Summary
Glitches are quite recurring in video games that, for better or worse, are pretty much baked within the gameplay experience. These errors have affected playthroughs for a long time, accounting for some of the most bizarre moments that have cemented themselves in gaming history as nothing short of iconic.
Whether games are from veteran developers or indie ones, it is possible that some part of the coding does not work as intended. Quality assurance and bug testing have proven to be more important for a lot of game developers, but even with so many checks going on in modern games, the chance for something to go wrong in a hilarious way is more than possible.
The turn-based strategic video game,Civilization, is based onbuilding a nation from a small tribe to a world-dominating powerone turn at a time, each having its own leaders. One of the series’ most iconic glitches comes from Civilization I, where Gandhi, a peace-loving character, suddenly turns psychotic and begins dropping atomic bombs.
The leaders in Civilization had an aggression rating that matched their real-world counterparts, and Gandhi’s rating was as low as possible. Throughout the gameplay, Gandhi would always try to win through diplomacy, which resulted in his aggression, at which point he would instantly lose every shred of his sanity.
9Swing Set Launcher - GTA 4
When you look at the world ofGTA, things are bound to get complicated, especially when you compare GTA 4 against its previous versions,as the world is a little more dramatic, and the cars are a little too sluggish, but the funniest thing of all is a simple swing set.
This glitch can be triggered inside a vehicle or on foot when you hit hard against the playground swing set, which will catapult you hundreds of feet above the ground, launching your vehicle almost halfway around the City.
8Shaun - Heavy Rain
The psychological thriller video gameHeavy Raintells a gritty tale of a serial killer, aka the Origami Killer, where the whole game plot revolves around his identity, which comes out in the funniest way possible.
Earlier in the game, when you’re not supposed to, you can trigger a prompt, making the protagonist Ethan shout out his kid Shaun’s name. During the final act, this triggers a rare glitch, when Ethan finally faces the killer to rescue Shaun, causing him to repeatedly shout out, Shaun. It completely ruins the emotionally-heavy tone of the end cut-scene, making it one of the most hilarious moments in gaming history.
Ubisoft’s iconic game franchise,Assassin’s Creed, has gathered massive success over the years. However, Assassin’s Creed Unity will always remain a nightmare for players and the game creators from the day it was released.
Upon its release, Assassin’s Creed Unity was plagued with thousands of glitches, due to which players got dodgy wall-climbing and dancing NPCs. Yet the infamous Missing Face glitch stands out as the poster child for the mess this game was. This glitch wrapped the flesh/skin and even stripped them for some characters, with only the eyes left behind, making them appear as faceless horrors.
Sports simulations, such asMadden NFL, pride themselves on recreating their games down to every minute detail, but an error in a code can cause some serious glitches to appear quite frequently. One such incident happened with the player simulation of the rookie linebacker for the Cleveland Browns, Christian Kirksey, when the 6'2" player was rendered just a foot tall in one of the NFL Madden online challenges.
However, rather than fixing the bug, EA Sports took this with a sense of humor when they introduced the in-game Kirksey as Tiny Titan, who still had the hitting power of his real-life counterpart.
WWE is undoubtedly the biggest name in wrestling promotions for decades now. The company is so popular that it invested in the video game industry to start its ownWWE 2Kseries, with the 20th iteration being so busted that it could’ve ended the series.
Many fans believe that WWE 2K20 was an easy target, as upon its releaseit received widespread criticism for being a glitchy mess. During the game, the characters would weirdly melt into one another, ropes would oscillate, and wrestlers would appear bearing some seizure. WWE 2K20 is so full of glitches that it is hard to play and not chuckle at some point.
4Round Zero - Duck Hunt
The LegendaryDuck Huntis a simple video game inwhich players shoot ducks to level up, only for a dog to appear on the screen to shame you when you miss a target.
However, players looking forward to completing the game are destined only for disappointment because if you do manage to beat level 99, instead of rolling to level 100, it takes you to round zero, with a visual in which ducks fly on the screen for a few seconds, and suddenly the title game appears. It’s hilarious that the game developers thought no one could get as far as level 100.
Many video games have hidden regions/worlds, which are sometimes developer shortcuts or levels that never got finished. However, the originalSuper Mario Brosmight just have the most famous one of all, known as Minus One.
Accessed by clipping through the wall at the end of world 1-2 and then traveling down the nearest pipe, you get to the glitch level negative one, which in the game’s geography is essentially the world 7-2, but with one difference: that it has no definitive ending zone and the game loops back upon itself, meaning you are doomed to die here.
The internet is loaded with all sorts of stories about weird stuff and glitches in the earlyPokémongames, but none of them can ever top the MissingNo lore of Pokémon Red and Blue.
The glitch appears as a result of a specific movement on a certain part of the game map, which summons a glitch Pokémon called a MissingNo. Its presence in your line-up is enough to trigger a bundle of glitches that could corrupt your saved data and turn many items into creepy garbled messes. However, MissingNo also had a few uses as it allowed you to dupe items and was pretty good in a fight while appearing to be a man in your team.
In 2005, a new patch inWorld of Warcraftsaw an opening of a new area in the game where players would fight some jungle trolls and a blood god who would cast a spell called the corrupted blood.
This debuff caused the player’s health to drain within a few seconds. This curse could spread to any NPCs or even pets, which once dismissed would cause it to remain indefinitely to the point that it started to spread across multiple servers, and the developers had to do a hard reset. The incident got so much attention at the time, that it made the ethologists study how humans would react during a viral breakout.
