Animal Crossing: 10 Wonderful Tiny Details You've Probably Missed
2. November Oscar... Whisker?
One cannot play Animal Crossing: New Horizons without visiting a mystery island at least once.
Mystery islands are a new mechanic to the series that allows players to farm hybrid flowers, collect foreign fruits or bells, and even recruit villagers to live on their islands. In order to travel to one of these islands, one must present a Nook Miles Ticket to Orville, the dodo receptionist at the airport. From there, he will instruct his brother Wilbur to fly you to a randomly-generated island that you will never be able to visit again.
One key aspect of Wilbur's character is that he often speaks in code words or uses the NATO Phonetic Alphabet to spell things out. When prompting Wilbur to fly you back home, he replies, "Roger! Lifting off November Oscar Whisker". This one's hard to notice at first, seeing as the two words look so similar, but the NATO Phonetic Alphabet's word for "W" is actually "whiskey," not "whisker". Naturally, this was changed to eliminate a reference to alcohol from the game.
As an additional fun fact, Wilbur and Orville are named after the Wright Brothers, who invented the airplane. Wilbur's birthday, December 17, even corresponds with the date that the Wrights first flew their Wright Flyer in 1903. So that's pretty neat.