Viral Netflix show Tiger King makes Animal Crossing: New Horizons debut

Two of 2020’s biggest viral sensations in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and documentary series ‘Tiger King’ have finally had their long-awaited crossover, after a fan mixed the two together in a hilarious fake-trailer crossover.

Netflix struck solid gold with the release of Tiger King in March. The true-crime documentary miniseries focused on zookeeper Joe Exotic, and his big cat collection. More than 34 million people watched it in its very first week.

It makes complete sense then, that another massive hit from this year would eventually play host to Joe Exotic’s story: Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo’s follow-up to their huge social sim franchise equally exploded in 2020.

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There’s already been plenty of crossovers in Animal Crossing so far: Pokemon, Breaking Bad, and Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away have all debuted in Nintendo’s island-based title. Now it is Tiger King’s turn, and it’s as wild as you’d expect.

• Read more: Bizarre Animal Crossing glitch lets players walk on water

Redditor ‘elpinko‘ was the architect of the crossover. The talented fan even went beyond just adding Joe Exotic and Carol Baskin to the game ⁠— they mocked up a near-perfect trailer, based entirely in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

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The 1:38-minute animated trailer opens with the familiar Netflix drum roll⁠— though this time it was “Nookflix” ⁠— before cutting to a New Horizons-styled Joe Exotic saying his now-viral line: “I’m never going to financially recover from this.”

All the popular characters from the show were present in elpinko’s hilarious trailer too ⁠— Joe Exotic T.V. producer Rick Kirkham, John Finlay, Bhagavan ‘Doc’ Antle, and the infamous Carol Baskin all had star roles in the crossover clip.

• Read more: Pokemon player brings epic Gym battles to Animal Crossing

The Tiger King was clearly a hit in the Animal Crossing universe too, considering the reviews elpinko added. Tom Nook dubbed it “absolutely outrageous,” while Timmy and Tommy echoed it was the “best thing [they’d] seen.”

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According to elpinko, the Animal Crossing-Tiger King trailer took “about a week and a half” to put together because they had to make all the outfits, build the set pieces, act out the scenes for the trailer, and edit it ⁠— but we’re glad they did!

The fantastic trailer creation now begs the question: which popular franchise will we see in Nintendo’s cartoon world next? We can’t wait to see!