While there are a handful of Animal Crossing: New Horizons villagers that any fan can find endearing, it's likely at one point or another an unwelcome villager has made its way onto a player's island. Thankfully, there are a couple of ways to get rid of a specific villager to open up a lot for a more desirable one.
Getting rid of New Horizons villagers can be a bit of a pain, and patience is required to guarantee a certain villager will leave. Rest assured, however, that these methods do work. It also isn't necessary to completely ignore villagers, give them trash, or hit them with a net to kick them out; but keeping their friendship level low does raise the chances of them wanting to leave. That said, villagers with high friendship levels could very well ask to move away, too.
There are two methods to ensure a specific villager will leave the island. They will be referred to as the "campsite" and "thought bubble" methods. Anyone can use these methods regardless of whether they time travel in New Horizons or not, although doing so can expedite the process. Both approaches typically do require players to close out a game and restart it to get the desired results, but not always if a player is lucky.
Animal Crossing: Get Rid Of A Specific New Horizons Villager
The campsite method can be used if the visiting villager is one a player wants on their island. Players will have to talk to them until they offer to play a card game to decide if they should move in or not. If a player loses, they can keep talking to the campsite visitor until they offer to play again. Eventually, they will. Upon winning, the villager may decide to move to the island. They will call New Horizons' Tom Nook and mention the island is already full, if it is. They will then randomly choose a villager on the island to kick out. If they choose one a player wants to keep, they will need to completely close out the game before making a choice, load the game again, and start the process over. This can take multiple tries as the visitor may choose to kick out the same villager more than once. Players will have to repeat this process until the visitor chooses the villager a player wants to get rid of.
The other method involves waiting for a thought bubble to appear over a villager's head. Thought bubbles can mean many things, but sometimes it means the New Horizons villager wants to move. If this happens, and the villager is one the player intends to keep, they will again need to completely close out of the game before giving that villager an answer. Upon reloading, they should avoid speaking to that villager for the rest of the day if they still have the thought bubble. The next day, the thought bubble should transfer to another villager. It will keep transferring each day until a player chooses to allow or prevent a villager to leave. The same villager may get the move-out thought bubble a following day before it finally transfers to the unwelcome one. Players may need to wait and repeat this process until the bubble finally appears over the undesired New Horizons villager, and then they can allow them to go.
The thought bubble may not show up if the villager that wants to leave that day is inside. If players accidentally tell a villager they want to keep to stay, they will have to wait about a week or two before the move-out thought bubble reappears. While kicking out a specific Animal Crossing: New Horizons villager can be tedious by taking up time and requiring multiple attempts, it can be worth it if players are set on ridding their island of an unwanted neighbor.
Animal Crossing is available now on Nintendo Switch.