Video Game Trivia

To prevent memory leaks, Bethesda engineers programmed The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind to silently reboot the original Xbox during certain loading screens to clear the RAM. The screen displayed a static "Loading..." bar while the machine reset in the background. Hackaday
Grand Theft Auto originated from a bug in a racing game called Race 'n' Chase. A glitch in the AI caused police cars to ram players rather than pursue them; testers preferred this mechanic, leading developers to rebuild the game around crime and police chases. GamesRadar
The multiplayer mode in GoldenEye 007 was created by programmer Steve Ellis in the final six weeks of development without Nintendo's knowledge. The team revealed it to management only after the feature was functional to ensure it would not be cut. Engadget
The original Wing Commander (1990) shipped with a bug that caused a crash upon exiting. Programmer Ken Demarest used a hex editor to replace the EMM386 memory manager error message with "Thank you for playing Wing Commander!", masking the error as a closing screen. WCNews
The increasing speed of aliens in Space Invaders resulted from hardware limitations. As players destroyed aliens, the reduced rendering load allowed the processor to run the remaining sprites faster, a mechanic designer Tomohiro Nishikado retained. New Yorker
The fog in the original Silent Hill was used to mask the PlayStation's limited draw distance. Developers obscured the point where world geometry ended, effectively hiding technical limitations with an atmospheric effect. TechRadar
In Fallout 3, the game engine could not handle moving vehicles. The "Presidential Metro" train is an NPC equipped with a train-car model as a headpiece, running underneath the track to simulate the player riding inside a moving vehicle. PC Gamer
The "combo" mechanic in fighting games originated from a bug in Street Fighter II. Producer Noritaka Funamizu noticed a glitch allowing a second attack before the first animation finished; the team retained it, assuming the timing was too difficult for most players. Polygon
Minecraft's Creeper was created when Markus Persson accidentally swapped the height and length variables for a pig model. He applied a green texture to the vertical shape and programmed it to approach players and explode. Minecraft.net
NBA Jam designer Mark Turmell coded a specific rule affecting the Chicago Bulls when playing against the Detroit Pistons. If the Bulls took a last-second shot in a close game, their shooting stats dropped to zero. Ars Technica
The ghosts in Pac-Man use distinct AI targeting vectors. Blinky chases directly; Pinky targets four tiles ahead of Pac-Man; Inky calculates position based on Blinky and Pac-Man; and Clyde chases until he gets close, then retreats to a corner. GameInternals
In Dwarf Fortress, cats began dying of alcohol poisoning due to a hygiene code bug. Cats would walk through spilled alcohol, and the game calculated licking themselves clean as consuming a full mug of ale. Eurogamer
The developers of Game Dev Tycoon released a version of their game on torrent sites where players encountered unbeatable in-game piracy. This mechanic caused virtual bankruptcy due to lost sales, mirroring the real-world issue. CNET
The 2007 "Trinity" update for EVE Online contained a script error that deleted the boot.ini file from players' hard drives. This file was necessary for Windows to boot, preventing affected computers from starting up after the update. EVE Dev Blog
In Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis, Dr. Watson lacked a walking animation to save memory. Instead, he was programmed to teleport near the player when off-camera, causing him to appear instantly whenever the player turned around. YouTube
Hitman: Codename 47 utilized Verlet integration for physics, introducing real-time ragdoll death animations. The system calculated skeletal joint collapse, which occasionally resulted in unnatural body positioning. CMU / IO Interactive
The malfunctioning AI in Aliens: Colonial Marines was caused by a typo in a configuration file. A modder discovered that correcting "teather" to "tether" activated the intended tactical behaviors. Polygon
Richard Garriott designed a virtual ecology for the Ultima Online beta where wolves hunted rabbits. The system was removed because players killed wildlife so rapidly that the simulation could not function. Game Developer
EA recalled the initial PlayStation run of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 99 after it was discovered that the disc contained the unauthorized "Jesus vs. Santa" South Park pilot episode, used as dummy data. IGN
Homefront: The Revolution contains a hidden arcade cabinet running a native 4K port of TimeSplitters 2. The unlock code was discovered in 2021 by a developer. The Verge
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) rendered a 212-story skyscraper in Melbourne due to an OpenStreetMap data error. A user had entered "212" instead of "2" in the floors field for a two-story house. Engadget
The original Final Fantasy XIV suffered from performance issues partly due to high-polygon assets. A flower pot prop contained roughly the same number of polygons and shader lines as a player character's face. PCGamesN
Spyro: Year of the Dragon included copy protection that degraded the game experience if a crack was detected. Effects included disappearing items, language changes, and deletion of save files upon reaching the final boss. IGN
Diablo was originally pitched as a turn-based roguelike. Blizzard management requested real-time gameplay; after creator David Brevik implemented a test version, the team permanently switched the genre. GDC / YouTube
A bug in the Myth II: Soulblighter uninstaller commanded the computer to delete all files in the game directory. If installed in the root directory, this resulted in the deletion of the hard drive's contents. MinMax
The boss "The End" in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater can be defeated by saving the game during the fight and waiting one week (or advancing the system clock). Upon reloading, the boss dies of old age. ScreenRant
The Twin Towers were omitted from Deus Ex due to texture memory limitations. To explain the absence, developers added lore stating they had been destroyed by terrorists, predating the actual event by one year. PC Gamer
In L.A. Noire, the "Doubt" prompt originally meant "Force." While the UI label was changed before release, the protagonist's dialogue remained aggressive, contrasting with the new label. Eurogamer
The Kanto region was included in Pokémon Gold and Silver after Satoru Iwata wrote a compression tool that freed up enough cartridge space to include the second map as post-game content. Nintendo Life
Yuji Naka confirmed in 2022 that Michael Jackson composed music for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Jackson remained uncredited, reportedly due to dissatisfaction with the Sega Genesis sound chip's audio quality. Billboard
The pistol damage in Halo: Combat Evolved was doubled by Jason Jones shortly before the code was finalized. This change bypassed multiplayer balance testing, resulting in the weapon's high effectiveness. IGN
The Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation is controlled by two AIs. A "Director" AI knows the player's location and periodically gives vague hints to the "Alien" AI, ensuring the enemy remains nearby without knowing the player's exact position. RockPaperShotgun
The Level Select menu in Sonic 3D Blast serves as an error handler. To prevent crashes from failing certification, the game was programmed to load the menu if an error occurred. Eurogamer
During the World of Warcraft beta, Blizzard replaced an "exhaustion" penalty (50% XP) with a "rested bonus" system. The math remained the same, but the base rate was reframed as 100% and the bonus as 200%. PC Gamer
The sprint function for horses in Dragon Age: Inquisition does not increase movement speed. The developers added visual effects and a widened field of view to simulate speed, as the engine could not stream assets fast enough for actual sprinting. Kotaku
To simulate the baby perspective in the Fallout 3 intro, developers used a scaled-down adult character model with the camera locked to its head, as the engine lacked a crawling infant rig. GamesRadar
Donkey Kong 64 required the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak to resolve a memory leak that caused crashes. The additional RAM delayed the crash, allowing for extended gameplay sessions. Nintendo Life
The horse Agro in Shadow of the Colossus was programmed to occasionally ignore player input. This was an AI design choice to simulate a living animal rather than a responsive vehicle. Eurogamer
The Mortal Kombat character Ermac originated from a menu listing labeled "ERMACS" (Error Macros). Players mistook the diagnostic counter for a hidden character, leading developers to create him in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. PlayStation Blog
Rocksteady assigned one developer to work exclusively on cape physics for Batman: Arkham Asylum for two years. The cape required roughly 700 animations to handle gliding, combat, and environmental interaction. Eurogamer
The Sims began as an architectural tool called Dollhouse. Creator Will Wright shifted the focus to social simulation after testers spent more time interacting with the characters than designing houses. Gamasutra
During The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim development, the introductory cart ride frequently malfunctioned due to a bee spawning in the path. The insect had collision enabled, causing the physics engine to launch the cart upon impact. IGN
The Assassin's Creed engine did not support quadruped skeletons. Animators distorted human animation rigs to create horses, meaning the mounts were technically human skeletons running on all fours. Eurogamer
The sound effect for the dying Imp in Doom (1993) was sourced from a stock audio recording of a mating camel. Shacknews
To simulate Samus's face reflecting in her visor in Metroid Prime, developers rendered a translucent 3D model of her face in front of the camera, as the GameCube hardware could not handle real-time reflection rendering. Shinesparkers
Batman: Arkham Asylum contains a secret room featuring blueprints for Arkham City. The room remained undiscovered for three years until developers revealed its location. Game Informer
A coding error in X-COM: UFO Defense caused the difficulty to reset to "Beginner" after the first mission, regardless of the player's selection. Strategy Gamer
Resident Evil 4 uses a dynamic difficulty system. Enemy aggression and health adjust in real-time based on player performance. Polygon
During the Ultima Online beta, a player killed Richard Garriott's character, "Lord British," using a fire field spell. Garriott had forgotten to re-enable his invulnerability flag after a server reboot. MMORPG.com
Borderlands originally featured a realistic art style. Late in development, the art direction was changed to cel-shading to distinguish the game visually. GameSpot
The ambulance in Madden NFL '92 drove onto the field to retrieve injured players but often ran over other players and referees in its path. SB Nation
Nintendo named the character Kirby after attorney John Kirby. He successfully defended Nintendo in a copyright lawsuit by Universal Studios regarding Donkey Kong and King Kong. Nintendo Life
Devil May Cry started development as Resident Evil 4. The gameplay was deemed too fast-paced for survival horror, leading Capcom to release it as a new franchise. Polygon
Sonic the Hedgehog cannot swim because creator Yuji Naka believed real hedgehogs could not swim. Consequently, he programmed Sonic to walk on the bottom of underwater zones. Kotaku
The Spy class in Team Fortress was inspired by a Quake mod glitch where players appeared with the wrong team color. Developers noted that these players could pass enemies undetected and developed the class around this concept. PC Gamer
In Hitman 2, a bug caused the homing briefcase to travel slowly. IO Interactive later re-added the behavior as an unlockable item, the "Executive Briefcase MKII." Polygon
Namco held a patent on interactive loading screens from 1995 to 2015, preventing other developers from including mini-games during load times. Polygon
The "Radiant AI" in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was modified before release because NPCs satisfied needs in unintended ways, such as guards arresting people to take their food or merchants killing competitors. PCGamesN
Co-creator Andy Gavin bypassed official Sony libraries to access the PlayStation hardware directly for Crash Bandicoot. This allowed for higher graphical fidelity than standard development tools permitted. Andy Gavin's Blog
The "Kryptonite Fog" in Superman 64 was used to hide the Nintendo 64's draw distance limitations. The narrative explanation was that Lex Luthor had poisoned the atmosphere. Den of Geek
The cockroaches in Half-Life utilize AI flocking behaviors. They communicate to scatter away from light sources and the smell of dead bodies. Half-Life Wiki
The screams of the Zombies in Half-Life 2 are audio recordings of people yelling "Help me, God, help me!" played in reverse. YouTube (Audio)
Nintendo created Donkey Kong after failing to secure the license for a Popeye game. Assets were repurposed, turning Popeye into Jumpman (Mario), Bluto into Donkey Kong, and Olive Oyl into Pauline. Iwata Asks
In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the train level features a vehicle that physically moves through the game world, allowing dynamic lighting and shadows to react to the track's curvature. GamesRadar
The enemy AI in F.E.A.R. vocalizes commands to inform the player of their tactical movements, creating the perception of advanced coordination. MIT / GDC
Lara Croft's character model in the original Tomb Raider resulted from designer Toby Gard accidentally increasing her breast size by 150% instead of 50%. The team decided to retain the change. IGN
Samus Aran's "Morph Ball" transformation in Metroid was created because the developers struggled to animate a crawling cycle within the NES memory limitations. IGN
Programmer Shigeki Morimoto added Mew to Pokémon Red and Blue two weeks before release, utilizing unused space in the code after debug tools were removed. Iwata Asks
The original World of Warcraft engine could not target the ground for area-of-effect spells. Developers programmed the game to spawn invisible rabbits at the target location to anchor the spell effects. Kotaku
Space Station Silicon Valley (N64) contains a bug where the trophy for "Fat Bear Mountain" lacks collision data, making 100% completion impossible on original hardware. Nintendo Life
The "Little Sisters" in BioShock were originally designed as slugs, then frogs, and later chipmunks. Developers chose human children to ensure players felt a moral conflict regarding harvesting them. PC Gamer
In 2005, a software bug in World of Warcraft allowed a damaging status effect called "Corrupted Blood" to spread outside its intended zone. The virtual infection killed thousands of low-level players in major cities; epidemiologists later used the event as a model to study real-world disease transmission and human behavior during outbreaks. CDC / Lancet
The "Hot Coffee" minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was not removed from the game code prior to release, but simply hidden by a configuration flag. Modders discovered the code and re-enabled the content, causing the ESRB to temporarily change the game's rating from "Mature" to "Adults Only." BBC News
In Super Mario Bros. for the NES, the clouds and the bushes utilize the exact same sprite data to save cartridge memory. The only difference between the two objects is the color palette assigned to them. Den of Geek
The boss Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid reads the PlayStation memory card to find save files from other Konami games. If the system detects files for games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the boss acts as if he can read the player's mind by referencing their gameplay history. IGN
In Doom 3, the player cannot hold a flashlight and a weapon simultaneously. This was not a design choice for atmospheric tension, but a technical limitation; the graphics engine slowed down significantly when rendering the dynamic lighting of the flashlight and a muzzle flash at the same time. PC Gamer
In Duck Hunt for the NES, a second player can plug a controller into Port 2 to control the flight path of the ducks. The game manual does not explicitly mention this feature. CNET
The 900-degree spin was not originally included in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Developers added the trick to the game in the final weeks of development after Tony Hawk landed the move in real life at the 1999 X Games. IGN
The "common infected" zombies in Left 4 Dead are modified versions of the counter-terrorist bots from Counter-Strike: Source. Valve repurposed the existing AI navigation meshes to allow large numbers of enemies to pathfind toward the player simultaneously. Valve / Steam
Halo 2 shipped without end credits in the campaign mode. The game data filled the DVD capacity so completely that there was no storage space remaining for the credits video file. Halopedia
The portals in Portal work by rendering the entire game world a second time from the perspective of the exit portal. To prevent the game from entering an infinite rendering loop and crashing, the engine limits the recursive depth of these reflections. Steam Community
The Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat required a cheat code ("ABACABB") to enable blood. This code is a reference to the album Abacab by the band Genesis. GamesRadar
The 200-unit supply limit in the original StarCraft was a hardcoded memory constraint. The game engine tracked all units in a single array; exceeding this number caused the pathfinding system to overwrite adjacent memory blocks, leading to crashes. Code of Honor
In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the voice of Link (played by Nobuyuki Hiyama) and the roar of the volcano dragon Volvagia were recorded by the same actor. IMDb
The character Aerith in Final Fantasy VII was named "Aeris" in the original English release due to a transliteration error. The localization team mapped the Japanese "su" sound to "s" instead of "th," a discrepancy that was corrected in subsequent compilations and the remake. Polygon
The "Traffic Checking" mechanic in Burnout Revenge—which allows players to hit traffic cars without crashing—was implemented after developers observed that playtesters naturally steered into traffic rather than avoiding it. Eurogamer
The level counter in the original arcade version of Pac-Man is an 8-bit integer. When the player reaches level 256, the counter overflows (attempting to display 256 in a byte limited to 255), causing the game to draw garbage data across the right half of the screen, creating the unplayable "Kill Screen." DonHodges.com
The first letters of the twelve chapter titles in Dead Space (2008) spell out the phrase "NICOLE IS DEAD." This acrostic reveals the game's primary plot twist regarding the protagonist's girlfriend before the story's conclusion. IGN
Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that Super Mario Bros. 3 was designed as a stage play rather than a "real" adventure. This aesthetic choice explains the presence of curtains on the title screen, platforms hanging from ropes, and background objects bolted to the scenery. Polygon
In the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI, the "Blind" status effect (visualized by the character wearing sunglasses) does not function due to a coding error. The algorithm fails to check the accuracy flag during combat, meaning "blind" characters retain their full hit rate. FF Wiki
The weather system in Shenmue (1999) simulates the actual historical weather conditions of Yokosuka, Japan, from 1986. The developers incorporated real meteorological records to ensure the in-game weather matched the real-world dates of the story. PlayStation Blog
The unmasked face of Tali'Zorah in Mass Effect 3 is a modified Royalty-Free stock photograph of a human model. BioWare artists performed minor edits to the image to give the character an alien appearance for the in-game reveal. PC Gamer
In Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, a bearded spectator in the front row of the crowd ducks his head exactly when the opponent Piston Honda is about to execute his special attack. This animation serves as a visual cue for the player to counter-punch. HuffPost
The face texture for the "Corpse01" model in Half-Life 2 was sourced from a real medical forensic textbook. The image depicts a real human burn victim, which Valve artists mapped onto the in-game model. Kotaku
The "Lylat" language spoken by characters in Star Fox consists of recordings of the development staff speaking English and Japanese. The audio was chopped up and sped up significantly to create the unintelligible robotic dialect. Argonaut / Shinesparkers
The "Minus World" (-1) in Super Mario Bros. is the result of a pointer error. When the player glitches through the wall, the game reads a blank memory tile (ID 36) as the level number. The graphics engine renders tile 36 as a blank space, resulting in the display " -1". Legends of Localization
The voices of the "Common Infected" zombies in Left 4 Dead 2 were recorded by Faith No More singer Mike Patton. He performed the various shrieks, gurgles, and screams into a cup to create the distorted audio effects. Engadget
In Wii Sports bowling, if the player releases the ball during the backswing (throwing it behind them), the crowd of Miis behind the lane will simultaneously jump and spin around in shock. IGN
The "Ladder" sequence in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater lasts exactly as long as the vocal performance of the main theme, "Snake Eater." The climb was designed to serve as an intermission that showcases the song in isolation. Kotaku
The heavy breathing sound of the "Closer" monster in Silent Hill 3 is a looped audio recording of a rhinoceros breathing. Silent Hill Wiki
In Outer Wilds, the player character stays at the coordinates (0,0,0) while the entire solar system moves around them. This "floating origin" system was necessary because the map is so large that if the player moved normally, floating-point precision errors would cause the physics to jitter and break at the edge of the system. TechRadar
The ending slideshow of Fallout: New Vegas is not a pre-rendered video. The game teleports the player into a small, dark room, freezes their movement, and projects the slides onto a wall; the narrator's voice comes from an actual NPC (named "Ron the Narrator") standing physically behind the wall to deliver the audio lines. PC Gamer
The "Endless Stairs" in Super Mario 64 utilize an auditory illusion known as a Shepard Tone. The music consists of several sine waves separated by octaves; as the pitch rises, the highest note fades out while a lower note fades in, tricking the brain into hearing a constantly ascending pitch that never actually goes higher. Polygon
In the horror teaser P.T., players are constantly haunted by the sound of the ghost, Lisa, right behind them. Hackers later discovered that the game engine physically attaches Lisa's model to the player's back, ensuring her shadow and sound effects are always present, though the player cannot turn fast enough to see her. IGN
The story that Gandhi becomes a nuclear aggressor in Civilization due to an "integer underflow" bug is a myth. Creator Sid Meier confirmed in his memoir that C/C++ was not used for the first game and no such error existed; the behavior was a confirmation bias joke that the developers eventually embraced as a feature in sequels. Ars Technica
To create the visceral gore in Dead Space, the art team did not rely on drawings. They studied photos of real-world car crash victims and war injuries to accurately model how human flesh tears and bones protrude, a process the developers described as mentally exhausting. Eurogamer
The "Pit Stop" disc of Gran Turismo 2 (1999) featured a marketing gimmick where the disc itself was "scratch-and-sniff." When rubbed, the top of the CD-ROM released a chemical scent designed to smell like authentic pit lane rubber and fuel. IGN
The texture used for the "flesh" walls and bloody wounds in Doom (1993) was created by scanning a photograph of artist Kevin Cloud's knee. He had injured it on a hiking trip, and the team decided the scab and blood looked perfect for the game's hellish aesthetic. Shacknews
In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the "Explosive Gel" gadget was originally designed as a simple spray can. Developers changed it to automatically draw a Bat-symbol because playtesters repeatedly used the free-spray mechanic to draw crude genitalia on the walls. RockPaperShotgun
In Tony Hawk's Underground, the game engine did not support vehicles. To implement the driving sections, developers simply reused the skating code; the car is technically a giant skateboard with a car model attached, programmed not to "ollie" or grind rails. Game Informer
Prior to the shutdown of Final Fantasy XIV (1.0), developers replaced the standard moon texture with a larger model named "Dalamud." With every patch, they manually increased the size of the model in the skybox, creating a months-long, slow-motion apocalypse that culminated in the servers going offline permanently. PC Gamer
The pause menu in GoldenEye 007 (the watch interface) is not a 2D overlay. When the player presses pause, the game camera physically pans down to the character model's wrist to look at the 3D watch model, which is why the game world is still visible in the peripheral vision. GoldenEye Archive
The bridge in Shadow of the Colossus is so massive that the PlayStation 2 could not render it as a 3D object without crashing. The bridge the player sees is actually a 2D texture (a flat image) that uses forced perspective and scaling to trick the eye into seeing depth. Digital Foundry
To achieve the instant time-travel mechanic in the Titanfall 2 level "Effect and Cause," developers stacked two identical maps on top of each other—one in the "present" (ruined) and one in the "past" (pristine). When the player presses the time-travel button, the game simply teleports their coordinates vertically between the two maps, preserving their momentum and camera angle. Eurogamer
The mannequins in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are technically NPCs with a script that forces them to stand still. Occasionally, this script fails to load when the player enters a house, causing the wooden mannequins to wander around, breathe, or stare at the player. PC Gamer
In Silent Hill 2, players assumed for years that the protagonist James Sunderland was staring at his reflection in the opening mirror scene. By brightening the texture files, modders discovered that James's eyes are actually looking directly into the camera, making eye contact with the player. Polygon
The original Xbox release of Psychonauts almost failed certification because the game data was too small. The optical drive struggled to read the disc because the data was written too close to the center; developers fixed this by adding a massive dummy file named "WetBacon.bin" to push the game data toward the outer edge of the disc. Double Fine / YouTube
The "Tofu Survivor" mode in Resident Evil 2 originated from a debugging tool. Developers used a rectangular white block (hitbox) to test collision detection during development; they found the visual of a walking block funny and textured it to look like tofu for a secret unlockable mode. Resident Evil Wiki
The "Impact Time" mechanic in Burnout 3: Takedown—which allows players to steer their wrecked car in slow motion—was originally a bug. The game paused after a crash, but the camera continued moving; developers realized this was fun and programmed the ability to "push" the wreckage into other cars. GamesRadar
In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the boss fight with "The Sorrow" requires the player to walk up a river past the ghosts of enemies. The number of ghosts and their specific injuries correspond exactly to the enemies the player killed during that specific playthrough. Metal Gear Wiki
The opening cutscene of Grand Theft Auto III takes place in a "Ghost Town" that is hidden behind the hills of the map. This area is not solid and was never meant to be accessed, but players can reach it using the Dodo plane's flawed physics to fly outside the intended boundaries. GTA Wiki
The "Impossible Coin" in Super Mario 64 was a single coin placed underneath the geometry of "Tiny-Huge Island," making it mathematically impossible to collect. It remained uncollected for 18 years until a speedrunner utilized a frame-perfect glitch to clip through the floor and grab it in 2014. Destructoid
In Left 4 Dead, the "Director" AI monitors the players' stress levels by tracking variables such as ammunition, health, and recent kills. If the stress level is too high, the Director intentionally stops spawning enemies to give the team a "quiet moment" before the next wave. Shacknews
The mirror room in Super Mario 64 does not use a real-time reflection. Because the N64 could not handle the rendering math, the "mirror" is actually a window into a second, identical room where a second Mario model mimics the player's movements. Boundary Break / YouTube
In BioShock, the intro sequence where the player swims away from a plane crash is gameplay, not a cutscene. The water effects were so advanced for the time (2007) that many players sat idle, waiting for a non-existent video to finish, not realizing they had control of the character. IGN
The "Jockey" enemy in Left 4 Dead 2 was specifically designed to counter "turtling" (players standing back-to-back in a corner). The Jockey's ability to steer a Survivor away from the group forces players to break formation and chase their teammate. Valve Developer Wiki
In Final Fantasy VII, the final attack "Supernova" used by Sephiroth causes a status effect that confuses the party, but it cannot actually kill the players. Due to a math error in the damage calculation (it deals 15/16ths of current HP), it is mathematically impossible for the attack to reduce HP to zero. FF Wiki
The "Nuke" explosion in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was not an animated texture. It was a 3D sphere that expanded rapidly; the developers simply scaled up a standard explosion model until it swallowed the entire map. Boundary Break / YouTube
If the player has a microphone connected while playing Alien: Isolation on console, the game's audio engine listens for real-world ambient noise. If the player screams or speaks too loudly in their living room, the in-game Xenomorph hears the sound and is alerted to the player's hiding spot. Eurogamer
The face of the protagonist in the original Max Payne (2001) is a digitised photograph of the game's writer, Sam Lake. The developers operated on a limited budget and could not afford professional actors, so the development team modeled characters after themselves and their relatives. Game Informer
In Doom (2016), the soundtrack composer Mick Gordon hid satanic imagery within the audio frequencies. When the track "Cyberdemon" is run through a spectrogram, the visual waveform clearly displays the number "666" and multiple pentagrams. Polygon
The Pokémon move "Splash" is a mistranslation of the Japanese word "Haneru," which translates to "Hop." This explains why the move is a normal-type rather than a water-type, why non-water Pokémon (like Hoppip) can learn it, and why the game text states that "nothing happened" (the user simply hopped). Kantopia
GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 supports a control scheme labeled "2.x Galore" that allows a single player to use two controllers simultaneously. This setup enabled dual-analog movement (using the joystick on each controller) years before dual-analog gamepads became the industry standard. Radio Times
The skyboxes in the original Spyro the Dragon were generated using a panoramic renderer originally designed for flight simulators. This allowed the PlayStation 1 to display high-resolution, seamless skies without using fog to hide the draw distance, a rarity for the hardware. Gamasutra
The "Play of the Game" highlight in Overwatch is not a video recording. The game engine completely reloads the map and character models, then executes the recorded input data in real-time to re-enact the sequence from a specific camera angle. Point & Clickbait / Blizzard
In 2012, the developer of the indie game Fez refused to patch a known save-corruption bug on the Xbox 360 because Microsoft charged developers approximately $40,000 to re-certify a title update. Eurogamer
The cruise ship level in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception features a fully simulated ocean. The ship is a rigid body physics object floating on the programmed water, meaning the level geometry physically tilts and rocks in real-time, which caused motion sickness in several playtesters. Naughty Dog Blog
In Red Dead Redemption 2, animal carcasses persist in the open world and undergo a decomposition process over time. A dead animal will rot, bloat, attract flies, be eaten by scavengers, and eventually disappear, leaving only a skeleton. VG247
The racers in Mario Kart 64 are not 3D models. They are 2D pre-rendered sprites (billboards) that switch between 16 different angles depending on where the camera is positioned relative to the kart. Supper Mario Broth
Mr. Resetti, the mole in Animal Crossing who lectures players for resetting the console without saving, was made significantly less aggressive in later entries (specifically New Leaf) because his angry tirades in the GameCube and DS versions reportedly made young children cry. Polygon
The "Pitioss Ruins" dungeon in Final Fantasy XV was secretly created by a single developer. It features no enemies and relies entirely on complex platforming mechanics; the developer built it on his own initiative, and it was only officially added to the game in the final stages of production. USGamer
In Metal Gear Solid, if the player character has a cold (indicated by sneezing, which alerts guards), they can cure it by equipping and consuming the "Medicine" item. Metal Gear Wiki
God of War (2018) utilizes a "single-shot" camera technique, meaning the game never cuts away from the start to the end credits. To achieve this without loading screens, the developers utilized "Realm Travel" rooms and elevators to stream assets in the background while the characters were confined to a small area. Digital Foundry
The source code for Quake III Arena contains a fast inverse square root algorithm that utilizes the hexadecimal constant 0x5f3759df. This specific "magic number" allowed the engine to calculate vector normalization for lighting and reflections roughly four times faster than standard floating-point division hardware could at the time. Beyond3D
The "MissingNo." glitch in Pokémon Red and Blue occurs because the "Old Man" capture tutorial temporarily stores the player's name in the memory buffer designated for wild encounters. Flying immediately to Cinnabar Island prevents the buffer from clearing, causing the game to interpret the hexadecimal values of the player's name as wild Pokémon species data. Kotaku
The fluid animation in the original Prince of Persia (1989) was created using rotoscoping. Creator Jordan Mechner videotaped his younger brother running and jumping in a parking lot, then traced over the footage frame-by-frame to digitize the character's movement. Jordan Mechner Blog
In Burnout Paradise, motorcycle riders disappear instantly upon impact. The developers programmed the rider models to vanish during crash sequences to prevent the game from receiving a "Mature" rating, as ragdolling human bodies would have violated the criteria for the target "E10+" rating. Destructoid
The Nintendo 64 port of Resident Evil 2 compressed 1.2 gigabytes of data (two CD-ROMs) onto a single 64-megabyte cartridge. Angel Studios achieved this by utilizing aggressive audio compression and a system that dynamically lowered the resolution of the background images based on the scene's complexity. Digital Foundry
The cooking scenes in Dragon's Dogma 2 utilize high-definition video footage of real meat being grilled rather than CGI. Director Hideaki Itsuno stated that filming real meat was both cheaper and more visually appetizing than attempting to render photorealistic cooking physics. IGN
The "Simlish" language in The Sims was created to avoid repetitive dialogue. Improv actors generated the language by combining elements of Ukrainian, French, and Tagalog, ensuring the speech sounded emotional but remained unintelligible so players would not tire of hearing the same phrases. The Verge
The original Doom (1993) engine uses Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) and is not technically 3D. It cannot render one room directly above another; verticality is achieved through variable floor heights, meaning no two sectors can occupy the same X and Y coordinates at different Z elevations. Fabien Sanglard
In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the ice cubes in the tanker level melt in real-time based on physics calculations. The engine tracks the volume of each cube and slows the melting rate for cubes that are touching each other compared to those isolated in the bucket. Eurogamer
The 3D sprites in Donkey Kong Country were created using Advanced Computer Modelling (ACM). Rare rendered high-resolution 3D models on Silicon Graphics workstations, then captured 2D snapshots of the models from various angles to create sprites that the 16-bit SNES hardware could display. Nintendo Life
The repulsing and propelling gels in Portal 2 were adapted from an independent student project called Tag: The Power of Paint. Valve hired the entire student team from the DigiPen Institute of Technology to implement their paint mechanics into the Source engine. Game Informer
To capture the sky in Forza Horizon 3, Playground Games built a custom 12K resolution camera rig. They sent a team to the Australian outback to film the sky for 24 hours a day over several weeks to ensure accurate cloud formations and lighting cycles. Ars Technica
The liquid in the bottles in Half-Life: Alyx uses a dedicated shader to simulate viscosity and surface tension. The liquid is not a full physics simulation but a visual trick that calculates the "slosh" effect based on the velocity data from the player's VR controller. Polygon
The original Spyro the Dragon implemented a custom "Level of Detail" (LOD) engine that allowed distant objects to be rendered as low-poly models rather than disappearing into fog. This was a workaround for the PlayStation 1's limited geometry processing, creating one of the first open 3D environments without draw-distance fog. Gamasutra
In Super Mario 64, the texture used for the metal Mario power-up is not a reflection of the level. It is a static environment map of the castle courtyard that remains fixed on the model's surface regardless of where Mario is located in the game world. Supper Mario Broth
The "curved world" effect in Animal Crossing: Wild World and subsequent titles is achieved through a vertex shader. The game world is actually flat; the graphics engine bends the geometry along a cylindrical axis relative to the camera's position to simulate the appearance of a rolling log. SimonSchreibt
To ensure fairness in platforming, Celeste employs a mechanic known as "Coyote Time." The game code allows the player to input a jump command for several frames after their character has already walked off a ledge, preventing frustration caused by human reaction times. Game Developer
The original Myst (1993) was not built using a traditional game engine, but was programmed as a stack in HyperCard, a software typically used for interactive databases on the Macintosh. Ars Technica
In BioShock, the enemy AI is programmed to intentionally miss its first shot if the player has not taken damage recently. This "grace period" was implemented to warn the player of an enemy's presence without inflicting cheap, immediate damage from off-screen. Shacknews
The Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2 originated as a developer tool labeled the "Physgun." Valve created it solely to test the Havok physics engine by moving props around levels; they eventually realized manipulating objects was fun enough to be a core gameplay mechanic. Combine OverWiki
To optimize performance, Horizon Zero Dawn utilizes aggressive frustum culling where the game engine dynamically unloads and deletes any world geometry that is not within the player's direct field of view, effectively rebuilding the world in real-time as the camera turns. Kotaku
The "Diegetic" UI in Dead Space—where health and ammo are displayed on the character's suit rather than a HUD overlay—was designed to increase immersion. However, early playtesters were confused by the lack of traditional menus, forcing developers to add explicit tutorial prompts explaining the suit's lights. Engadget
In Guitar Hero, the audio stems for the guitar track are separate from the rest of the song. When a player misses a note, the game simply mutes the guitar stem volume while the drums and vocals continue playing, creating the illusion that the musician has stopped playing. Gizmodo
The SNES version of SimCity replaces the "Godzilla" disaster with "Bowser" due to licensing issues. While Godzilla appeared in the original PC version, Nintendo substituted their own character to avoid paying royalties to Toho Co., Ltd. The Cutting Room Floor
In Star Wars: Battlefront (2004), the AI bots do not actually use vehicle physics when flying. Instead, they follow pre-determined splines (paths) in the sky; if a player hijacks an AI-controlled ship, the game instantly switches the physics model from "on-rails" to "player-controlled." Gamasutra
The Leviathan Axe in God of War (2018) does not travel in a straight line when recalled. The code applies a variable curve to the weapon's return path to ensure it avoids colliding with enemies or terrain that might block it, while also "wiggling" in flight to simulate weight. Gamasutra
The reflections in Lego Star Wars: The Video Game are created by rendering the entire room a second time. The game draws an inverted, duplicate version of the room and characters below the shiny floor texture, as the hardware could not handle ray-traced reflections. TT Games
In Splatoon, the hit detection rate (tick rate) is 16Hz, meaning the game updates the state of ink and player positions only 16 times per second. This low update rate often results in "trade kills" where two players splat each other simultaneously due to network latency. Eurogamer
The "paper parchment" art style in Okami is achieved using a post-processing filter. The 3D world is rendered normally, then passed through a mesh filter that flattens the color palette and adds a noise texture to simulate the texture of rice paper. Capcom Unity
In World of Warcraft, the flight paths (gryphons/wyverns) operate by spawning an invisible NPC vehicle that moves along a predetermined rail. The player character is "seated" on this invisible object, which is why players sometimes experience bugs where the mount disappears, leaving them swimming through the air. WoWpedia
The "Stop 'n' Swop" feature in Banjo-Kazooie was designed to transfer items between games by quickly swapping cartridges while the N64 was turned off, relying on the RAM to hold data for a few seconds. The feature was scrapped because newer N64 hardware revisions cleared the RAM almost instantly, making the swap impossible to perform in time. Rare
In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, shooting the moon with a sniper rifle causes it to cycle through varying sizes. The developers implemented this easter egg because the art team disagreed on the appropriate size for the moon texture, so they allowed the player to choose. Kotaku
The NPCs in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are generated using an evolution of the Wii's "Mii" avatar system. The game utilizes a file format called "UMii" to render the characters, which allows the engine to populate the world with hundreds of distinct faces using very little data. Polygon
The notoriously difficult tutorial in the original Driver (1999) was intentionally designed to be nearly impossible to beat. The developers confirmed they spiked the difficulty of the opening "Garage" mission to prevent players from finishing the game during a standard two-day Blockbuster rental. VG247
The "Breencast" screens in Half-Life 2 do not play pre-recorded video files. The game engine projects a live camera feed of the actual Dr. Breen NPC, who acts out his speeches in real-time while standing in a hidden black room located outside the boundaries of the playable map. Combine OverWiki
Perfect Dark originally included a feature that allowed players to map their own faces onto in-game characters using the Game Boy Camera. Rareware removed the feature shortly before launch due to the political controversy surrounding violent video games following the Columbine High School shooting. IGN
The sound effects in Super Mario Galaxy are dynamically synchronized to the background music. When Mario collects a coin or performs a jump, the game engine pitch-shifts the sound effect to match the current key and chord progression of the soundtrack. 8-Bit Music Theory / YouTube
In early versions of Minecraft, a terrain generation bug known as the "Far Lands" appeared at the edge of the map (12.5 million blocks from spawn). Floating-point precision errors in the noise generator caused the terrain to warp into a massive, distorted wall of geometry. Minecraft Wiki
To manage the limited memory of the PlayStation 1, Crash Bandicoot co-creator Dave Baggett wrote a custom software pager in the programming language LISP. The tool allowed the game to swap 64KB pages of data between the CD and RAM dynamically, bypassing the console's standard memory management libraries. Andy Gavin's Blog
The factory building game Satisfactory includes an "Arachnophobia Mode" that does not remove the spider-like enemies, but instead obscures them with 2D sprites of cats. The developers utilized the cat images because they felt the glitchy, floating sprites were just as unnerving as the actual spiders. PC Gamer
The original "Fire Temple" music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time contained samples of Islamic prayer chanting. Nintendo recalled the initial cartridge run and replaced the track in version 1.1 to avoid potential religious offense, though the chanting remains in the GameCube re-release due to an oversight. Zelda Dungeon
The soundtrack for the indie game Fez contains hidden images embedded in the audio frequencies. When specific tracks are run through a spectrogram, the visual waveforms reveal photos of historical figures and QR codes that unlock in-game secrets. IGN
In World of Warcraft, the "Corrupted Blood" incident of 2005 saw a debuff accidentally spread from a high-level raid boss to the general population. The virtual plague killed thousands of players and was later studied by epidemiologists as a model for real-world human behavior during a pandemic. CDC / Lancet
The "Guile Handcuffs" glitch in the original arcade version of Street Fighter II allowed Guile to freeze his opponent in place permanently. It was caused by an overflow error in the charge move calculation, which the game interpreted as a command to lock the opponent's sprite coordinates. Street Fighter Wiki
The PlayStation 2 version of Okami features a hidden minigame on the loading screens. Players can mash buttons to create paw prints that fill the screen; filling the screen completely awards the player with a "Demon Fang," a rare in-game currency. Okami Wiki
The flight AI for the Vertibird aircraft in Fallout 4 is a modified version of the dragon AI from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Because the code was originally designed for a creature that swoops and hovers near targets, the Vertibirds exhibit similar erratic behavior and frequently crash into the terrain. PC Gamer
In Pokémon Red and Blue, the "Psychic" type is completely immune to "Ghost" type attacks due to a coding error in the type-effectiveness lookup table. Although the strategy guide and anime stated that Ghost moves should be super-effective against Psychic types, the glitch made Psychic Pokémon virtually overpowered until it was patched in Gold and Silver. Bulbapedia
The "Heavy Metal Choir" in the Doom Eternal soundtrack is not a professional chorus, but a recording of game developers and fans. Composer Mick Gordon invited attendees of QuakeCon to a recording studio to scream the fictional Slayer chant "Kar En Tuk" in unison. Polygon
In Metroid Prime, the game masks loading times by making doors take several seconds to open after being shot. If the player traverses a room too quickly, the door remains locked while the engine finishes streaming the next room into memory. Gamasutra
Geralt's beard in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt grows in real-time based on the in-game clock. Developers utilized a "HairWorks" state system that gradually transitions the facial hair model from "clean-shaven" to "full beard" as the player spends time exploring. Eurogamer
The G-Man seen in the introductory tram ride of Half-Life is not a scripted animation, but a standard NPC. He is standing inside a small, invisible box that moves alongside the tram train to ensure he remains in the player's field of view during the sequence. PC Gamer
In Grand Theft Auto V, if the protagonist Michael De Santa wears flip-flops, the game engine simulates the physics of the sandal separating from his heel. The audio engine also switches the footstep sound effect from a standard "thud" to a "slap" to match the animation. IGN
A long-standing myth that the Star Fox characters had their legs amputated and replaced with metal prosthetics to withstand G-force was debunked by Nintendo. Character designer Takaya Imamura confirmed the metal legs were simply high-tech boots designed to look like pilot gear. Nintendo Life
Final Fantasy VII began development as a detective game intended for the Nintendo 64. Square moved the project to the PlayStation because the N64 cartridges did not offer enough storage capacity for the pre-rendered backgrounds and full-motion video files they wanted to use. Polygon
In Batman: Arkham City, the villain Calendar Man recites unique dialogue if the player visits him on specific real-world holidays. He has a special hidden monologue that only triggers if the console date is set to December 13, 2004—the date Rocksteady Studios was founded. Eurogamer
The faces of the enemy soldiers in GoldenEye 007 are low-resolution photographs of the Rare development team. Due to the limited N64 texture memory, the developers mapped their own faces onto the enemy models rather than hiring actors. Den of Geek
Sonya Blade was not in the original design document for Mortal Kombat. She was added late in the development cycle after the team decided the roster needed a female fighter, replacing a planned character named Stryker (who was later added in Mortal Kombat 3). Game Informer
Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 Assembly language rather than a higher-level language like C++. This low-level optimization allowed the game to simulate thousands of individual park guests with distinct AI behaviors on the limited hardware of 1999 without performance drops. PC Gamer
The "Sanity Effects" in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem were designed to break the fourth wall. If the character's sanity meter dropped too low, the game would simulate a television volume mute, display a "Blue Screen of Death," or falsely inform the player that their memory card data had been deleted. IGN
The final boss of Doom II, the "Icon of Sin," plays a demonic voice clip that is actually a reversed message saying, "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero." Using a "noclip" cheat code reveals that the boss's hitbox is a sprite of designer John Romero's severed head impaled on a spike behind the wall. Shacknews
The CryEngine used for the original Crysis renders an infinite ocean plane at the zero-elevation level across the entire map. Even when the player is deep inland or atop a mountain, the game is still rendering the water surface underneath the terrain geometry. TweakTown
EarthBound includes a multi-layered anti-piracy measure. If the cartridge detects it is a bootleg, it spawns enemies at a significantly higher rate; if the player manages to reach the final boss despite this, the game freezes and deletes the save file entirely. Starmen.net
In Metal Gear Solid, Colonel Campbell instructs the player to find Meryl's Codec frequency on "the back of the CD case." This was not an in-game item, but a reference to the physical jewel case the game was sold in, which featured a screenshot of the Codec screen showing the frequency 140.15. Kotaku
The recurrent door code "0451" found in immersive sims like System Shock, Deus Ex, and BioShock was the actual door code for the Cambridge offices of Looking Glass Studios, the developer of the original System Shock. Polygon
The physics glitch in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that causes giants tolaunch players into the stratosphere when hitting themwith a club was discovered prior to release. Bethesda developers chose not to patch it because they deemed it entertaining and consistent with the game's chaotic nature. PC Gamer
The second disc of Xenogears shifts abruptly from standard RPG gameplay to a visual novel format where characters narrate the events while sitting in a chair. This drastic change occurred because the team exhausted their budget and development time, forcing them to condense the final chapters to ship the game. Kotaku
In Superman Returns (2006), the protagonist has no health bar because Superman is invulnerable. Instead, the game displays a "City Health" meter; the player loses if Metropolis takes too much collateral damage from enemy attacks or the player's own reckless actions. GameSpot
LucasArts developed the iMUSE (Interactive Music Streaming Engine) system for Monkey Island 2 and Star Wars: TIE Fighter. The engine allowed MIDI audio tracks to branch and transition seamlessly between different arrangements in real-time based on the player's actions, such as entering a building or starting a dogfight. The International House of Mojo
The walking animation for the tripod "Striders" in Half-Life 2 was modeled directly after the gait of a giraffe. Valve animators studied footage of giraffes running to ensure the alien bio-mechanical movement felt grounded and physically plausible. Combine OverWiki
The Nintendo 64 logo that spins on the screen upon booting the console is a 3D model composed of exactly 64 faces and 64 vertices. Reddit / Model Analysis
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the size of the map is restricted by the floating-point precision of the PlayStation 2. If the player travels too far from the center of the map (coordinates 0,0), the physics engine begins to degrade, causing the "jittering" effect seen in aircraft at high altitudes. GTA Wiki
Assassin's Creed began development as a spinoff of Prince of Persia titled Prince of Persia: Assassins. Ubisoft rebranded the project after deciding that a game focused on an assassin escorting a prince deviated too significantly from the core franchise's narrative. Polygon
The character Kratos in God of War (2005) originally had blue tattoos. During development, the team changed the color to red because the blue design looked too similar to the Barbarian class in Diablo II. PlayStation Blog
The "Companion Cube" in Portal was originally a sphere. Playtesters frequently lost the object because it rolled away from them; Valve changed the shape to a cube solely to ensure it would stay in place when dropped. Game Informer
The "Swing Set Glitch" in Grand Theft Auto IV launches vehicles at high speeds due to a physics error. The game engine stores excessive potential energy in the chains when they are compressed by a vehicle; this energy is released instantly, catapulting the car. GTA Wiki
The "Pendant" starting gift in Dark Souls has no in-game function. Director Hidetaka Miyazaki confirmed he included the item as a prank to mislead players into searching for a non-existent secret or gameplay mechanic. Eurogamer
In Left 4 Dead, the "Witch" enemy's crying sounds are recordings of a voice actor crying, but slowed down and pitch-shifted. The team originally experimented with putting her in a wedding dress, but scrapped the idea for being too cliché. Left 4 Dead Wiki
The "Klobb" submachine gun in GoldenEye 007 was named after Ken Lobb, a Nintendo of America developer. The team named the gun after him as a joke because it was the weakest and most inaccurate weapon in the game. Nintendo Life
The chainsaw sprite in the original Doom (1993) was digitized from a real McCulloch Eager Beaver chainsaw. The art team borrowed the tool from Tom Hall's girlfriend and scanned it from multiple angles to create the in-game frames. Doom Wiki
In the original Street Fighter II, players could not select the same character (e.g., Ryu vs. Ryu) because the game code did not support palette swapping. This feature was added in the Champion Edition update to allow distinct colors for identical sprites. Street Fighter Wiki
The laugh of the Boos in Super Mario 64 is a pitch-shifted recording of Bowser's laugh. The developers sped up the audio clip to create the high-pitched cackle used for the ghosts. Supper Mario Broth
The map layout of Midwich Elementary School in the original Silent Hill is based on the floor plan of the school from the 1990 film Kindergarten Cop. Destructoid
In Metal Gear Solid 4, the installation screens feature Solid Snake smoking a cigarette. The behavior of the smoke is interactive; it reacts to the motion sensors in the PlayStation 3 controller, drifting in the direction the player tilts the gamepad. Metal Gear Wiki
The "Circus of Values" vending machines in BioShock are voiced by the game's creative director, Ken Levine. He recorded the lines as a placeholder, but the team decided to keep his performance in the final game. BioShock Wiki
The E3 2003 demo for Halo 2 featured a fully scripted graphics engine that was distinct from the actual game code. The engine used for the demo could not run the full game, forcing Bungie to discard the demo assets and rebuild the campaign engine, leading to significant content cuts. Eurogamer
The "door opening" animations in the original Resident Evil were necessary to mask loading times on the PlayStation hardware. In the GameCube remake, the hardware could load rooms instantly, but the developers retained the animations to maintain the game's pacing and tension. IGN
The white towers that appear during the PlayStation 2 boot sequence represent the save data on the memory card. The columns grow in height and number as the player creates more save files. Business Insider
The ambient menu music of the Nintendo GameCube is actually the startup jingle of the Famicom Disk System slowed down by 16 times. IGN
The theme song for Civilization IV, titled "Baba Yetu," was the first piece of video game music to win a Grammy Award. It won for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) in 2011. Guinness Records
Scott Cawthon created Five Nights at Freddy's after his previous game, Chipper & Sons Lumber Co., was criticized for having characters that moved like "creepy animatronics." He leaned into the criticism to create a horror franchise. Polygon
Pac-Man was originally titled Puck-Man. Namco changed the name for the North American release due to concerns that vandals would scratch the "P" on arcade cabinets to look like an "F". Wired
Nintendo named their mascot "Mario" after Mario Segale, the landlord of their American warehouse. He had interrupted a company meeting to demand overdue rent, prompting the team to name the character Jumpman after him. NPR
Before entering the video game industry, Nintendo experimented with various business ventures in the 1960s, including a taxi service, instant rice, vacuum cleaners, and "love hotels." Kotaku
In Tomb Raider II, players could lock the butler, Winston, inside the mansion's walk-in freezer. He would shiver and turn blue, but the developers never programmed a way for him to escape. IGN
The reflection seen on the Metal Mario trophy (and others) in Super Smash Bros. Melee is not a game environment, but a texture map of a real-world Japanese kitchen, likely from the studio where the game was developed. Supper Mario Broth
Shigeru Miyamoto drew inspiration for the Star Fox series from the Fushimi Inari-taisha shrine in Kyoto. The shrine is famous for its thousands of torii gates, which inspired the game's arches, and its fox statues. Iwata Asks
Mega Man is blue because the NES hardware had a limited color palette. Blue offered the widest range of shades (cyan, light blue, dark blue), allowing the artists to add more detail to the sprite than other colors permitted. Polygon
Rhydon was the first Pokémon ever designed and programmed into the game data. This is why Rhydon statues appear frequently in the gyms throughout the original Red and Blue games. Game Informer
The falsetto "Toasty!" line heard in Mortal Kombat is the voice of sound designer Dan Forden. His face appears in the corner of the screen briefly when the line is played. Polygon
The alien ambient background noise on the original Xbox dashboard consists of altered audio recordings of actual NASA transmissions from the Apollo missions. Engadget
The rumor of a secret boss named "Shen Long" in Street Fighter II stemmed from a mistranslation of Ryu's victory quote: "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance." "Sheng Long" was a misreading of "Shoryuken" (Dragon Punch), but the myth was so popular Capcom later created Gouken to fit the lore. Capcom
The Game Boy that survived a barracks bombing in the 1990–1991 Gulf War is still functional. It is currently on display at the Nintendo NY store in Rockefeller Center, continuously running Tetris. Nintendo Life
In Super Mario World, Mario is not pointing forward when Yoshi extends his tongue. Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that the original animation depicts Mario punching Yoshi in the back of the head to force the tongue out. IGN
The Dreamcast Fishing Controller contains motion sensors that make it compatible with the fighting game SoulCalibur. Players can swing the rod to execute sword attacks. GameSpot
Fallout was originally developed as a licensed game based on the GURPS tabletop RPG system. The license was revoked late in development due to the game's violence, forcing the developers to create the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system from scratch. PC Gamer
The voice of the bizarre fish creature in the Dreamcast game Seaman was provided by Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek), who recorded the narration shortly before the game's release. Eurogamer
In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, if the player kills the young Ocelot, the game ends instantly with the message "Time Paradox," because Ocelot is required to be alive for the events of the later games in the series. Metal Gear Wiki
The "Deep Jungle" world from Kingdom Hearts (based on Tarzan) never appeared in subsequent games because the rights to the property reverted to the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which refused to license it again. CBR
The manual mechanic in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was added because professional skater Rodney Mullen played a pre-release build and told the developers the game felt "broken" without the ability to link tricks on flat ground. Jenkem Magazine
The distinct high-pitched whine of Sam Fisher's night vision goggles in Splinter Cell is a recording of the camera flash capacitor charging on a disposable camera. Splinter Cell Wiki
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was heavily inspired by the TV show Twin Peaks. Director Takashi Tezuka wanted to create a "suspicious" atmosphere with a small cast of eccentric characters in a mysterious town. Iwata Asks
The PlayStation controller symbols were designed with specific meanings: Circle and Cross represented "Yes" and "No" (common in Japan), Triangle represented a viewpoint or head, and Square represented a piece of paper or menu. Kotaku
Programmer Jacques Servin was fired from Maxis after he secretly inserted code into SimCopter that caused shirtless men in swimming trunks (called "hunks") to spawn in massive numbers on specific dates and kiss each other. Snopes
Upon seeing the violence in GoldenEye 007, Shigeru Miyamoto suggested that the game should end with James Bond visiting all the enemies he shot in the hospital to show they were just actors. The Guardian
The original Witcher game (2007) was built using a heavily modified version of BioWare's Aurora Engine, which was originally designed for the 2002 game Neverwinter Nights. Eurogamer
Pikmin originated from a technical demo called "Super Mario 128," which was designed to test the GameCube's ability to display over 100 independent AI characters on screen simultaneously. IGN
The wooden shield in Bloodborne is intentionally useless. Its item description mocks players who rely on blocking (common in Dark Souls), stating that shields "engender passivity." VG247
Chex Quest, a game distributed in cereal boxes in 1996, is a total conversion mod of Doom. It uses the same engine and geometry, simply replacing demons with "Flemoids" and guns with "Zorchers." PC Gamer
Tetris was the first video game played in space. Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov played it on a Game Boy during a mission to the Mir space station in 1993. Guinness Records
In Pokemon Yellow, Pikachu's voice clips are the only digitized voice acting in the game. To save space, the sound engine generates the cry by manipulating a single short recording of the voice actor saying "Pika" at different speeds and pitches. The Cutting Room Floor
The "Cow Level" in Diablo II was created because fans rumored it existed in the first Diablo. Blizzard denied it for years, then eventually added the "Secret Cow Level" as an easter egg to honor the community myth. Diablo Wiki
The Game Boy that survived a barracks bombing in the 1990–1991 Gulf War is still functional. It was displayed at the Nintendo NY store in Rockefeller Center for years, continuously running Tetris despite its melted chassis. Nintendo Life
In Super Mario World, Mario is not pointing forward when Yoshi extends his tongue. Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that the original sprite animation depicts Mario punching Yoshi in the back of the head to force the tongue out. IGN
The Sega Dreamcast Fishing Controller contains motion sensors that make it compatible with the fighting game SoulCalibur. Players can swing the rod to execute sword attacks, a feature not listed in the manual. GameSpot
Fallout was originally developed as a licensed game based on the GURPS tabletop RPG system. The license was revoked late in development due to the game's excessive violence, forcing the developers to create the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system from scratch. PC Gamer
The voice of the human-faced fish in the Dreamcast game Seaman was provided by Leonard Nimoy (Spock from Star Trek), who recorded the extensive narration shortly before the game's release. Eurogamer
In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, if the player kills the young Ocelot, the game ends instantly with the unique "Time Paradox" screen because Ocelot is required to be alive for the events of the later games in the timeline. Metal Gear Wiki
The "Deep Jungle" world from Kingdom Hearts (based on Tarzan) never appeared in subsequent games because the rights to the property reverted to the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which refused to license it again. CBR
The manual mechanic in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was added because professional skater Rodney Mullen played a pre-release build and told the developers the game felt "broken" without the ability to link tricks on flat ground. Jenkem Magazine
The distinct high-pitched whine of Sam Fisher's night vision goggles in Splinter Cell is a recording of the capacitor charging on a disposable camera flash. Splinter Cell Wiki
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was heavily inspired by the TV show Twin Peaks. Director Takashi Tezuka wanted to create a "suspicious" atmosphere populated by a small cast of eccentric characters in a mysterious town. Iwata Asks
The PlayStation controller symbols were designed with specific meanings: Circle and Cross represented "Yes" and "No" (standard in Japan), Triangle represented a viewpoint or head, and Square represented a piece of paper or menu. Kotaku
Programmer Jacques Servin was fired from Maxis after he secretly inserted code into SimCopter that caused shirtless men in swimming trunks (called "hunks") to spawn in massive numbers on specific dates and kiss each other. Snopes
Upon seeing the violence in GoldenEye 007, Shigeru Miyamoto suggested that the game should end with James Bond visiting all the enemies he shot in the hospital to show the player they were just actors. The Guardian
The original The Witcher game (2007) was built using a heavily modified version of BioWare's Aurora Engine, which was originally licensed for the 2002 game Neverwinter Nights. Eurogamer
Pikmin originated from a technical demo called "Super Mario 128," which was designed to test the GameCube's ability to display over 100 independent AI characters on screen simultaneously. IGN
The wooden shield in Bloodborne is intentionally useless. Its item description mocks players who rely on blocking (common in Dark Souls), stating that shields "engender passivity." VG247
Chex Quest, a game distributed in cereal boxes in 1996, is a total conversion mod of Doom. It uses the exact same engine and geometry, simply replacing demons with "Flemoids" and guns with "Zorchers." PC Gamer
Tetris was the first video game played in space. Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov played it on a Game Boy during a mission to the Mir space station in 1993. Guinness Records
In Pokemon Yellow, Pikachu's voice clips are the only digitized voice acting in the game. To save cartridge space, the sound engine generates the cry by manipulating a single short recording of the voice actor saying "Pika" at different speeds and pitches. The Cutting Room Floor
The "Cow Level" in Diablo II was created because fans rumored it existed in the first Diablo. Blizzard denied it for years, then eventually added the "Secret Cow Level" as an easter egg to honor the community myth. Diablo Wiki
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was originally intended to be a licensed Warhammer game. When Games Workshop declined the partnership, Blizzard retooled the art assets and lore to create their own fantasy universe. Kotaku
The screeching sound made by the Ghasts in Minecraft is actually an audio recording of music producer C418's cat, which he accidentally disturbed while it was sleeping. Reddit (AMA)
In the Pokémon Red and Blue beta, the poison-type Pokémon Koffing and Weezing were named "Ny" and "La." These names were a reference to the heavy smog and pollution found in New York and Los Angeles. The Cutting Room Floor
Lara Croft's iconic ponytail is missing in the original Tomb Raider (1996). It was present in the beta, but the physics engine caused the hair to glitch and clip through her head, so developers cut it for the final release. IGN
The map screen in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is not a pre-rendered image. It is the actual 3D game world with the camera zoomed out and the level-of-detail (LOD) settings maxed out to render the terrain from a high altitude. Game Informer
The "Tallboys" in Dishonored were originally designed as street lamp lighters. The developers liked the stilt-walker design so much that they repurposed them into the terrifying armored city guards seen in the final game. PC Gamer
In Goat Simulator, the ladder climbing animation shows the goat stiffly levitating upwards. This was not a stylistic choice but a result of the developer failing to program a quadruped climbing animation, so they left the broken physics in. Gamasutra
The character Dan Hibiki in Street Fighter Alpha was created as a parody of Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia from SNK's Art of Fighting. His gi, hairstyle, and exaggerated taunts mock the rival company's design tropes. Street Fighter Wiki
The 9-hole golf course in Wii Sports is not an original design. It is a 3D recreation of the courses from the 1984 NES game Golf, originally programmed by Satoru Iwata. Iwata Asks
The recipe for the cake in Portal, which is recited by the GLaDOS intelligence core, contains "fish-shaped crackers," "sediment-shaped sediment," and "an entry called 'how to kill someone with your bare hands'." Portal Wiki
The bread in Yakuza: Like a Dragon is rendered with a custom shader and an exceptionally high polygon count. The director was dissatisfied with how food looked in previous games and demanded hyper-realistic bread physics. Automaton Media
In Grand Theft Auto V, the GPS signal on the minimap disappears when the player enters a tunnel. This is not a loading error, but a programmed detail mimicking real-world satellite signal loss. IGN
The "Fission Mailed" screen in Metal Gear Solid 2 is a fake game-over screen that appears during the simulation glitch sequence. The game remains playable in a small window in the corner while the fake error is displayed. Metal Gear Wiki
The "Devil Trigger" mechanic in Devil May Cry originated from a bug in Onimusha: Warlords. During testing, enemies would occasionally juggle players in the air indefinitely; designers liked the aerial combat and evolved it into DMC. 1UP / EGM
Toriel, the motherly figure in Undertale, is named after the word "Tutorial," as her primary role in the game is to guide the player through the game's mechanics in the Ruins. Undertale Wiki
In Halo 3, the faces of the developers are hidden on the underside of the "Monkey People" easter egg found in the Sierra 117 level. The low-poly cavemen models use photos of Bungie staff for textures. Halo Wiki
The walking sound in Among Us is a recording of the developer, Marcus Bromander, walking on the back of a canvas painting. Twitter
The "Creeper" face in Minecraft can be seen in the sandstone texture of the hieroglyphs. This was an intentional texture edit by Notch to embed the game's mascot into the ancient block design. Minecraft Wiki
To defeat Psycho Mantis in Metal Gear Solid, players are often required to physically unplug their controller and insert it into the second controller port. This prevents the boss from "reading" the player's inputs and dodging every attack. IGN
The Xbox was originally named the "DirectX Box" because the console was built using Microsoft's DirectX graphics technology. The marketing team shortened the name after focus groups initially rejected the full title. IGN
The turrets in Portal do not fire bullets in a traditional sense. Instead, they use a spring mechanism to launch the entire cartridge—casing and projectile together—resulting in "65% more bullet per bullet." Game Informer
In Far Cry 4, the player can beat the game in roughly 15 minutes by simply waiting at the dinner table during the opening sequence. If the player does not flee, the antagonist Pagan Min returns and grants a peaceful ending. Eurogamer
As the narrative of Spec Ops: The Line becomes progressively darker, the loading screen tips transition from standard gameplay advice to accusatory statements directed at the player, such as "Do you feel like a hero yet?" Polygon
In the original Half-Life, rapidly pressing the "Use" key on the microwave in the break room causes the casserole inside to explode. This action kills the nearby scientist, who remarks, "My God, what are you doing?" PC Gamer
The urban legend that Atari buried thousands of unsold E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cartridges in a New Mexico landfill was proven true in 2014. An excavation team unearthed the games, confirming the 1983 disposal. BBC News
The Sony PlayStation began development as a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. When Nintendo publicly broke the partnership to work with Philips, Sony executives decided to develop the hardware as a standalone console. The Verge
Due to licensing restrictions, Disney allowed Mickey Mouse to appear in only one scene in the original Kingdom Hearts. To work around this, developers displayed his silhouette in the distance for that single scene. IGN
The Goombas in Super Mario Bros. were the last enemy added to the game. Developers included them because playtesters found the Koopa Troopas too difficult to defeat in the first level, requiring a simpler enemy. Iwata Asks
The Sega Dreamcast logo is orange in Japan and North America, but blue in Europe. This change was made to avoid a trademark dispute with the German video game publisher Tivola, which used a similar orange swirl. GameSpot
L.A. Noire utilized "MotionScan" technology, which used 32 cameras to capture an actor's facial performance from every angle. This resulted in highly realistic faces but meant developers could not edit the facial animations by hand. The Guardian
The Warthog in Halo: Combat Evolved features four-wheel steering. This functionality originated from a bug in the physics code, but Bungie developers decided to keep it because it made the vehicle more maneuverable and fun to drive. Eurogamer
The iconic voice of Scorpion shouting "Get Over Here!" in Mortal Kombat is provided by the game's co-creator, Ed Boon. He has voiced the character in almost every iteration of the franchise since 1992. Polygon
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night features an "Inverted Castle" that serves as the second half of the game. Developers added this by flipping the existing map assets upside down, effectively doubling the game's length without creating new geometry. Eurogamer