10 Creepiest Unexplained Glitches in Video Games

Sometimes you’re playing a video game when you run into a glitch that makes you think... what just happened? This is why today we’re looking at the 10 creepiest unexplainable glitches in video games.

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Thank you to my friend and YouTuber Slippy Slides for helping get the footage for this video. Subscribe to his channel here:

Games Featured SPOILERS

Grand Theft Auto 4
FEAR 2
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Postal 4: No Regerts
Like a Dragon: Ishin
Crash Team Racing
Friday the 13th
Halo 2
Noita

Clips and References

Grand Theft Auto 4

FEAR 2

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Postal 4: No Regerts

Like a Dragon: Ishin!

Friday the 13th

Halo 2

Fan art by Artkid

Thumbnail art by Goiaba.

Assistant producer: Mrs Odd

Special thanks to Sean Crosby, Ian Benton, Cimbone, and Gonzo for their contributions to this video.

#oddheader

Music From Oddheader:

[WWEdeadman]

For he Amnesia one, with the weird physics the game sometimes has, I could see that being a box or some other moveable object just glitching out and flying across the screen.

[JoeCool]

The kate glitch is kinda wholesome, she gets to have one last date before she passes on to the afterlife

[GrahamBurgers]

Graham here! (I did the Noita footage at 14:45!) The altar has been suspected to appear because of a consequence of the way Noita loads certain structures to spawn in, where the overlap between biomes can sometimes cause incorrect objects to appear.
It's my pet theory that the runes/glyphs on the altar are an early version of the full glyph alphabet found in the final game. Though there's definitely still a lot to learn about them!

[thesucc]

Kate showing up as an "Unknown Caller" may be caused by the game's code marking her as dead/nonexistent after the game's ending. it's also likely she doesn't exist in Niko's phone contacts anymore, so the game essentially 'deletes' her, the "Unknown Caller" ID is most likely a placeholder name.
This is all just speculation though, I'm not a game programmer but I've seen similar cases in other games.

[smokemidigofoolish]

The Kate glitch is kinda sad. The fact she never calls after makes it seem like Niko was hallucinating the whole thing

[ImperiousMax]

I think what's fascinating about the pink blob from Like a Dragon: Ishin is the pink light is reflected off of the water in the footage. It's clearly an object in the scene that's able to emit like that bounces off of the environment. Given there were birds around in the shot, I'd guess it was one of the birds glitching out.

[niklikourentzos]

There's this pretty creepy glitch in an indie game called Pentiment. The dialogue probability bar appears, the game freezes, and you are sent back to the menu. When you reload the save, it is permanently midnight, everyone in town is missing, your memories are erased, and you cannot proceed in the story.

[linsidious]

The Crash Team Racing glitch has been well known for some time now. Its called The Language Glitch and its used in speedrunning as it shortens the boss cutscenes.

[usb]

The "Little Dude" in the Apollo Justice is actually the rope and stanchion that appears next to Apollo in the court. The dialog box is from Apollo, and you can see at 4:12 that the pole is in the exact spot as the "Little Dude" seconds before he is put on screen. The face is most likely just the lighting of the sphere on top.

[LPnob]

Glitches and falling through the terrain are far scarier than anything a developer could have intentionally planned

[BodhiDon]

The Crash Team Racing glitch probably sets a "current language" value to an invalid state of -1. Assuming they have unique lipsync animations for each boss character, it selects from a list of animations at the boss' start index + language offset. Since it's -1 is picks the last animation of the previous boss in the list

[Simon_Loves_Art]

The Apollo Justice one is the bollard & rope barrier yoke from the courtroom glitching into the scene. No idea what causes it but it's there with it's usual colours when the camera's on Apollo

[Kaysab]

The Halo ghost was solved forever ago, it’s just a network issue. It was diagnosed and was made easily repeatable. It’s still a fun part of Halo’s history but it definitely isn’t some unsolved secret or anything

[sakenem]

I completely forgot about the ghost of lockout, that took me way back. Halo 2 managed to be the greatest conduit for horror like this, anyone remember the gate to hell on coagulation?

[wasuh]

That fear 2 glitch with Alma being smacked in to the cosmos had me out loud laughing. No shame

[jamesbland]

That Postal glitch was definitely a Postal glitch, those games are made with duck tape, spit, and a lot of love and care.

[fancyferro]

Theres actually a reason for the Halo ghost, when a player disconnects during a privet session or disconnects from the host of a multiplayer lobby, the game attempts to auto reconnect them assuming their internet is still stable (witch is usually the case). Somtimes this causes Halo to freak out, leaving the disconnected player appearing to be still in the game and the ''ghost'' actually being the player that disconnected and reconnected instantly, hence why the ''ghost'' doesnt have any animations or gamer tag

[legendarynaga]

I had the same glitch in FEAR 2. Alma becomes less scary in FEAR 1 when you realise her kid form is actually helping you. Usually checking the area she spawns from has hidden ammo and she usually appears to take out enemies in front of you (scripted instances, but still).

[charlesworthless]

I was once playing F13 The Game and got killed in a closet, which for some reason caused the camera to immediately close up to Jason’s face. Honestly, don’t think I’ve thrown my controller in fear so hard.

[EphyMusicOfficial]

For that pink ishin bug, this sort of thing happens when some sort of object/texture isn't being culled out when you stand in a particular area or when you look in a specific direction from the right angles on a map. Definitely a bug, nothing nefarious. Something got hecked there. Not sure why it moves when in view and stops when not in view. Perhaps it's something tied to a value of how long something has been in view?