Today, we’re jumping back to some Animal Crossing Lore, this time surrounding the Personality types of Villagers. 

Now Animal Crossing New Horizons, and the past titles are full of interesting facts, back stories, and hidden details you may not know. For example, only Jock or Big Sister villagers can be your 2 starting Villagers in New Horizons, which I’m sure you knew, but did you know the next 3 are always Peppy, Normal and Lazy… in that order… It’s pretty interesting. 

Speaking of Villager Personality types, there is another very interesting phenomenon that the Personality of several Animals has actually changed. It’s true, there are 18 Animal Crossing villagers, that at some point or another have had their Personalities switched to a different type. This typically occurs when a new Animal Crossing game is released… 

With that out of the way, here is every Personality Change, in Animal Crossing. 

Big Sister

I thought we’d highlight these as their new Personalities Types, and of course probably the ones you recognise them to be! So, what better place to start than Big Sister, given you will always encounter one, when you first start a new Island. There are six Big Sister Villagers in Animal Crossing. They are Sylvia, Ursula, Paula, Charlise, Plucky and Faith, and in previous games, their respective Personality Types are different.

The characters of Sylvia and Ursula have always been Snooty in the past. But when they returned to New Leaf, their personalities became Big Sister. Paula, Charlise and Plucky used to be Peppy, but again returned to New Leaf as Big Sister. 

And Faith was originally a Normal Koala, and after being missing from several instalments of Animal Crossing, returned to New Horizons as Big Sister. We’ll discuss why these changes occurred towards the end of the article, but it’s not really surprising to know Big Sister Villagers saw some of the most changes, given it is the least common Personality Type. 

Cranky

Next up, we have Cranky Villagers. As far as I know, there are three villagers of this Personality Type. Likewise, their previous Personality Types were not like this. These include, Harry, T-Bone and Dobie. 

Harry is the second Villager whose Personality has changed so far. He was a Jock Villager before. But after returning to Animal Crossing City Folk again, his Personality became Cranky. And T-Bone and Dobie were previously Lazy, before returning to New Leaf as Cranky. Until New Leaf, it wasn’t common to change Personality Types, but 3 Villagers do pre-date this game, with Harry being one of them. 

Jock

Speaking of Personality Changes that pre-date modern Animal Crossing games, we have 1 Jock Villager. Although Rowan’s previous Personality Type was not what it is now, it is certain that he is now the only villager that has become a Jock.

Rowan once was a Cranky, but when he returned to Wild World, he was switched to Jock.  

Furthermore, it’s not surprising to know only 1 Villager was changed to Jock, given Jock is the most common Personality Type. 

Smug

Next up, we have Smug Villagers. In total, there are 7 Smug Villagers as you know them now, who started out with different Personalities, and they are O’Hare, Curlos, Ed, Leopold, Kidd, Huck and Roswell. By the way, you can decorate them with ACNH Items if you like.

O’Hare and Curlos debuted in Animal Crossing with the Cranky Personality Type, before returning to New Leaf as Smug. Ed and Leopold, were originally Jock, but once again returned to New Leaf as Smug. And Kidd, Huck and Roswell debuted as Lazy Villagers, before switching to Smug. 

All of these Villagers saw Personality Changes in New Leaf, except for Roswell, who returned to New Horizons as a Smug, after being absent from the Series for several games. 

Second to Big Sister, the Smug Personality Type is the least common, so it makes sense it saw some of the most changes. Snooty. 

Now, Snooty is another Personality Type that only saw 1 change. Violet the Gorilla, who debuted in e+ is of course a Snooty Villager. However, she originally had the Peppy Personality Type, and it wasn’t until she returned to City Folk, she become Snooty. 

Violet was only 1 of 2 Villagers to see a Personality Change in City Folk. Making her and Harry the joint-second Personality Changes, overall, after Rowan. 

Reasons

Now, in total there have been 18 Personality Changes over the years, with 1 in Wild World, 2 in City Folk, 8 in New Leaf, 5 in Welcome Amiibo and 2 in Animal Crossing New Horizons. 

Interestedly, as of editing this article, there isn’t a single Lazy, Normal or Peppy Villager right now that used to have a different personality types. 

Now, there are 3 primary reasons for the changes that did happen, though. The first reason is that those who were originally Islanders became residents before appearing in future games.

The second reason is that the new Personality Types were filled after Smug and Big Sister were introduced in New Leaf. And the third being an attempt at balancing some of the Villager Types and Personality Types. To this day, Jock and Normal Villagers are the most common, and Smug and Big Sister are the least common. 

You probably know that many of the same people, who work on Animal Crossing also work on the Splatoon franchise. I mean the new Splatoon 3 DLC literally has characters that are inspired by Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Also, this fact is heavily cited as the reason that New Horizons stop receiving support due to the launch of Splatoon 3. I think it's safe to say that a fair amount of Animal Crossing fans have negative feelings towards Splatoon because of this, although it's never been confirmed. this is why Nintendo actually moved away from New Horizons. It is strange that we never got Inkwell.

However, this connection might actually be a really good thing for the future of the Animal Crossing series. In the past, I've discussed how the launch of Splatoon 3 has given us hints on how this team and Nintendo might aim to tackle the next Animal Crossing game and that the way they released updates in DLC for the previous platoon game Splatoon 2. I actually laid out the path for how they ended up releasing updates in DLC in New Horizons a few years later.

Now that we're nearly six months into Splatoon 3 and we've had updates and DLC announced. This bodes really well for the future of Animal Crossing if Nintendo decides to use a similar approach once again, like they did with Splatoon 2 in New Horizons. As long as the content is good enough, it will attract more and more new players and stimulate them to consume ACNH Items in the game.

Nintendo has announced that they'll be releasing two waves of DLC for Splatoon 3 filled with all kinds of exciting content for the franchise. I think like a lot of you, I was really surprised that we only got one wave of DLC for New Horizons despite how well the game sold. I think seeing two waves already for Splatoon 3 and possibly even more in the future shows that Nintendo really took that criticism on board. And hopefully, they've learned that generally speaking players want more content not less.

Related: ACNH: 8 Updates & Changes You Should Know In March 2023

The same could be argued that they're releasing big updates every three months or so. When New Horizons had lots of large gaps, they've kept it much more consistent in Splatoon 3. So, this could definitely be the case for the next Animal Crossing game. Don't get me wrong though I do wish they were doing this right now for New Horizons instead as the next game could be a while off.

Now, the very first wave of DLC that they announced was Splatoon 3. It actually gave me a really interesting idea. You see wave one of the Splatoon 3 DLC was a return to Inkopolis from the very first Splatoon game.

Effectively, this DLC is just a new hub world for you to enjoy. It's kind of a reskin of what you can do in the usual hub world. But it kind of makes me wonder if Nintendo would take this approach and maybe bring back something like the city from Animal Crossing City Folk that we could visit in a DLC for the next Animal Crossing game.

The concept honestly seems really similar and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo did decide to do that approach after all Nostalgia is incredibly popular. We know it sells really well. I mean I just look at the Pokemon games, so I could definitely imagine Nintendo using the Nostalgia from the old Animal Crossing games in DLC waves and such.