Trivia / Neopets

• Ascended Fanon:
  • The "Rooligans" are a chatgroup for the Roo Island team during the Altador Cup. Eventually, TNT decided to use the term as an all-purpose nickname for RI fans.
  • The Maraquan Lutari, Kiko and Jetsam all originated as concept designs by fans who were then contacted by The Neopets Team for permission to make the designs official.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • For most of the site's life, discussion of LGBT topics resulted in warnings and bannings due to, at the time, being considered too closely intertwined with religion and politics for the users to have civil discussions. In 2021, however, the site publicly acknowledged Pride Month, and made pride-themed merchandise available year-round. It wasn't so much the items and merchandise itself that was the saving throw, however — it was what their existence represented, in that it was now absolutely clear that outdated policy was history. Some users worried that the support showed was non-genuine, expressing fears that they would still risk being frozen for talking about any related subjects, but the staff has made it clear when people asked that would not be the case. And indeed, since then no user has gotten in trouble for what before would have given at least an automated warning. If that wasn't clear enough, they doubled down on their support for marginalized groups in subsequent years, releasing a large amount of items for Neopets to express other orientations, identities, and disabilities.
  • Following the shutdown of Jumpstart, Neopets went on to become independent with the new CEO even stating their intent to give the site a well needed overhaul by implementing a unified home page, official Ruffle support to bring new life to the old flash games, fixing the Pound bug, reviving Island Builders, and fixing the many bugs that the site had been suffering.
  • Pets refusing certain items whose name has the same characters as theirs was a feature that was heavily panned by players, as it most notably made scoring high in Gourmet Foods and Book Club tedious for many, as well as a waste of neopoints for anyone who has purchased a petpet only for the neopet they want to give that petpet to decline it. As of March 14, 2024, this mechanic was patched out, much to the relief of the playerbase.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Co-founder Donna Powell revealed in a 2014 AMA on Reddit that the existence of two pet species—the Ogrin and the Xweetok—can be attributed to her having one during the Viacom buyout. Though users sure aren't complaining considering the Xweetok quickly became the fifth-most populous pet species on the site^note This position is almost certainly set in stone, barring a highly unlikely unprecedented surge in the active playerbase; fourth place (the Lupe) outnumbers the Xweetok by 500,000, and Xweetoks outnumber sixth place (the Uni) by over one million.—and after the end of the site's Golden Age, to boot!
    "I do feel rather ashamed about it now. I was really, really frustrated and annoyed by years of frustration and then the whole post-sale experience. That doesn't really justify it but at least you may get where I was coming from.
    Xweetok and Ogrin were my parting 'gift' to Neopets. I thought they were the most hideous pet designs and worst names I had ever heard, so I approved them..."
  • A second Creator Breakdown happened in June 2023 when Adam entered the r/neopets Discord server to defend his upcoming crypto game, Dragginz. With the... sordid reputation crypto has among the Neopets fanbase, it did not go over well, and they both devolved into viciously insulting people until they had to be banned from the server. Jellyneo details what happened (along with more attacks from Adam in the comment section).
• Dear Negative Reader: The Neopets Metaverse Twitter account called people criticizing the use of NFTs as "Hateoooors." An ambassador for the Neopets Metaverse also said that Neopets fans were "worse than COVID." This incident, among several other incidents, is part of why the vast majority of the Neopets fandom refuses to associate with the Metaverse fandom.
• Defictionalization: Very often, the Random Contest's theme is based around this. Whether it be Altador Cup gear, Smoothies, or just about anything else.
• Demand Overload: Following the release of the Styling Studio and the introduction of Neocash Pet Styles on January 23rd, 2024, the site experienced extended loading times and constant crashing after an influx of users attempted to login to see the new feature and the return of the old pet art. This even resulted in many failing to complete their dailies due to the postponed maintenance that was initially scheduled to last at 10:00 AM PST.
• Development Hell:
  • This page once listed several features that where "coming soon", including what appears to be three new plots, a new flash game, and a make-over of preexisting games. They were "coming soon" for several years, though they've since been replaced with other features.
  • The Battledome was apparently in the works since the site was created, although it wasn't implemented until several years later. Also, pets could have stats prior to the Battledome, giving them a use for them. Likewise, clothing and accessory items existed long before pets could actually be dressed up.
• Dummied Out: Several neopets have colors that went unreleased, many of which were either repurposed (i.e. the Tyrannian Buzz) or replaced by completely different ones (i.e. the Mutant Wocky from 2009 was never released and was replaced by a completely different one in 2015). JellyNeo's book of ages has a page dedicated to them here.
• Fanwork Ban: To a point. In the Nickelodeon Kids & Family Virtual Worlds Group games terms of service (which includes Neopets, Petpet Park, Nicktropolis, and Monkey Quest), all rights to making derivative works under Fair Use are given up. However, Neopets at the least still allows people to submit original fanwork to the various contests and the Neopian Times, all of which have rules that all submissions must follow in order to be accepted. Though considering the site is no longer owned by Nickelodeon, this may no longer be the case, and even if it is, it seems to be hardly enforced anyway, as many off-site fanworks continue to flourish.
• In Memoriam:
  • On August 28, 2013, every player who visited Coltzan's Shrine received the new Petpet Sparky, which strongly resembles the Spardel but with the addition of angel wings. This was a tribute after the original inspiration for the latter, former official artist Claire Hummel's pet Boston Terrier Sparky, had passed away the day prior.
  • The Schnelly was named and designed after TNT member DJ Skellington's deceased pet cat.
• Missing Episode: The The Invasion of Meridell game. Broken by a bug and no developer bothered to fix it or knew how it worked. It was incredibly fun for some as well.
  • Currently all but 7 of the old games are unavailable due to dropped Flash support. The staff has promised to port over as much content as possible, but started with general site stuff, and not the games.
  • Even before the death of Flash, this was a common issue with the site's older games. While the Game Graveyard was created with the purposes of averting this by being a place where old games are archived, not all games that have been retired have been sent there, including sponsor games, and non-Flash games like the aforementioned Invasion of Meridell. Even some that were have since been removed ^note  Omelette Defender, Ultimate Bullseye I and Whack-a-Beast, respectively .
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • A fan, chanii1234, drew the original Zafara design, which was the winner of a contest to create a new Neopet.
  • The Shoyru was also designed by a player by the name of Mew_151.
  • Several designs for Maraquan pets were taken (with permission) from users' concept art, including the Maraquan Kiko, Maraquan Jetsam, and Maraquan Koi.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Known as the "Cursed Cup", every team that has won the Altador Cup has proceeded to take a nosedive in the following year's tournament.
• Referenced by...: An optional cutscene in an indie RPG called BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm features two of the characters reminiscing about playing Neopets when they were younger.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • It's implied that this is the reason behind Bruce changing from a Bruce Forsyth caricature to a penguin, and Kau changing from a caricature of singer Macy Gray. Similarly, the Fuzio became the Kyrii for unspecified legal reasons — what those reasons were is anyone's guess.
  • Co-founder Adam Powell revealed in 2023 that a similar fate befell other old pets such as the Tigren, Fleye, and Tatsu: they were designed by underage artists — the Tigren and Fleye in particular being winners of site-wide Create-a-Pet competitions — so they could not legally give Neopets, Inc. the rights to the designs. Other competition winners such as the Zafara and Shoyru avoided being replaced because either they were able to have their designs changed enough to avoid the problems without becoming entirely different pets, or because the competition winner was an adult at the time and could hand over the rights.
  • Some items themed after the site's sponsors were changed to generic Neopets items after the related sponsorship ended. For example, the Cocoa Puffs item was changed to Kadoatie Puffs.
• Tie-In Cereal: Islandberry Crunch, a promotion with General Mills in 2006 which came with TCG cards.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: This trope was played with, somewhat: the rumor wasn't made by players that Jelly World existed, but by TNT themselves. Many newbies often get laughed at by others when asking if it exists. (You think this is real? What, do you need to be dragged by your ankles to the Meepit Oaks Sanitorium?)
• Word of God: The Editorial section of the Neopian Times is used for this.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early in the development of The Faeries' Ruin Xandra and Brynn were the same character!
  • Very early in the site’s life, it was planned to have crossover opponents in the Battledome, such as The Powerpuff Girls.
  • At the very beginning of the site's history, nineteen planes of existence were listed under Neopia's first map◊^note The banner at the top of the screenshotted page in anachronistic because of the way the page was preserved, which kept the direct link to the since-overwritten image, and implied that a Karma Meter was going to be incorporated at some point. Ultimately, though, nothing was done with them except being referenced in some of the earliest Neopian Times submissions and one of the old Collectible Cards before those were revamped.
  • In 2005 there were plans for a Neopets animated movie by DNA Productions (who were known for Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius) under Warner Bros. with a planned for release in 2009, then 2011 and 2012 but those plans never happened.
  • A map of Neopia◊ from sometime in 2010^note Moltara was added to the site on November 12th, 2009. Faerieland was destroyed on November 24th, 2010. Both are present on the map. was found Dummied Out in the game files of Legends & Letters which gives names to many of the unexplored areas and landmasses of Neopia. It was apparently intended for a project called "Legends of Neopia", which has long since been scrapped — you might notice the Nickelodeon logo is on it, despite Legends & Letters being entirely developed in the JumpStart era.
  • Ever wondered why the classic pet images have "baby" in their URL? (e.g. "lupe_red_baby.gif") This is because pets were originally intended to evolve, but this idea was scrapped early on, so pets stayed in their "baby" stage.
  • Prior to the Styling Studio update, the Nostalgic Faerie Ixi style would've had an update to the original art with black lineart on the body◊, but reception to the change was overwhelmingly negative that it was scrapped in favor of the original purple lineart it once had.

---