About a week ago, TheGamer reported that Roald, the popular penguin villager from Animal Crossing: New Horizons had taken on a new job in addition to his role as a Twitter superstar. His new, and significantly less glamourous, job was revealed to be an employee at Walmart. Yup, popular American retail corporation Walmart. Roald, the Animal Crossing villager now works there. There’s even proof.
But if you can manage to wrap your head around the absurdness of a fictional Animal Crossing villager getting hired by a real-life retail chain and accept it as fact, then the only next logical line of question is such: How in the world did Roald end up as a Walmart employee?
Here we lay out our theory regarding exactly how Roald’s new place of employment came to be.
All About Roald
Per his official description from the Animal Crossing wiki, Roald is a jock penguin villager. As a jock, he has a great interest in sports and bodybuilding, and might even engage with the player by challenging them to a bug-catching or fishing contest.
His name also might be a reference to Roald Amundsen, the first person to reach Antarctica, which is where Adelle-type penguins can be found. To further this theory, his icy home interior in New Horizons and his catchphrase “b-b-buddy”, as well as his tendency to stutter, are likely all references to his original and much colder home.
Why Walmart?
So what could a jock like Roald get out of working at Walmart? Well, a couple of things:
Firstly, retail employees are often given the task of carrying boxes of merchandise from the inventory in the back to the front of the store, which can sometimes be heavy. Roald might have seen this as a way for him to potentially get in some extra weight training while making a few extra bucks.
Secondly, super-retail chains like Target and Costco that feature a grocery stock in their stores often have an area in the back of the store reserved for frozen goods, where the temperature needs to be kept down in order to preserve the products - and Walmart is certainly no exception. Living in a tropical village where it’s almost always sunny and hot could get exhausting for a penguin whose natural habitat is the cold. Sure, he could stay in his homemade ice palace he calls his home, but can you blame the guy for wanting a change of scenery?
Speaking of his icy home, let’s talk about his home and the last possible reason for his decision to work at Walmart. Though I admittedly don’t have much experience or expertise in this kind of interior design, I imagine that living in a house in the middle of a tropical island that’s filled to the brim with ice could be incredibly expensive. Imagine his A/C bill every month, trying to keep it cool enough to keep so many intricate ice sculptures from melting. Now that it’s summer, his bills must be at an all-time high! No wonder he’s looking for some extra cash during this time of year.
Tom Nook is a Nepotist
But even though those two details align with Roald’s personality, it still doesn’t completely explain his need to leave the virtual world of Animal Crossing when there’s a perfectly good place to work on his island. Why couldn’t the blue penguin just waddle on over to Nook’s Cranny, ask Tommy and Timmy for an application, and then start working at a place that’s right by his house?
The only logical explanation is nepotism.
That’s right - loan shark Tom Nook doesn’t want anyone who isn’t part of the Nook family working in any store with his name on it.
Sure, I suppose one could argue that having a name like “Nook’s Cranny” implies a kitschy, independent family-owned small business vibe. Maybe Nook just wants his kin to work there, or maybe he doesn’t even have the money to hire any more employees. (We are living in “unprecedented times,” after all.)
However, Nook’s Cranny is 100% a retail chain - how else do you explain the fact that there’s one on every island you visit? - and Tom Nook definitely has money from all the loans he’s collected over the span of hundreds of thousands of players’ islands.
“Welcome aboard, b-b-buddy!”
So here we are. Roald works at Walmart because he lives in an ice palace on a tropical island in the middle of the summer and thought picking up a job in retail was an easy way to make some cash and fit in some weight-lifting sessions. Sounds legit, if you ask me.
As for how long he’ll be working there, (or how long Nook will continue prioritizing his relatives over other hardworking islanders), who’s to say?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Twitter (@Walmart)
