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This article's content is marked as Mature Needlemouse found something very brutal for those with a weak heart. The page Penny (The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing) contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you're 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | Tom, dear, is that you? Did you bring that boy I told you to fetch? DID YOU HAVE TO HURT HIM?! | „ |
| ~ Penny's first line in the story, not realizing Tom is dead and that Billy is walking in on his own. |
| “ | Do you know what I'm going to do, Billy? I'm not going to kill you. No, that would not be fitting. I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU HURT. FOREVER. That's what Tom would want. I'm going to start with your hands and feet... | „ |
| ~ Penny describing the ways she's going to torture Billy after discovering he has Tom Nook's key. |
Penny is the main antagonist of The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, a Let's Play of Animal Crossing: Wild World that originated on the SomethingAwful forum and turns the game into a grim and horrific story about a "camp" that lures children in and uses gyroids to break their minds so that the camp master, Penny, can then kill and steal body parts from to try to rid herself of her cancer.
She was voiced by Triangle Head.
Appearance[]
Penny's appearance within the story is a distorted, nightmarish version of her appearance in the game. Similarly to her video game design, she wears an orange dress with a brown pattern, has dark brown fur that surrounds her face and goes across her body, with a small curl signifying hair on her forehead, she has a large, round, dark brown nose, a mouse-like tail, and her eyes appear as small black marbles on her face.
Unlike her canonical counterpart, however, this version of Penny is horrifically mutated, with her right arm being a bear's arm and her right leg being like an elephant's, as well as her right ear being more cat-like than mouse-like. After the villagers form a lynch mob against Billy and take out his left eye, Penny uses it to replace her own left eye, causing part of her face to rot off due to Billy's resistance to the gyroids' effect.
Biography[]
Past[]
Penny Nook was once a kind human woman that suffered from terminal cancer and was supposedly dying of it, prompting her husband Tom, a real estate agent, to buy a tropical island paradise so she could spend the remainder of her days living in comfort. Eventually, with the association of K.K. Slider, construction workers and materials were ferried to the island so that Tom could convert it into a bunch of enclosed private beaches for wealthy tourists to rent and enjoy, so that the medical bills could be paid off without a hitch and Tom, K.K., and Penny could all live the rest of their lives in luxury.
But during their time on the island, the workers began digging up strange statues with unsettling designs from the ground called gyroids. As more and more gyroids were uncovered, Tom began having them taken to his personal office, which was within the same mansion that Penny resided in. Before long, the gyroids began to take control of her and Tom, gradually turning them into human-animal hybrids. The effect that they took on Penny was particularly adverse, turning her into an anthropomorphic mouse and causing her to go insane. But unlike the others, because of her cancer, her sanity never recovered, and she started instigating fights and riots amongst the construction workers that hadn't left the island in fear, taking up a role as their leader.
Before long, she usurped control of Nook's entire company, making herself the leader of the island. She started the "summer camp" scam to trick kids into coming to the island, only to suffer torment of all kinds once they arrived, using the gyroids to transform them and break their minds so that Penny could take parts of their bodies and use them as replacements for her own. Tom, terrified of what she was doing and desperate to keep her from continuing with it, convinced her to make the children as comfortable as she would allow them so that they'd be less likely to detect the scam and more susceptible to the effect of the gyroids.
The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing[]
Main Story[]
Though she doesn't appear for most of the story, with Tom Nook seemingly the main antagonist, she's responsible for some of the events that happen prior to her reveal. It's confirmed that the guard dogs posted at the island gates to prevent the campers from escaping are working under Penny. When Billy first arrives at camp, Kapp'n drives the car away despite of all his stuff still being in the trunk, leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back, and it's strongly implied that Penny is the one behind this, likely as a method of keeping her campers from having any contact with the outside world, as well as possibly selling their possessions to continue to have funding for everything on the island. When Billy attempts to make friends with one of the animal people, Pate, it's implied that Penny forces him to stop convening with Billy, as having a friend to talk to would likely increase his mental health and give him further resistance to the mind-breaking effects of the gyroids.
In part 8, after Billy receives all of Tom Nook's personal documents and files from a fellow camper named "Penny" (actually an alias for Tom Nook himself), he finds Tom's journal and reads through the entries, finding that they, along with the other files, reveal the story of the camp and the truth behind the gyroids, before devolving into maddened gibberish and unintelligible rants. The middle pages are torn out, and the last few pages are cryptic but lucid statements about "young ones crossing faster" and how the writer needs more of something. It turns out that these are actually statements written by Penny, who took the journal at some point either while Tom was still insane or after he regained his sanity.
Afterward, a lynch mob of villagers, sent to Billy's house by Penny, suddenly break down the door and drag Billy out, burying him waist-deep in the dirt and beating him senseless until he blacks out, and eventually one of them takes an eye from him and takes him back to the house while he's still unconscious. Penny would try to use this eye to replace her own, but Billy's resistance to the gyroids causes part of her face to rot off as a result. She then has Tom's tongue removed after finding out he was responsible for sending Billy the documents. Tom Nook, still using the alias "Penny", then sends a final box to Billy, in which he leaves his key. Billy reads the message and feels horrified hearing that his friend had "her" tongue removed. He then looks at the box and wonders if he should open it.
Anti-Box Ending[]
After reading the gruesome message sent by Tom, Billy decides he doesn't want to see what's in the box and throws it out into the ocean. Afterward, he has a nightmare about "Penny" rising out of the ocean and haunting him for his decision, which ultimately leads him to attempt suicide by drowning. He then wakes up in his bed, and after walking out of his house, he meets Mr. Resetti, who tells him that he saved him from suicide because he feels Billy should "roll with life's punches". This causes Billy to realize he can't escape the camp even by suicide, and as a result, he finally goes insane and attempts to murder Tom with his axe, saying that he wants Tom and his axe to be friends.
He ultimately winds up being restrained by the villagers, though it's left ambiguous whether he actually killed Tom or not. Eventually, Penny finds out about his now weakened mental state, and immediately takes advantage of it by exposing him to more gyroids, which finally take an effect on him and start to turn him into a rabbit. As a result, Penny then invites Billy to her house for a special party, explaining to him that she caught a terrible thief roaming around camp and that she wants him to be the first to meet a new person coming to town named Jeff, before asking him to write the entire story of his experience on the island as it would "help her a lot and make the island a better place for everyone".
Pro-Box Ending[]
Billy goes back and forth over whether or not he wants to open the box, scared of what might be inside, but in the end, his curiosity wins out and he finds Tom's key inside, realizing that he now has access to every part of the island. He decides to use it to go into Tom's secret passage, which he's terrified to discover Tom is already in. He swings his axe at his leg before preparing to kill him, but demands an explanation from him before he does. Tom then tells Billy the whole story of camp, including how Penny is actually his wife and the psychotic leader of the camp, before telling Billy to get off the island while he still can, trailing off, and committing suicide by stabbing himself in the chest, causing Billy to realize how alone he truly is now.
After his conversation with Tom, he decides to take a trip to Penny's house to kill her and put a permanent end to her reign of terror. When he finds her, she's sitting at her dresser, attempting to fix her face. She seems fairly composed at first, calling out to Tom to ask if he's home, but quickly starts yelling in an insane manner, asking gleefully if he had to hurt Billy. When she turns around to face Billy, he sees the rotting part of her face, causing him to become dizzy and almost pass out. After recollecting himself, he tells her that Tom is dead, and that he was the one who killed him. Penny barely seems to care, exclaiming how he always managed to get himself in trouble before considering where she'd find a replacement for him.
When Billy then explains that he needs to kill her, seemingly causing a sudden crowd of people down below to stir, she reveals that it was actually her plan all along for him to show up, saying that she doesn't want to keep the crowd waiting. At that point, Billy begins to panic, but before he can escape, two guard dogs emerge from the shadows and seize him, taking his axe and throwing it to the ground. Billy is then dragged outside, where he sees that the large crowd of people are actually children, many of whom are missing multiple body parts, being held against their will by guard dogs. Penny then starts shrieking at Billy, asking him who was responsible for stealing the documents. At first, he tries to claim full responsibility, but Penny tells him that she knows he was at his camp that night, before asking him again who was responsible.
He then admits it was Tom, but Penny, still not believing him, has the child at the front of the crowd brought to her. His guards seem to panic, but they begrudgingly resign to her will, dragging the boy, now kicking and screaming, inside. Several minutes pass after this, during which Billy can hear loud, blood-curdling screams from inside the building, before they suddenly fall silent. Penny then walks out onto her balcony, waving a severed arm at the crowd, telling Billy that Harold's waving goodbye to him before demanding him once again to tell her who stole the belongings.
Finally, a boy named Philip, missing his ears and part of his leg, walking on crutches, emerges from the crowd, claiming he was responsible. As he and Penny walk around to the side of the house, he attempts to kill her by stabbing her in the side with the end of his crutch, which is sharpened to a point. Unfortunately, Penny quickly manages to overpower him and immediately kills him, just as Billy escapes from the guards and rounds the corner of the house. As she digs through his corpse looking for organs to take, Billy is suddenly plowed down from behind by guard dogs, causing the key in his pocket to come flying out onto the ground. When Penny sees it, she picks it up and looks down at Billy, enraged by the discovery. She drags Billy into the house, asking him furiously where Tom is. He tells her again that Tom is dead, prompting her to insult Billy and claim he couldn't kill a fly before asking him again.
Billy finally explodes in anger and tells her that Tom committed suicide because he couldn't stand the thought of living with Penny one second longer, causing her to slowly let go of him and begin to express a variation of emotions, before saying somberly that she and Tom were supposed to be together forever and that he said "it would only be a few more days before they got here". She then regains her wrath, looking straight at Billy as she told him how she was going to make him suffer forever, before gazing off dreamily listing off all the possible ways she could torment him. Realizing she was distracted, Billy quickly leapt at her and began punching her all over, wherever he could possibly hit. Caught off-guard, she stumbles backwards before swinging back at him and attempting to cut him open, but to no avail.
Billy then grabs his axe and causes her to stumble onto the ground as she looks at him, utterly dumbfounded, before he begins striking her with his axe, forcing her through the balcony doors and leaving wounds all over her. Then he lunges at her, causing them to hit the railing of the balcony. As he continues swinging at her, Penny grabs him by the neck and waist, lifting herself over the balcony and causing them both to fall from it, Billy losing his axe in the process. When they crash onto the ground, Billy rises up to realize that he's still alive, having only sustained a cracked rib as a result of the fall. Penny, however, was supposedly killed by the fall, having taken the impact of the fall along with the added weight of Billy. He then finishes the job by beating her head to an unrecognizable bloody pulp with his bare fists, before finally reclaiming his lost eye and holding it up like a demented carnival prize.
Personality[]
Although it's implied that, despite suffering from terminal cancer, she was a kind and loving woman as a human, after the gyroids possessed her and turned her into a mouse, she became completely unhinged, her personality becoming aggressive, murderous, possessive, and wrathful. It's clear she takes sick pleasure in murdering the children that arrive at her island, even if her primary goal is using their body parts to try to rid herself of her illness.
She's manipulative, as shown in her attempts to get Tom Nook to join her in her evil scheme, her usage of blackmail to get Billy to tell her who stole her documents, and her ability to brainwash others with the gyroids, as well as being fully willing to resort to extreme violence when she doesn't get her way. And although she likely doesn't have full control over her actions as the gyroids have caused her to lose her mind and are implied to be in control of her, she still seems to show some understanding of right and wrong, as evidenced by her telling Billy it's not right to kill someone "even if they're a liar" in the anti-box ending, despite it being rather hypocritical on her part.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- In the original Animal Crossing, Penny was merely a background character, not being married to Tom Nook nor appearing in any of the future games (including Wild World), being replaced by Rod afterward. However, her appearance in this story has helped to make her a more well-known character, to the point where many believe she was an OC created specifically for the story.