a costume and don't you go snooping got it Zippity zappity that hippity ho what do you know bunny day is April 12 I promise to bounce right on back to this island on that wonderful wonderful day in the meantime skipper don't tell anyone you ran into old zipper it'll be a funny bunny surprise excuse me but could you please stop staring at my back it's rude won't find anything back there anyway stop looking back there glad you think this is funny kid seriously cut that out last warning fine but don't say I didn't warn you have a funny bunny hello internet welcome Zig game theory the show that's not afraid to unzip the bunny suit and ruin the magic today we're dipping our toes into a new franchise for the channel the pristine waters of Animal Crossing as you probably know this channel is no stranger to Nintendo properties I mean act one of Nintendo's us representatives even calls himself our surrogate uncle love you to Uncle David but I gotta admit I'm a late comer to the Animal Crossing franchise no it's just something about a game where your primary objective is paying off a home loan it's a bit too real for me feel seen by this game but I need a good way I'm already grinding away in real life to try and get Chase Bank to stop looking over my shoulder and now you want a videogame racoon to do the same thing I only have two shoulders guys if only I could get chase bank to accept ocean sunfish as a currency and be set but the newest release New Horizons actually got me to change my tune with a bit more time on my hands I decided to give it a whirl and something about the game's cute aesthetic the island atmosphere the relaxed music just hit all the right chords it felt good to find routines and cross items off a short to-do list rather than the neverending set of thankless tasks that adulting requires I gotta do what with the pipes again why why is it never a stable state when you own a house there always something falling apart and apparently I wasn't the only one having those feelings since its release was the same day as doom eternal the Internet has been eager to splice the likes of Isabel and Tom Nook together with that of the doom Slayer but the comparison may be more true than any of us realized considering New Horizons has been tearing through sales records like a well-armed Marine ripping through heck beasts peacefully ripping through heck beasts or at least things were peaceful until Easter suddenly everyone's Islands were flooded with unwanted eggs clogging up their streams the trees even popping out of the rocks this marked when all of us first time players were introduced and all the veteran players were unfortunately reintroduced to the creepily mysterious zipper tea bunny oh sure he might look like just any other animal in this game world but zipper is hiding a secret well I mean he's not very good at hiding the secret considering he complains about it under his breath all the time and is literally named after that secret still he is hiding it nonetheless zip Bertie our little Easter Bunny stand-in is someone hiding inside a rabbit costume who ever heard that one before [Music] seriously I should start an asylum for the criminally furry who knew that half the programming on this gaming related channel would be trying to expose people inside disturbing animal suits anyway that again is exactly our goal today despite zippers warnings of it ruining the magic we're peeling back the mask to identify yet another creepy dude who's hiding inside a bunny costume and I swear if his name winds up being William Afton I am out I quit I am done let's begin by looking at zippers history zipper tee Bunny's first appearance was an animal crossing city folk before making a return appearance in new leaf with both appearances arousing plenty of suspicion from series fans showing up around bunny day which is the animal crossing equivalent of Easter zipper is a bit of a trickster always leading the player to hunt eggs for the promise of a prize that's never quite as fabulous as you would expect and those eggs are a point of contention on their own as Nintendo was recently forced to update the game to make the ever-present eggs less annoying in people's gameplay this just in from the newsdesk insane rabbit replaces entire ecosystem with eggs I just want my wood again please God I just want my wood everywhere he's a maniac I for one lack the eggs they tasty but today we're not focused on the eggs-cruciating gameplay of early April we're instead focused on the man who's tormenting the town zipper is hardly the cheery mascot you might expect from someone pretending to be the Easter Bunny in fact he spends a lot of time mumbling about how uncomfortable hard and boring it is being the bunny all right saying things about how hot and sweaty it is inside the costume or after a particularly cheesy line things like look I can't believe I just said that zipper also likes to act like his costume is real even pushing it to the point of correcting the game devs a new leaf where the description of zippers camp reads quote amping gives zipper a chance to finally get out of that stuffy old costume and we're being told in no uncertain terms that it is not a costume end quote if you try and look at the giant obvious zipper on mr. Bunny's back he is not amused saying things like excuse me can you stop staring at my back it's rude you won't find anything back there anyway even his actions reflect how tired and bored he is with this whole thing if he thinks that you're looking super we'll hop around and act cheerful but if he thinks that you're out of sight he completely drops his act and start shuffling around sighing a lot so that alone is pretty darn weird for what's otherwise a very cheery relaxing mystery free game but what makes it stranger is the response that zipper gets in universe from other characters it'd be one thing if just us players thought he was weird but even the other animals in our village find zipper to be a bit off we know from the way other villagers react to zipper that he's not a normal part of the animal crossing world they complain about him acting weird and refusing to acknowledge his own zipper what's more when zipper shows up he brings with him this plague of eggs and that's just not a gameplay impact other villagers actively point out how unusual it all is so for the sake of everyone who or what is zipper tea bunny well I think I have the answer Animal Crossing games tend to have themselves a fairly small cast of characters so all we have to do is eliminate all the potential suspects until we're left with one popular fan theories on the topic have identified old mayor tortimer as a top candidate because of the tea and zipper tea bunny may be standing for tortimer and the whole getting tired thing inside the suit angle would work really well for an old aging man others say that the tea and his name might stand for Tom Nook still others think that Phyllis the postal worker penguin might be behind the mask because she mutters on her breath and hates her job just like zipper does um hold up a postal worker who hates her job guys we might have other reasons to be afraid of this character to be honest is that a reference that anyone gets at this point Wow I feel old in the 90s there were multiple incidents of postal workers going crazy and lashing out with violence against other employees or the public hence the term going postal it even sparked a video game series classified as one of the most violent video games of all time the more you know last major suspect in fan theories is Hopkins because he's also a bunny who happens to share the same birthday as zipper tease so that is a decent number of options for us to check out so I guess you're gonna have to tune in for part two make sure you hit that subscribe button to get notified of when that video hits your sub boxes nope not gonna do it to you this time because honestly we don't need to so if you did want to hit that subscribe button right now this is an excellent opportunity anyway it's actually fairly easy to eliminate all of those suspects right now in one fell swoop they're all able to be seen in proximity to zipper you know how there's a theory circulating the internet that I'm secretly Scott Cawthon because you've never seen us in the same room together well the exact opposite works for zipper during Bunny Day events zipper can be found in the center of town and pretty much every other character can be seen in proximity to him or they're just working inside a building while the bunny man stands right outside even in a world where you can wave a magic wand and change your clothes moving that fast just breaks reality so if we throw some duplicating or teleporting magic out the window which feels fair based on the rules of this game universe the long and short of it is that zipper isn't a villager that you are I know but let me be clear that doesn't mean that we don't know the true identity of zipper T quite the contrary in fact I think that zipper T Bunny is actually our Father that might seem really random but let's talk about why this is the only explanation that makes any sort of sense first your father is indeed a character in this game albeit a minor one while your mother will send you fairly frequent letters throughout the Animal Crossing games sometimes even including things like gifts your father is a bit more distant originally he would only send you a card on Father's Day even admitting in those letters that he's not much of a writer as your mother in his defense it's really you who should be sending him a card on Father's Day but still recent games have seen him sending more letters but still he's a relative mystery oh and by the way here's a weird fact about this whole thing along with his Father's Day letter he tends to send a red carnation now carnations are known as the traditional flower of Mother's Day and the rose strangely enough is the official flower of Father's Day here's the creepy part though internationally people wear roses on Father's Day red if Dad is live and white if he's deceased so basically an animal crossing on Father's Day your dear old dad is sending you a flower to remind you that yes he is still alive just watch out for the day that he sends you the white carnation yikes but okay what does any of this have to do with zipper Bunny nothing at least in English but for the real answer we again have to look internationally obviously zipper bunny in English is just to plan the fact that he's a man in a costume and this is true for lots of his other international names as well most of them are some version of zipper or bounce but a few of them really stand out as being particularly interesting in Germany they drop the whole pretense of bunny day altogether and just call zipper OST Hoss or a pun on the German translation of Easter hare in Japanese notably the native language for the core Animal Crossing development team zippers name is peon Tarrou which is something of a portmanteau of peon roughly the Japanese equivalent of Boeing and taru which is a suffix for a Japanese boys name specifically reserved for the first son at least in the ancient tradition in other words in Japanese his name roughly translates to Boeing boy this along with the fact that villagers are using male pronouns can help us determine that zipper is most likely a male but hold on to that whole first son thing we're gonna get back to that in a second things start to get even more interesting when you get to his Italian translation Oh video in Italian the word wove Oh is egg which is kinda close to OVD oh but still it's a pretty far departure video is also unusual considering that it's the actual Italian name for Ovid an ancient Roman poet known for his epic work the Metamorpho sees which is a bunch of myths chronicling the creation of the world up until the death of Julius Caesar it was a hugely influential literary work inspiring famous authors like Dante Chaucer Shakespeare my wife Stephanie who was a classics major assures me that this was funny because of the grammar in it or something I am skeptical to say the least anyway as the name implies the whole thing is about transformation with Ovid specifically saying that transformation in the world comes about via either violence or love Ovid himself was eventually exiled from Rome by the Emperor for reasons still unclear in Ovid's own words it was a poem and a mistake a crime worse than murder more harmful than poetry seems really random writes but the themes of exile as well as the themes of fathers and sons continue in other international translations of zippor teased name specifically the Korean name it looks like this and it translates to the word tobot I initially thought that this might be a play on the word rabbit or bunny in Korean which looks a lot like this notice that the first character is exactly the same but that reads as taki now I can be barking up the wrong tree here but the translation of hobbit in English is really fascinating you see the book of Tobit is a Roman Catholic text that tells the story of an exiled man named tobot and his son Tobias I was a professional twice over an analyst and a therapist the world's first analysis not that Tobias Hobbit was exiled for his debt and it was up to his son Tobias to get money for his father to pay off that debt now I'll admit that a lot about this story doesn't really line up one thing tobot was blinded by bird poop and i'm pretty sure that's not as far as zippers backstory but it is still very interesting that the developers chose to go with this name in korean well almost every other name is a transparent play on words or an autumn on appeal this one is a very specific obscure reference it's about a man in exile because of debt and the son who goes out into the world to pay back what his father owes in Animal Crossing a story about a kid going out into the world and immediately being put into debt and having to earn his way out of that debt it's a weird coincidence wouldn't you say you couple that with the Italian name Oh video potentially a reference to Ovid another exiled man and pianta Roux with its implications of tying back to a firstborn son and you have yourself a case to be made that zipper is a father in exile for his debt I mean think about this you are the only human in this game your parents are presumably humans too but you never see them so to blend in with a village of animals they would need a suit of some sort say a bunny suit and if you've just been exiled from a civilization for your debt that would increase your need to hide your true identity when you first meet zipper out in the wilderness he seems to only want to talk to you at first he specifically asks you not to tell anyone else that you talk to him as though he's afraid of being found out or that his secret of hiding two eggs is gonna be discovered no I'll admit that this sounds creepy and Kenz if a man in a bunny suit asks you to not tell anyone about him please please tell someone trustworthy about it but at least in the game all of zipper's efforts seem directed to help you out no one else is out there collecting the eggs so who is he hiding them for you and the fact that the village thinks it's weird seems to indicate that this isn't a regular occurrence or some yearly tradition that they were familiar with until you it's because you are here now he's here hiding eggs for you and not anyone else I mean what in universe character would care so much about you as to show up to your Island every year just to hide eggs furniture even money to keep you entertained on Bunny day other than your own parents and here's the thing Animal Crossing is a Japanese game and in Japanese culture fathers are almost required to be distant from their children studies of parenting in Japan show that many fathers feel like outsiders in their own homes because so much emphasis is placed on the economics of the household how much that household earns and how much of your life you have to devote to the company fathers as a result are always away from the house they're always working there leaving most of the parenting to the mother there's even a phrase for this in the Japanese language chichi yo Fu's I roughly meaning that the father is missing in action it makes the relationship between father and child stunted in many families with fathers struggling to express themselves it's probably why your dad and the game has so much trouble actually writing you letters couple that with all the references to fathers and exile and the fact that no other character we see in the game can possibly be zipper without the power of magical teleportation and I think zipper T might just be your father trying to show his affection through other methods not writing but doing not himself but as a character sweating away in a miserable rabbit outfit who else would try so hard to keep the illusion of the Easter Bunny alive and hide presents and trees specifically for you who else would then take those same worthless eggs that you just found and trade them in for more and more recipes and gifts I mean he's not entirely good at it he's kind off word and a lot of times it feels like more work than it's actually worth but he does frequently refer to you as kid and he does want to keep the magic alive for you so the way that I see it the mystery of zipper T Bunny is either one of two things either it's one your father doing his best to express his love for you in the way that only he can or two he's a really weird dangerous stalker hiding out in the woods and a bright colored cartoon game for children waiting to murder you but hey well we're on the topic of things that you're using to pass the time while in quarantine I've got another one for you and this one doesn't involve you having to dig yourself out of a mountain of debt to do it audible our sponsor for today's episode is coming to the rescue right when we all needed a most trapped at home and looking to escape from the real world and into the imaginary world of our minds audible is the biggest provider of audiobooks on the planet they've got them all and you can listen to 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Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 4,621,164

Rating: 4.9178371 out of 5

Keywords: animal crossing, animal crossing new horizons, acnh, new horizons, new horizons animal crossing, zipper t bunny, isabelle, animal crossing new horizons trailer, animal crossing new horizons island, animal crossing new horizons gameplay, animal crossing new horizons music, animal crossing 5 star island, animal crossing tarantula island, animal crossing new horizons tips, animal crossing new horizons tour, isabelle smash, tom nook, game theorists, game theory, matpat

Id: LNK-CjcH5dY

Length: 18min 43sec (1123 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020

Reddit Comments

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[u/Bwee_boi]

Honestly this theory was a little insane, but interesting to watch Matpat pull this stuff out of god knows where. I like to think that Zipper is just a bouncy bunny, and the zipper on his back is just part of his clothes.

[u/vgdnd123]

He grasped at so many straws it isn’t funny, seriously taking the name “First born son of spring” to mean what he thinks zipper is has to be one of the worst stretches yet to the point I’m surprised this theory didn’t have tears, by far the worst theory this year so far

[u/amageish]

Well. It's a fun speculation theory, though I don't think this is actually solving a mystery intended by the authors, even though it's primarily based on an international Zipper names.

I feel like Zipper was likely intended to either be Hopkins or just unknowable. Hopkins hadn't been in the series for a long time when Zipper was introduced and the shared/birthday voice makes it seem possible to me (plus the potential joke of "What is in this fake bunny? Another fake bunny!" as Hopkins is a pool inflatable rabbit villager). That said, with Hopkins back in the series as of Welcome Amiibo... Yeah, obviously that no longer works, but I think it's possible it was considered when he was first created.

[u/Oz_The_Terrible]

I made a separate post about this, but it got auto removed so I'll comment here for now.

I think the intro was based on my art?

Here's what I'm talking about: https://twitter.com/OzTheTerrible/status/1259250425582071808

[u/BigSisterPanda]

Posted this on YouTube too but the whole time I kept thinking about how it could also be Tom Nooks’s first born son. Idk why but I couldn’t shake it out of my head.

Tom is clearly trying to take as much money from people as possible and work his kids constantly.

Jealous kiddo trying to wreck his dad’s new economy after he wasn’t as good as his twin brothers? 🤷‍♀️

[u/TopShelfPrivilege]

The problem is that Tom Nook is a tanuki (hence the name that sounds like it.) In Japanese lore tanuki are magical, it's commonly accepted the all the furniture appear as leaves because leaves, sticks and rocks are common somatic components in tanuki magic/spells. That stacked with the wands, I'd say that pretty well determines magic to some extent is real. One of the specifically noted magical abilities of tanuki is to transform themselves into other figures, as well as cloning themselves to confuse and distract.

[u/Broly_]

First bit had me interested but the rest was REALLY stretching.

[u/shadowsoul720]

Zipper could be "Glitchtrap" - Here's the new horizons Easter interactions

This video can also be used as information for theory building around Zipper. I just like the idea of it being a fnaf crossover. Even if Zipper was created first.

https://youtu.be/Blmso_6-vog