Cephalobot (ギーガーGiga?) is a smugoctopus villager in the Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update. He was revealed in the October 15, 2021 Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct. Cephalobot has the playhobby and is the only smug villager with this hobby.
Cephalobot is a silver robot octopus with glowing yellow eyes with two filaments inside and metal eyelids. His head is made of four metal plates visibly held together by rivets; the largest meet at the middle and make up most of the left and right halves his head, except for where two plates in the back cover the crown and nape of his head. The crown's plate has the numerical designation "083" stenciled on with a small "four-gilled" vent above it, with similar "three-gilled" vents on either sides of his face under his cheeks. The nape's wider plate has three white power outlets for Type B electrical cables, each having a rectangular orange LED underneath.
Personality
Below is a brief description of the smug personality. For more information, click here.
Smug villagers are very polite, kind, and gentleman-like. As a smug villager, Cephalobot will get along easily with other villagers. Smug villagers get along well with most villagers, their personality appearing to be a mix of the other personality types. Smug villagers will stroke their egos from time to time, going on about how cool they are.
Generally, Cephalobot will get along with lazy, normal, snooty, and peppy villagers, and may conflict with cranky villagers.
House[]
As with his house design, his house interior is very futuristic and sci-fi. K.K. Robot Synth plays on his throwback skull radio.
He, along with the other New Horizons newcomers, was added to Pocket Camp in an update that was released at the same time as the release of New Horizons's 2.0 update.
He is the fifth robot villager overall if Nindori is included.
Since Cephalobot's birthday is April 1st, it coincides with Tammi's original birthday and the April Fool's Day events from New Leaf. Due to differences between New Leaf and his debut game, New Horizons, there are no April Fool's Days he or any villager would have previously had to participate in, but he can potentially attend Tammi's party as her birthday was moved to April 2nd.
Different meanings can be found in Cephalobot's international names:
His English and Dutch name, Cephalobot, is a portmanteau of cephalopod (a member the octopus' taxonomic class, Cephalopoda; from Ancient Greek κεφαλή (kephalḗ "head") and ποδός (podós "foot")) and robot (Czech for "slave" or "worker", coined in 1929). The suffix "-bot" is commonly used in the fond naming of machines of select appearances or purposes.
His Russian name, Цефалобот (Tsefalobot), is a direct transliteration of his English/Dutch name. It is not a portmanteau between the Russian translation головоно́гий (golovonógij "cephalopod") with the cognate ро́бот (róbot).
His Japanese and Korean name, Gīgā (ギーガー;기가), references both:
The Swiss surname of Hans Reudi Giger (1940-2014), a special-effects artist best known for his work on the sci-fi horror film Alien (1979).
The English prefix giga- (from A.Gk. γίγας (gígas "giant")) that is used to denote "billion" in metric measurements, especially in relation to computers, such as with gigabytes, gigahertz, and gigawatts. In Japanese, (ギガgiga?) is commonly used as short hand for (ギガバイトgigabaito?).
His French name, Octoborg, is a portmanteau between the words octopus and cyborg (an English blend of cybernetic and organism coined in 1960.)
His Spanish name, Octoberto, is a portmanteau of the word octopus and the masculine name Roberto or similar.
Both his French and Spanish names use the orginal Latin root word inplace of their languages' respective words for octopodes (French pieuvre/poulpe; Spanish pulpo) or the number eight (French huit; Spanish ocho). Unlike the other Romantic translations, his Italian name does not use this borrowing from Latin.
His German name, Tentatron, is a portmanteau of the word Tentakel "tentacle" and the suffix -tron (from A.Gk. -τρον; used to denote a mechanical instrument.)
His Italian name, Polpobot, is a portmanteau of the words polpo "octopus" and robot.
His Chinese name, Jígéěr (吉格尔/吉格爾), comes from the transcription of his Japanese name, and ultimately from H.R. Giger.
The Han characters also have meaning by themselves.
吉 jí can mean "good", "lucky", or "vacant". It is also a surname.
格 gé can mean "pattern", "lattice", "form", or as it is the 22nd tetragram of the Tài Xuán Jīng; "resistance". It is also a surname.
爾 ěr (simplified as 尔) can mean "you", "your", or "that". When refering to flowers, it may mean "exuberant".
Cephalobot's catchphrase, "donk donk", is a reference to the Star Wars franchise, specifically GNK-series power droids. Nicknamed "gonk droids", they regularly make the low honking sound "gonk gonk".
Cephalobot greatly resembles the Octobot enemies from the EarthBound series.
The numbers on the back of his head, 083, in Japanese can be read collectively as hachijūsan (八十三?), or individually as hachi san (八三?). The latter reading is pronounced the same as Hachi-san (八さん?), which can be interpreted loosely as "Mr. Eight".
Cephalobot is the second villager and third character overall to appear naked. Both him and Clay appear naked in their respective posters, and K.K. Slider appears naked both in his poster and in person.
He, along with Raymond, Kidd, Ed, O'Hare, and Curlos are the only smug villagers that wave with both hands.
In New Horizons, Cephalobot's preferred styles are Active/Simple, and his preferred colors are Black/White.
