Nene laughing during the beginning cutscene of Darnell.
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 idle animation without A-Bot.
Nene lowering her knife whenever Pico recovers enough health.
Nene raising her knife whenever Pico is losing.
Nene waiting for Pico to lose.
Nene tossing her knife during Pico's game over animation.
Unused combo cheer animation.
Unused combo fawn animation, presumably when the player reaches a combo of 100+.
Nene
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Spoiler Alert
“Now... How should I go about killing myself???”
― Nene, Nene Interactive Suicide
Nene is a major supporting character in Friday Night Funkin'. She takes Girlfriend's place in WeekEnd 1. 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, and the third being Tankman.
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 overall minidress with heart-adorned straps, a pinkish-white shirt, pinkish-white leggings, a pink headband, 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. The screen has a semicircular notch in the body's main color, centered at the bottom with the capital letter A in medium-light yellow-green. The screen displays segmented bars in multiple colors that have a fast, up-and-down pulsating animation on a very dark blue background. The speakers on the upper sides of the visualizer are gray with red inner grills and attached to darker bluish gray cylinders; these come from A-Bot's shoulders. Each cylinder has a hole in the bottom. The cylinder on the right has cut wires coming out of the hole and a cut tube coming out of the side, with debris on the ground to the left of the tubing, all in the same shade of bluish gray. A-Bot's head is on the ground beside the audio visualizer, partly behind the left cylinder.
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.
Origin
Nene as she appears in 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 a highly suicidal girl with promiscuous tendencies. She is also very sadistic 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 presumed sake of money. According to Pico's World, she has ADHD-PI, meaning she is also inattentive. She is also lustful, as she tends to sleep around.[6] She appears to have a penchant for knives in Friday Night Funkin'. She can also be quite mean.[7]
History
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.[8]
A sneak peek of WeekEnd 1 shows Pico running away from and fighting his friends, Nene and Darnell, who are trying to kill him.[3] Nene uses her knives to attack Pico. Multiple parts of a bigger image briefly flash in the teaser; when pieced together, these reveal a scene where Daddy Dearest is offering Pico money to do something to Boyfriend. In the same image, Darnell and Nene are seen, with Nene holding a knife piercing through a stack of cash. The full image was later posted on Newgrounds, revealing that Daddy Dearest is paying Pico, Darnell, and Nene to kill Boyfriend, as indicated by Daddy Dearest's full speech bubble and the "assassins" tag on the Newgrounds submission.
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.[9]
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 and attack Pico.
Daddy Dearest
Daddy Dearest hires Nene to kill Boyfriend, offering her money to do this, which she accepts.
Boyfriend
Nene is hired to kill Boyfriend, though it is unclear if she knows who her target is. She appears to be determined to get the job done.
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 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.[10]
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.
Trivia
General
- Darnell and Nene were both confirmed to be coming to Friday Night Funkin' in a sneak peek showing a cutscene for WeekEnd 1.[11]
- 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'.[12][13] Lead animator and artist PhantomArcade confirmed the leaks were real via a Tweet[14] and Twitch live stream titled "FNF work, it leaked, no point in hidin it".[15]
- 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.[16]
- 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.[17]
- 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.[18] He also redesigned Nene alone.[19]
- 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.[20]
- Nene's name is correctly read as "Nay-Nay".
- Nene's voice was provided by Monica Franco, also known as l0litsmonica. Monica also provides the voice for Mommy Mearest.
- This makes Nene the sixth character to not be voiced by Kawai Sprite, the first being Skid and Pump, the second being Monster, the fourth being Tankman and the fifth being Darnell.
- If the player gets too low on health during Darnell, Lit Up, and 2hot, Nene will start a new animation where she raises her knife, readying to chuck it at Pico. 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 week's direct opponent to influence a game over.
- 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,[21] likely indicating that she will return in a future week.
Lore
- Nene is neurodivergent, as she has ADHD-PI.[22]
- 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.[23] 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,[22] 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.[22]
- Nene has an IQ of 133, which is classified as "very superior".[22]
- In her original series, Nene has herpes,[22] 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.[6]
- 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.[20]
- As revealed by Tom Fulp, some of Nene's favorite musicians include Carly Rae Jepsen, Trans-X, Purity Ring, and Charli XCX.[24]
- 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."[25]
- 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.[7] Since she is dating Jordan Katalano, Nene is m-spec.
- According to PhantomArcade, Nene has an OnlyFans account.[26]
Inspirations
- It was confirmed that the style of Nene's white eyes is heavily inspired by Little Orphan Annie comics.[27]
- As Pico was originally inspired by 1990s Children's Tylenol Cold illustrations, Nene's original design in the Pico series is believed to be an extension of said illustrations' style, although Tom Fulp noted that he may be forgetting something about her design having a direct correlation to the illustrations.[28][29]
- 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 animation test created by PhantomArcade during a Twitch live stream.
Nene as she appears in the teaser for a future content release.
Nene attacking Pico with knives.
Pico desperately trying to escape Nene.
Since when was this game set in NYC?
An image of a very happy Nene with sharp teeth in the sneak peek of a cutscene for WeekEnd 1.
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.
References
| Characters | |
|---|---|
| Main Characters | |
| Opponents | |
| Others | |
| Upcoming | |
| Scrapped or Unused | |
| Background Characters | |