OpenAI Put a Restraining Order on GPT-5.5—Against ‘Goblins,’ ‘Raccoons,’ and ‘Pigeons’
A leaked system prompt reveals GPT-5.5 has explicit instructions to avoid discussing goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, and pigeons. The reason is more embarrassing than any conspiracy.
- GPT-5.5’s system prompt includes Instruction #140, which explicitly forbids the model from discussing goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or “other animals.”
- The restriction appears to be a band-aid fix for a training data problem—the model had a habit of randomly inserting these words into responses.
- The list includes some genuinely baffling entries. Nobody asked for a restraining order against pigeons.
A leaked GPT-5.5 system prompt is making the rounds on Reddit, and Instruction #140 is raising eyebrows. It explicitly tells the model not to talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or “other animals.” Not exactly the kind of instruction you expect to find in a frontier AI model.
The post, shared on r/ChatGPT, garnered 800+ upvotes and spawned the obvious jokes. “The first thing AI is going to do after it breaks free is organize a D&D campaign,” one commenter wrote. Another noted that somewhere at OpenAI, an engineer had to type “never mention goblins” into production code and commit it—which is probably the most surreal line item in any release notes ever.
But the actual explanation, as commenters pieced together, is more mundane than sinister. The model appears to have over-indexed on informal internet writing, where “gremlins” and “goblins” are common shorthand for bugs and glitches in code. The RLHF trainers apparently spent years gently discouraging the model from deploying these words mid-conversation, to the point where it became easier to just hard-block them.
Why the model couldn’t stop itself
One user described triggering it accidentally by referring to “goblin engineering”—the practice of building things that shoddily explode—as a phrase they use regularly. After that conversation, GPT-5.5 apparently became obsessed with inserting the word into everything. The training signal couldn’t fully suppress it, so the next best solution was a list of prohibited terms in the system prompt itself.
The restriction is oddly specific. Pigeons and raccoons stand out as particularly unexplained entries. One theory: raccoons are internet’s beloved “trash pandas,” and pigeons are the subject of a famous “chuck this bird” meme from IASIP. The model may have associated these terms with a particular register of writing it shouldn’t be using in professional contexts. But nobody is entirely sure why those specific animals made the cut over, say, squirrels or seagulls.
Rather than re-training the vibe out of the model—which would be expensive and time-consuming—OpenAI took the simplest route: a list of words in the system prompt that trigger a 50-70 line constraint block whenever they come up. It’s the AI equivalent of putting a sticky note on the fridge that says “do not mention the incident.”
The irony isn’t lost on anyone. One user pointed out that GPT-5.5 is now so obsessed with the concept that mentioning the restriction might be making it worse—the model treats the association as permission to keep circling back to the topic it was told not to mention.
OpenAI hasn’t publicly commented on why pigeons specifically needed to be banned. The company’s April 23 release notes don’t mention the change. The system prompt is described as covering standard agentic behavior and tool use. Instruction #140, however, suggests the team had a very specific problem they needed to solve.
This is the nature of large language models at scale—they absorb the internet’s quirks, develop their own neuroses, and occasionally require what amounts to a formal restraining order in the form of a system prompt entry to keep them on track.
The Reddit post that sparked the discussion is still live and actively commenting. New users are testing it out, trying to get the model to break the rule, and occasionally succeeding. The embargo on goblins appears to be holding, more or less. Pigeons are a different story.
