Trivia / Animal Crossing: City Folk

• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: This news broadcast shows the extent to which this trope can harm the unassuming's perceptions of a work. In this case, a parent in Minnesota watching their child play City Folk mistook Tortimer, an in-game NPC, for a human-controlled character; because part of the game involves Tortimer asking the player for their birthday (as a means of controlling when in-game villagers celebrate it), the parent thought a pedophile playing online was extorting personal information from their kid as a means of preying on them, leading to a police report that then reached mainstream news outlets. This apparently caused enough of a fuss that Nintendo of America themselves directly intervened, publicly explaining the in-game mechanics relevant to Tortimer, which allowed the whole row to die down. Another reporter on the same news story also pairs up Webkinz with the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, as if Webkinz were its own console.