Advice Animals […] are a type of image macro series featuring animals […] that are accompanied by captioned text to represent a character trait or an archetype that fits the role of a “stock character”. While many Advice Animals use a color wheel background, some use unedited versions of the original photo.
what was up with the multicolor haxagonal-ish backgrounds?
It’s just how they were. That’s like asking “why are they all screenshots underneath plain text on a white background?” re memes now.
It was the style at the time.
It’s the hallmark of the “Advice Animals” category of memes.