Nene's current idle animation. A-Bot's screen and eyes are not present because the engine animates them separately.
Nene's current static idle pose.
Nene's original static idle pose.
Nene's static idle pose without A-Bot.
A-Bot on his own.
Nene raising her knife whenever Pico is losing.
Nene waiting for Pico to lose.
Nene lowering her knife whenever Pico recovers enough health.
Nene tossing her knife during Pico's Game Over animation.
Combo cheer animation, played when the player reaches a combo of 50.
Combo fawn animation, played when the player reaches a combo of 200.
Nene
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Spoiler Alert
Nene is a major supporting character in Friday Night Funkin'. She sits on the speakers in WeekEnd levels, as well as in the Pico remixes of songs in other weeks when Pico is selected as the player character in Freeplay. She is an assassin and a friend of Pico and Darnell, attempting to kill the former for sparing Boyfriend when the three were hired to kill him.
She is tied with Darnell as the fourth guest character introduced to Friday Night Funkin', the first being Skid and Pump, the second being Pico, the third being Tankman, and the fifth being Otis.
Appearance
Nene is a young woman with light skin and shoulder-length, bluish black hair. Two short locks of hair stick out of her head, one being much thinner than the other. Two longer strands of hair fall from her front hairline, each one parted to the side. The overall style of her hair is pointed, with multiple spikes on each side, particularly by her shoulders. She has a constant blush, razor-sharp teeth, and white eyes with no pupils. She wears a pink headband, a pinkish-white long-sleeved shirt under a pink overall minidress with heart-adorned straps, pinkish-white leggings, and pink shoes with medium-light red hearts adorning the sides. She is drawn in a chibi style.
Nene sits atop a large green audio visualizer with speakers detached from A-Bot's body. The audio visualizer's main body is A-Bot's torso, which is medium-dark green and shiny. The front has a large display with a medium-light green outline around it and a semicircular notch centered at the bottom of the screen, with the capital letter A on the notch in medium-light yellow-green. The screen displays segmented bars in multiple colors on a very dark blue background. The conical speakers on the upper sides of the visualizer are gray with red inner grills and attached to darker bluish gray wheels; these cylinders are A-Bot's shoulders. Each arm wheel has a hole in the bottom. The left wheel has cut wires coming out of the hole and a cut tube coming out of the side, with rubble on the ground below the wires, all in the same shade of bluish gray. A-Bot's head is on the ground beside the audio visualizer, partly behind his right wheel.
In her idle animation, Nene swings her left leg up and down, sticks her tongue out, and waves around a bloody, partially serrated knife in her right hand as she rests her left hand and right foot on the audio visualizer and bops her head to the tempo of the music. She wears a somewhat malicious and smug smile.
During Week 5, Nene wears a red reindeer antler headband, a red minidress and shawl lined with white fur, a black belt with a golden buckle, and her pinkish-white shirt and leggings underneath. She also wears light gray boots with white fur.
During the Week 6 Pico remixes, her regular appearance is brightened and rendered in pixel art style.
Origin
Nene as she appears on the title screen of Nene Interactive Suicide.
Nene originates from Nene Interactive Suicide, a Flash game created by Tom Fulp in 1999 as the second entry in the Pico franchise. In Nene Interactive Suicide, Nene wakes up after a night with Jordan Katalano and discovers that she has contracted herpes; she then concludes that she can only "die with honor" by killing herself. The player can choose between several different ways to have Nene die (or attempt to die) by suicide.
Personality
Nene is depicted as a depressed, highly suicidal individual, particularly in the Pico series. In Friday Night Funkin' she maintains suicidal tendencies with her favored method being through a noose, but she always fails to tighten the noose enough to hang herself properly. The more she hangs out with Pico, the less she tries to end her own life.[7]
She also has promiscuous tendencies, as well as being a sadist and a masochist. Similarly to Darnell, she appears to be very greedy and selfish, going as far as to attack her own friend Pico for the sake of money. According to Pico's World, she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder predominantly inattentive (ADHD-PI), meaning her sustained attention is poor. She is also lustful, as she tends to sleep around.[8] She appears to have a penchant for knives in Friday Night Funkin'. She can also be quite mean.[9]
History
Prior to the events of Week 3, Daddy Dearest hired Nene, Darnell, and Pico to kill Boyfriend. When Pico failed to follow through with the task, Nene became angry with him.
While Nene does not physically appear in Week 7, she is one of the assassins hired to find Boyfriend's body and confirm that he is dead. Upon discovering that he is still alive, Nene is very happy, as she has the opportunity to finish her job and kill Boyfriend.[10] However, Pico ends up sparing and saving Boyfriend. Due to this, Daddy Dearest ends up not paying any of the contract killers, leaving Darnell and Nene in a financial crisis and prompting them to seek revenge.[5]
During WeekEnd 1, Nene, equipped with her knife, runs into Pico as he takes a walk through the city. Pico quickly hides in an alley, and Nene looks for him. He checks the reflection of his gun to see if Nene is still there, which she notices, leading her to throw knives at him and chase him. They run through the alleyway, dodging obstacles, until Pico runs into a lift with stairs that can be dropped. As Nene runs toward him and throws a knife, Pico gets ready to shoot, and his bullet bounces off the knife and onto a lever that breaks off and drops the stairs on Nene's face. Pico runs away, relieved, until he hits A-Bot and sees Darnell spray painting on a wall. Pico engages in a rap battle and later a fist fight against Darnell, with Nene watching. While Darnell and Pico ultimately reconcile, Nene remains angry by the end, tearing up a photo of Boyfriend.
Abilities
While Nene does not have an established skillset in the Pico series, Friday Night Funkin' shows that she has taken an interest in kitchen knives as her chosen weapon. She is shown to be quite agile, chasing Pico while throwing knives at him.
Relationships
Pico
Nene and Pico have been stated to be friends, though their interactions have often been unpleasant, such as her begging him to kill her in Pico's School. In Resident Pico, she warns Pico about the zombies and tells him to run, showing that she does care about his safety. In Friday Night Funkin', Nene attacks Pico with knives for breaking the contract they had with Daddy Dearest to kill Boyfriend, as she was left in financial ruin as a result. After spectating Pico's battle against Darnell, she angrily tears up a photo of Boyfriend, and it is unclear whether they make up by the end. However, even though she wants him dead, Pico arouses Nene in WeekEnd 1,[11] and she wants him in general.[1]
Nene is overly clingy towards Pico, with their whole relationship being described as "fucked".[12]
Darnell
Nene and Darnell are friends. While the two were never shown interacting in the Pico series, they team up in Friday Night Funkin' to assassinate Boyfriend then attack Pico for failing them.
Boyfriend
Nene is hired to kill Boyfriend without having a clue of who the target actually is, but she remains determined to get the job done regardless. She fails to find and assassinate him since Pico gets to Boyfriend first. Nene learns of his identity by Week 7 but is unable to locate him in time once again. Nene ends WeekEnd 1 with an even greater desire to kill Boyfriend herself after she angrily tears up a photo of him and his girlfriend.
Daddy Dearest
Daddy Dearest hires Nene to kill Boyfriend, offering her money to do this, which she accepts. Their relationship is purely contractual only for Nene to unwillingly fail him twice. Daddy Dearest is displeased with Nene and revokes any and all payments promised.
Cassandra
Cassandra and Nene were never shown interacting directly in the Pico series. In Pico's School, the school shooting perpetrated by Cassandra puts Nene through a great deal of distress, triggering her anxiety and suicidal ideation. Despite this, according to a drawing uploaded to PhantomArcade's Twitter, Nene has supposedly formed an intimate relationship with Cassandra since then.[13]
In Pico's School: Love Conquers All, Nene and Cassandra have a much nicer interaction, with Nene greeting Cassandra and Pico in the hallway on her way to the bathroom.
Senpai
This is non-canon, as the player character remixes are "what if" scenarios.
Nene is neutral towards Senpai at first, talking normally to him, but quickly finds him tacky and annoying, to the point of suggesting killing him after Senpai's nasty insults.
Tankman
Nene dislikes Tankman and his men, so much so that she stabs one of his men in the eye and then tries to kill Tankman by throwing a knife at his helmet after he insults Pico. She also mocks him when he relates his pain from the stab.
Trivia
General
- Darnell and Nene were both confirmed to be coming to Friday Night Funkin' in a sneak peek showing cutscenes for WeekEnd 1.[14]
- Nene is named after the character Nene Romanova from the anime OVA Bubblegum Crisis. Pico mentions the fact that the two share a name while talking to Hanzo about anime in Pico's School: Love Conquers All.
- Nene and Darnell's sprites were accidentally leaked late March 2022 through a link to the test build of an unreleased update found in the GitHub repository for Friday Night Funkin'.[15][16] Lead animator and artist PhantomArcade confirmed the leaks were real via a Tweet[17] and Twitch live stream titled "FNF work, it leaked, no point in hidin it".[18]
- Along with the sprite leaks, there were songs that were leaked as well featuring Darnell. The songs in question were also confirmed to be real by PhantomArcade.[19]
- A-Bot and Darnell are both mascots of the Newgrounds Audio Portal and have been depicted alongside Nene in official artwork for the site.
- Nene herself was the mascot of the Newgrounds Art Portal and its vote system from its debut in 2011 until she was phased out in 2020.
- During a Reddit AMA, ninjamuffin99 revealed that at one point during development, the team "may have been considering" having Nene speak with voice acting in WeekEnd 1. Ultimately, this concept was scrapped.[20]
- According to PhantomArcade, there were many Nene designs for her Friday Night Funkin' redesign that did not get through and will appear in a future artbook.[21] He also redesigned Nene alone.[22]
- Aspects of Nene's design in the Pico series—namely her yellow skin, slanted eyes, and large buck teeth—are stereotypes based on racist caricatures of East Asian people. PhantomArcade addressed this during a live stream, where he noted that many past designs for Newgrounds characters were tasteless and stated that "Jose [MindChamber] is just, like, some, probably at the time, like, 30-year-old Spanish guy just designing, like, a Korean girl who was previously designed by, like, some 16-year-old white kid in his basement who only had, like, default Flash colors. Not the best shit." Consequently, PhantomArcade made new designs for Nene and other characters, putting his own twist on them and giving them colors that he thought looked good.[23]
- Nene's name is correctly read as "Nay-Nay".
- Nene's voice was provided by l0litsmonica. Monica also provides the voice for Mommy Mearest.
- Nene is tied with Darnell as the fifth character to not be voiced by Kawai Sprite, the first being Skid and Pump, the second being Monster, the third being Mommy Mearest, and the fourth being Tankman.
- If the player gets too low on health while playing as Pico, Nene will start a new animation where she raises her knife, readying to chuck it at him. If the player reaches 0 health, Nene throws the knife, killing Pico and causing a game over. If the player manages to get their health back to a certain amount, Nene will lower her knife and resume her normal idle animation. This makes Nene the first character to directly influence the game over screen, the second being Darnell during 2hot if the player reaches 0 health after failing to shoot Darnell's spray can out the air, and during Blazin' if the player reaches 0 health.
- This also makes Nene the first and so far only character who isn't the level's direct opponent to influence a game over.
- While in this animation, Nene is set to blink after a random number of beats, in order to make it look more natural.[24]
- The EQ visualizer on A-Bot's speaker screen is reactive to the current song's instrumental and the in-game volume.
- A-Bot's eyes shift in the direction of whoever is currently singing.
- According to PhantomArcade, Nene will eventually get more screentime,[25] indicating that she will return in a future level. This includes WeekEnd levels, as Nene will take on the role of sitting on the speakers (termed a supporting character[26]) due to Pico and Nene being "accomplices".[27]
- Originally, PhantomArcade drew Nene with darkened eyes instead of the typical white due to him thinking that it would look better on her due to her being female. This idea was shortly scrapped, and Nene retains the iconic pupilless white eyes in her Friday Night Funkin' appearance, similar to the rest of the Pico characters.[28]
Lore
- Nene is neurodivergent, as she has ADHD-PI.[29]
- Müllerian and close-to-müllerian ADHDers have less obvious symptoms than those who are wolffian or close to wolffian. For instance, they can act ditzy or appear to act silly, which seemingly matches up with Nene's personality.
- Many ADHDers have anxiety disorders as well, and Tom Fulp has stated that people may project their own identities onto Nene, especially if they are anxious in nature.[30] In Pico's School, Nene asks Pico to spare her the anxiety triggered by the blood, violence, and tension occurring due to the school shooting. This suggests that Nene has an anxiety disorder.
- Nene has a severe case of lactose intolerance,[29] to the point where she will violently vomit blood and have her head explode if she consumes any dairy products. In real life, the consequences of a lactose-intolerant person consuming dairy products are far tamer. While doing so may cause diarrhea, bloating, and nausea, it is not deadly.
- Nene is a suicidal sadomasochist.[29]
- Nene has an IQ of 133, which is classified as "very superior".[29]
- In her original series, Nene has herpes,[29] specifically herpes labialis.
- Despite sleeping around too, PhantomArcade has confirmed that the more shock value aspects of Nene such as her herpes are being left behind in the Friday Night Funkin' depiction of her.[8]
- Nene is a Christian. In Nene Interactive Suicide, she has a Bible on her nightstand, and she prays to God to end her life.
- Nene may be multiethnic (Japanese-Korean), as she says the Japanese word "腹切り" (harakiri) in Nene Interactive Suicide and the Korean phrase "사랑합니다" (I love you) in the old Newgrounds vote system.
- PhantomArcade has referred to Nene as being Korean.[23]
- As revealed by Tom Fulp, some of Nene's favorite musicians include Carly Rae Jepsen, Trans-X, Purity Ring, and Charli XCX.[31]
- According to Tom Fulp, Nene would have possibly majored in psychology if she had entered college, as she "wants to sort out her issues and potentially help others."[32]
- On a live stream, PhantomArcade confirmed that Nene would easily walk out of a room with another woman after having sex with them, but she would still make fun of people for being gay.[9]
- On another live stream, PhantomArcade stated that Nene is interested in anyone,[1] indicating that she is pansexual.
- According to PhantomArcade, Nene has an OnlyFans account.[33]
- If Nene had caught Pico with her knife in the alleyway during the intro to WeekEnd 1, she would have cuddled with his dead body.[34]
- In the universe of Friday Night Funkin', there is unrequited love between Nene and Pico, as according to PhantomArcade, Nene likes Pico in a romantic sense, but Pico doesn't share the same sentiments.[27]
Inspirations
- Nene's depiction in Friday Night Funkin' incorporates multiple aspects originally seen in fan Flashes, particularly those created by Newgrounds animator Luis Castañon:
- Her interest in bladed weapons is a trait that was first seen in Luis' 2004 animation The Perfect Murder, which would inspire her weapon of choice in many future fan animations.
- Her overalls are a design choice based on Luis' design of Nene.
Gallery
View Nene's full gallery here.
Nene's static idle pose in the dark.
Nene laughing in the dark.
Nene raising her knife whenever Pico is losing.
Nene waiting for Pico to lose.
Nene lowering her knife whenever Pico recovers enough health.
Combo cheer animation.
Combo fawn animation.
Nene's hair blowing animation.
Nene's hair blowing animation while waiting for Pico to lose.
Nene's static idle pose in her Christmas outfit.
Nene laughing in her Christmas outfit.
Nene raising her knife whenever Pico is losing.
Nene waiting for Pico to lose.
Nene lowering her knife whenever Pico recovers enough health.
Nene tossing her knife during Pico's game over animation.
Combo cheer animation.
Combo fawn animation.
Pixel Nene's static idle pose.
Nene raising her knife whenever Pico is losing.
Nene waiting for Pico to lose.
Nene lowering her knife whenever Pico recovers enough health.
Nene tossing her knife during Pico's game over animation.
Pixel A-Bot.
Ditto, but without the head.
Nene being held at gunpoint by the Tankmen.
The Tankmen on A-Bot about to shoot Nene until she stabs the soldier to her right in the eye, followed by Otis leaping from the sky in slow-motion.
Otis kicking Nene off of A-Bot and bashing the two Tankmen soldiers with his AK-47s.
Pico catching Nene, followed by her kissing him to his dismay.
Nene and Pico's left pose.
Nene and Pico's down pose.
Nene and Pico's up pose.
Nene and Pico's right pose.
Nene and Pico's left miss.
Nene and Pico's down miss.
Nene and Pico's up miss.
Nene and Pico's down miss.
Nene throwing her knife at Tankman.
Nene choking Pico while hugging him after getting a Game Over.
Nene and Pico's full Game Over animation.
Nene and Pico's "Retry" animation.
Nene and Pico laughing.
Nene's original animations on the character select screen.
Nene's original static idle pose on the character select screen.
Nene's current idle animation on the character select screen.
Nene's confirm animation on the character select screen.
Nene's cancel animation on the character select screen.
Nene animation test created by PhantomArcade during a Twitch live stream.
Nene as she appears in the teaser for WeekEnd 1.
Nene attacking Pico with knives in the teaser for WeekEnd 1.
Pico desperately trying to escape Nene.
Nene chasing after Pico.
An image of a very happy Nene with sharp teeth in the sneak peek of a cutscene for WeekEnd 1.
Nene's character sheet.
Notes
- ↑ For years, Newgrounds users speculated that Pico and his friends were around 10–14 years old during the events of Pico's School and Pico 2, but Tom Fulp confirmed that all of the main characters of Pico's School were high school seniors (approximately 16–18 years old). Although Fulp later retconned this with the statement that "Pico and his friends don't really have super defined ages," MindChamber's statement contradicts this regarding Pico.
