Animal Crossing: New Horizons players are dressing up as The Weeknd's backup dancers from his Super Bowl 2021 halftime show.
Just below, you can check out the full halftime show at the 2021 Super Bowl from The Weeknd, which took place just yesterday on February 7. At certain points throughout the performance, backup dancers wearing white surgical masks appear to aid the artist onstage in several routines.
Oddly enough, this has been picked up on by the Animal Crossing: New Horizons community, of all the corners of the internet. You can see one such post on the Animal Crossing subreddit, which shows a player using the Mummy Mask item to dress themselves up like one of The Weeknd's backup dancers.
The Super Bowl Halftime Showfrom r/AnimalCrossing
Elsewhere on the subreddit, someone even got all their villagers into one big dance routine, while they posed at the front wearing the Mummy Mask. We've got to agree, we also wish we could dress up all our villagers in Mummy Masks and have them parade around like a horror show.
my take on the halftime show -- never have I ever wished more that we could put mummy masks on villagers!from r/AnimalCrossing
Thing is, the mask actually feeds back into The Weeknd's current commentary on social culture in his After Hours album. Just below, you can see the short film that accompanied the release of After Hours last year, in which The Weeknd portrays a character with a broken nose and bandaged face.
In an interview earlier this month with Variety, the artist commented on the nature of the masks. "The significance of the entire head bandages is reflecting on the absurd culture of Hollywood celebrity and people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated," he said. "I suppose you could take that being attractive isn’t important to me but a compelling narrative is." No matter the reason, it's fascinating to see the Animal Crossing community jump on a trend and all join in on recreating something.
For our pick of the best community-made designs, head over to our guide on the best Animal Crossing: New Horizons design codes.
