Bugs in games you've made a storyline for?

[D-Class 198482]

Once upon a time I was playing New Vegas and after romping around being a dick to everybody I decided to help Ringo out, finally. I was Vilified by the town and he said that I wasn't exactly friendly with them, so I decided "Fuck it, I'll kill you and join the Powder Gangers" but before I could do that ANOTHER Ringo burst into the place and started shooting at me before being slaughtered by my axe-wielding cigarreto-smoking Ghoul bodyguard.
My storyline for this? Ringo was a goddamn time traveler here and tried to kill me before I killed off the town.
Makes sense? No. Makes the bug way more fucking awesome? Hell yeah.
Share your similar stories of bugs in games that you've made storylines for, because I honestly can't be the only one that nuts, right?!

 

[TheSteeleStrap]

In the opening cutscene of Deadly Premonition, I chose to believe the lady bug flew away in a hurry because it had this experience with humans, and was late to teach a class on humans, having now had something to teach.

Was that the wrong kind of bug?

 

[Lieju]

I played Skyrim with my friend, and I made an extensive backstory for my character, and also explained some of the bugs.

I think the most extensive backstory for a bug was for a fox that just stayed still, stared me in the eye and then disappeared out of existence. A little bug, but it spawned a story of a trickster-god who took on different form to mess with my character he was kinda fond of.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

Way back in Halo 1. If you've moved through a checkpoint sometimes all the enemies would freeze, you could damage them all but the damage would only register if you went through the checkpoint again, the MASTER CHIEF HAD LEARNED THE TIME STOP IN THE WAR AGAINST THE COVENANT.

On a similar note to the OP, my friend showed me Fallout 3 and the graphics glitched so that there were bright rainbow-esque lights in the middle of the screen. My interpretation? The worst case of radiation poisoning that you could get.

Also, anything in Stalker was the work of the zone, NO EXCEPTIONS.

 

[MajorTomServo]

Not really a bug, but I tell myself the reason all clothes fit all people in the Fallout universe is because somewhere in the early 2000's they started bio-engineering people to all be the same size.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

It's not a bug, but if I get really bored while playing a game, I try to come up with logical reasons why the character can go back in time, (i.e why the player can load a saved game) that could conceivably coincide with the rules of the game's universe.

This leads to the obvious, (in just about every Call of Duty campaign, any failed runs are actually just simulations of the outcomes the mission could have, while successful runs are the real deal. This led to some interesting circumstances where POV characters are thinking about past mission simulations in the middle of the current mission, in order to explain the game's checkpoint system), the half-assed, (similar to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the game's protagonist is actually recounting the events to a listener, and having to load a game simply means that they've forgotten what actually happened, and are trying to tell it right, which is the route I took with the Uncharted games), or the completely silly, (in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there was a sneaky wizard following my character around who had created a spell that allowed him to manipulate time, and he was having a really good time messing with my poor Imperial swordswoman).

My favourite recent one was from FarCry 3, where I was explaining Brody's ability to come back from the dead by saying that the Rakyat could not find anyone more suited to partaking in their plans, and whenever Brody died, they were holding weird voodoo rituals to bring him back from the dead.

I rather enjoyed the idea that Jason Brody was actually just a psuedo-zombie, heavily dependent on voodoo magic to keep him walking.

CAPTCHA: Apparently 'never heard of it' is NOT a suitable description for the brand ABInBev.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

I have one from Skyrim called "Sammy the Waterbear".

Sammy was a bear who grew jealous of Argonians and Slaughterfish due to their ability to stay underwater and hunt fish indefinitely. While hunting for food Sammy killed an entire caravan of scholars who were delivering scrolls from Cyrodiil to the College of Winterhold. When he devoured the flesh of one of the scholars he found that he had torn open a scroll of Waterbreathing and the ability mixed with his bear blood making the change permanent. Sammy was soon the happiest creature on Tamriel, able to hunt adventurers and fish underwater to his hearts content for many years! Then some douchebag Khajiit Dragonborn found him and shouted him off a cliff because he thought it would be funny.

THE END

 

[Eomega123]

In Fallout New Vegas if a shop has two of the same item, one of significantly better condition than the other, and you purchase the more degraded one, you will instead receive the more repaired one. You can then sell the high quality weapon to the shop for a profit, and repeat the process to clear out all the shop's caps and useful items. The glitch stops working sometimes though, but the one vendor it never fails on is the securitron gun runner, who has an insane ammount of cash, powerful weapons, and unique items. The only playthough I exploited this glitch on, my character had maxed intelligence, above average agility, maxed speech, maxed barter, and maxed science. Put these together, and my courier is actually exploiting an error in the securitron's programming and combining it with his quick hands, quick thinking, and knack for business to create the greatest con scheme the Mojave has ever seen.

 

[Genocidicles]

I like to think that the MISSINGNO Pokemon from Pokemon Red & Blue is actually some kind of horrible eldritch pokemon from beyond time and space.

 

[saintdane05]

MissingNo. is Cthulhu. Makes sense.

 

[sapphireofthesea]

Way back in Halo 1. If you've moved through a checkpoint sometimes all the enemies would freeze, you could damage them all but the damage would only register if you went through the checkpoint again, the MASTER CHIEF HAD LEARNED THE TIME STOP IN THE WAR AGAINST THE COVENANT.

On a similar note to the OP, my friend showed me Fallout 3 and the graphics glitched so that there were bright rainbow-esque lights in the middle of the screen. My interpretation? The worst case of radiation poisoning that you could get.

Also, anything in Stalker was the work of the zone, NO EXCEPTIONS.

That my friend actually works well. Either the Zone or a reaction to it (in the case of people spazzing out). Still love that game for all the flaws ^^.

OT: I generally just ignore glitches, either the game is great and I keep playing it, taking them as the cost of enjoying the game, or the game is bad and it is easily a deal breaker (to be fair, if a game is bad anything is a deal breaker).
The above mentioned stalker was one of the glitchest games (the first one SoC) I have played that I couldn't stop playing. As the quoted mentions, every glitch can easily be encompassed by the effects of the zone (The often Crap AI decisions being the effects of the zone on most peoples psyche, they even had something that turned people into zombies, so no real stretch there XD)

 

[Luca72]

I like to think that the MISSINGNO Pokemon from Pokemon Red & Blue is actually some kind of horrible eldritch pokemon from beyond time and space.

Haha, I like this idea. I always imagined the idealized "think-about-it-for-a-second-and-it-makes-no-sense-like-what-do-people-even-eat" world of Pokemon is actually one experimental iteration of the Matrix, and Missingno is a human trying to contact the player. That's why the game glitches when you catch him.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

It's kind of cool how almost any glitch in an Assassin's Creed game could be explained as a "glitch in the Animus software."

Maybe that's why AC3 has so many glitches. Ubisoft figured they could stand to get away with it.

 

[MoreThanANoob]

I was playing Skyrim, today actually, and I was trying to join the thieves guild. Somehow the game bugged out and whenever I tried to follow Brynjolf into the cistern, he would stop just inside the door and everyone in the room would start attacking me.

Since I had been targeted by the Dark Brotherhood a while back, so I like to think they got creative once they found out I was in Riften and hired the Thieves Guild to take me out when I tried to join them.

Sure as hell beats Skyrim saying "F*** you, player."

 

[Orange12345]

Skyrim: I finished a quest for the god of madness, having escaped his twisted reality I was exiting the manor with my new staff in tow eager to try it out on a few unsuspecting chickens I looked up and noticed a peculiar thing. There was a body flying around in circles above me like superman amused by this I readied a spell and took a shot at him when I did nothing happened but the body shot out a spell after a moment of being rather perplexed I came to the realization that that body was ME!! but how? why was this happening unless... SHEOGORATHHHH!!!. I was still trapped in his realm being toyed with until I meant mad.

This was the worst glitch I got basically my character model was flying through the air following my cursor where ever it went but the weird thing was that when I attacked or cast a spell it would still happen but from where the model was and not me.

 

[StashAugustine]

Far Cry 3 has been giving me weird glitches where parts of the screen turn purple and yellow and black out. Given how trippy it is, the glitch rather enhances the experience.