About

Bob is a fictional character from the Animal Crossing series of life-simulation games published by Nintendo. appearing in all the titles of the series to date. Ever since his initial debut, he's become one of the most popular villagers among the fandom. His name is based on a bobcat and has a laid back and friendly personality, making him easy to befriend.

Origin

Animal Crossing first released in Japan on April 14th, 2001, as Dōbutsu no Mori (Animal Forest) on the Nintendo 64, featuring Bob as one of the many villagers. He's widely speculated to be the first villager created, as he has the first ID number in the game.^[1]

Spread

After the release of Animal Crossing, Bob has been one of the most talked about villagers among the series' fans, inspiring many pieces of fanart and conversation regarding him. Following the release of Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, Polygon^[2] published an article detailing their disappointment over Bob not being included in the game, with it later being updated when Bob was eventually added^[3]. Eurogamer^[4] published a guide for inviting the villagers you wanted to your island in Animal Crossing New Horizons, in which they mentioned Bob as their favorite villager.

On May 5th, 2020, reddit user Dther99 submitted a post to r/AnimalCrossing^[5] with the caption "My boy Bob is calling all of you out." (shown below, left), referencing the infamous online trading among the game's community, gaining 13.4k points (99% upvoted) in less than a month. On December 7th, 2019, user VanillaPuddingSnack uploaded fanart of the character^[6], receiving nearly 2k points (99% upvoted) in 5 months (shown below, right).

On May 23rd, 2020, Twitter user @nitrorad^[7] made a tweet with a picture of Bob wearing a crown in-game with the caption: "King Bob, ruler of the playground #AnimalCrossing #ACNH #NintendoSwitch". The tweet received 15.4k likes in just three days.

No one's around to help

No one's around to help is an error message from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp that appears when you're trying to request assistance to get into the quarry and either your friends list is empty or you've already requested from everyone on it. The message is usually associated with a gif of Bob dancing.

Various Examples

External References