20 Gaming Facts That Will RUIN Your Favourite Franchise

2. Gyroid Curse - Animal Crossing

Initially released on the Nintendo 64 in Japan in 2001, the Animal Crossing series has become the ultimate cosy game experience, allowing players to build and manage their own idyllic village. While this series is best known for its wholesome gameplay and ensemble of adorable anthropomorphic residents, Animal Crossing also has its darker side.

New Horizons, for example, featured a collection of haunted paintings and a spooky wallpaper where a ghost gets closer each time the lights are turned off. Players can likewise catch an ominous extraterrestrial broadcast at 3:33 am on Saturdays. However, none of these are as unsettling as the Gyroid Curse from the first game.

According to the game's manual, if a player fails to save their game after visiting another town, their villager will be transformed into a "weird zombie-looking character" that resembles a Gyroid, the strange collectible furniture items that appear throughout the series. While the character's hollowed face is scary enough, the real-life connection to Japanese history makes this addition even more disturbing.

Called haniwa in Japan, these clay figures were originally placed in graveyards to hold the souls of the deceased. The implication, then, is that the player's villager has become possessed.