Haha

Last week, some of my animals were complaining about Lyle. I think that Lyle is also something of a social commentary... the insurance pays out very little, it doesn't pay out every time it should, it's very expensive, you can't turn it down once you've started talking to Lyle, and it only pays 1/4 the cost of the medicine. And then there's the indication that Lyle might be in cahoots with Redd to resell those fake paintings. Anyway... With real insurance, the math is a little less obvious, but those insurance companies are making a profit, right? So I think the simple math of Lyle's insurance is also meant to comment on something.

Since I didn't really clarify this, even though it's obvious, by the math I'm referring to how much money you get from Lyle versus how much you give him. I don't remember how much the insurance costed, but at the start of the game I did calculate and figured that it was extremely improbable that I would make back even just half of what I paid him in the first place. Basically, you would have to wear the unlucky hat to trip a lot, shake lots of trees, and buy a lot of fake paintings, and even then, it would still take a long time to make all that money back in 100 bell increments.

The implication for real insurance is obvious. You pay them some amount of money every week, and you're set if something unlucky happens to you, but chances are that your premium is going partly to pay someone else's claim and mostly to the insurance company.

I found that commentary to be a bit more blatant actually than the K.K. Slider thing, or Gulliver's comment (although they're all supposed to be funny, I think).

The Lyle/Redd thing is definitely another great commentary, maybe one that's too elaborate in the game for the media to have noticed while researching the K.K. Slider story. Or maybe everyone just hates insurance companies anyway, so it didn't come across as a big deal that someone else was making fun of them.

Maybe it's just me, but the Gulliver thing just sounds mean. It gets right to the point, and the "monster" comment is pretty hateful. I don't mean to dwell on that, but I just wasn't expecting something like that to come out of Gulliver's mouth (or his bill, HA HA).

The Gulliver thing is pretty harsh, I agree. It seems out of place in Animal Crossing! But on the other hand, it's somewhat vague so it's only mean because it's true, hah. Sometimes the dialogue surprises me but I haven't seen anything quite like that one.