Glitches in games can be an absolute pain in the butt—but they can also be what makes a game great. Whether they’re wacky, handy, or just plain hilarious, glitches can take games to a whole new level. Sometimes, glitches can even be the best part of a game, locking them lovingly into our memory banks for a lifetime.
Here’s a few of my personal favourites and some of the funniest glitches in games.
The Forest
This game is filled with glitches — and it’s fantastic. Sometimes, it can be a bit annoying, like when a cannibal manages to glitch into your base when it most certainly shouldn’t be able to. But some glitches are actually super handy. Like when I was battling one of the nastier mutants in the game while it was rendered useless, stuck behind an invisible barrier. Or when I needed to get into an enormous pit — and instead of navigating cave after cave of cannibals and mutants, I took advantage of a glitch that lets you jump from the top and land unscathed.
Cannibals and mutants get stuck in weird positions all the time. I had a cannibal hovering in the air with its legs crossed for minutes while I walked around unbothered. It was also hilarious when I found some automatic glass doors in the game, and they recognised me as a person — but didn’t recognise the humanoid cannibals. So I could leap back and forth, slashing at them before hiding behind the safety of a closed door.
Glitches are so common in The Forest that speedrunners use it to their advantage, glitching up and down cave walls to finish in record time. I even watched a speedrunner glitch the game so much that they were able to finish it in 6 minutes, bypassing most of the storyline. Wild!
Cyberpunk 2077
It wouldn’t be an article about glitches in games without mentioning this baby. When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, it was rife with glitches — so much so on PS4 and Xbox that they actually had to refund some players.
A quick YouTube search can reveal so many hilarious glitches, like seeing random dead bodies flailing on the ground and bikes flying into the sky, and a main mission where, instead of an NPC handing you a USB, they hand you a gun. Speaking of NPCs, there’s a lot that’s just not quite right about them in Cyberpunk 2077. Like seeing characters without certain body parts, characters walking with their arms outstretched in a T-pose or watching them glide through the air like a ghost, their feet not even touching the ground.
Sure, a lot of the glitches can be pretty annoying — especially when they interfere with gameplay. But you’ve got to admit, at least it gives you a bit of a giggle! Although, I’m sure comedy isn’t what they were aiming for when they released the game.
The Sims
Ah, The Sims — an iconic game for glitches. In honour of this article, I decided to play The Sims 4, to see if I could experience any new glitches to report on — but sadly, it seems glitches aren’t as common in the newer games (at least for me)!
But most of us can remember the days of past, where you couldn’t play the game without seeing a hilarious or confusing glitch. Like the one that makes sims morph into weird, long-legged shapes straight from of a horror movie or when kids develop legs double their usual length and end up levitating mid-air. Creepy.
There are also all the times sims have the absolute wrong reactions to emergency situations. Like when their homes are on fire, and instead of reacting wildly like a normal person, they’re super chill, sometimes cooking or taking a nap. There’s also been levitating Christmas trees, times where parents have used a BBQ to change their baby’s diapers instead of a change table, and objects glitching through sims — like when your character has a weight-lifting bar embedded into their face. Now that’s a brutal workout!
These glitches have resulted in iconic memes, and I love them dearly.
Heavy Rain
While I love games like Heavy Rain, I didn’t love Heavy Rain. It’s slow and also rather buggy. But there’s one particular glitch towards the end of the game that always gives me a giggle. And yes, spoiler alert for the ending of Heavy Rain here.
It’s the final chapter in the Old Warehouse, and your character Ethan screams for his son Shawn over and over again. Even after you’ve found him, and are holding him in your arms, you can continue inappropriately screaming his name. It makes what’s supposed to be a harrowing, emotional scene rather hilarious — probably not what the developers intended when the game was released. The best part is that this glitch even remains in the PS4 remaster of the game.
Pokémon Red and Blue
This glitch is legendary. Dubbed the “old man glitch”, it involves players talking to an old man in Viridian City, who shows you how to catch Pokémon. You then fly to Cinnabar Island and surf up and down the east coast in a specific pattern to find a number of Pokémon — including MissingNo.
MissingNo. was never intended to be part of the game. It looks like a blur of static, with an equally displeasing distorted screech. While MissingNo. can’t evolve, you can use it in battle — and it’s actually not too bad.
However, Nintendo have urged players to not look for this Pokémon, because it can actively corrupt your game. But obviously, a lot of people ignored this warning. Gotta catch ‘em all, right?
Thanks glitches for making games extra fun!
Zoe Simmons is a journalist who writes to make a difference. When not writing articles or gaming, you can find her running her copywriting and editing business, or writing her book on her town’s survival in the Black Summer Bushfires. Follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for more!
