2021 was a good (or bad, depending on your perspective) year for glitches. We live in a world of contradictions, and there’s no easy way to classify glitches. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure — and I absolutely treasure me some trash.
Maybe it’s the on-going pandemic, but the games of 2021 definitely felt a little glitchier than normal. Or maybe we’re just going insane from staying inside way, way too long. Whatever the case, I mentally logged all the biggest, weirdest, and most wonderful glitches I encountered in 2021 just to share my trauma with the world. Here are the funniest, worst, most game-breaking and enhancing glitches we stumbled over in 2021.
The Best of 2021:
Best Secret Endings Of 2021 | Best Secrets, Unlockables & Weapons Of 2021 | Best Levels Of 2021 | Best Easter Eggs Of 2021
The Car Just Keeps Getting Wider [GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition]
The funniest glitch of GTA3 is never going away. You can find this glitch in the original game, in the smartphone re-release, and in the latest Definitive Edition. And it is hilarious. By wobbling a car left and right on the road, the vehicle will slowly get wider and wider, changing shape until it’s as wide as an entire street. Why does this happen? The better question is, why does this still happen. But this is hardly the worst glitch in the Definitive Edition. Thankfully, this is one chuckle-worthy glitch that’s just from the original game. The rest of the bugs on this list are entirely new messed-up creations exclusive to the Definitive Edition.
Uncomfortably Close [GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition]
At release, the GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition was (and continues to be) a bug-riddled mess. There aren’t just old bugs to rediscover, but plenty of totally new surprises. They’re like little bonuses for us to discover. And one of the most patently absurd is the bike bug. When riding on a bike or a quad wheeler, if you use the camera mode to view behind your vehicle, the camera angle is completely obscured by CJ’s giant face. This is an oversight that isn’t too bad in the scheme of things, and it is extremely funny.
Surprise Bottomless Pits [GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition]
Here’s a problem you’ll find in all three GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition games — chunks of the world were missing. Naturally, this is one of the first things the developers patched, but on release there were missing bridges and the ever-present fear that your car will just drop through the world geometry. Which it will. A lot. San Andreas is especially packed with phantom potholes just waiting to swallow you up.
A Real Hovercraft [Battlefield 2042]
A true contender for my favorite glitch of 2021, Battlefield 2042 has a hovercraft problem. At release, hovercrafts were the vehicle meta — everyone and their mother summoned hovercrafts. Each round was a mess of hovercraft action, and as if the hovercrafts weren’t bad enough, players learned they could adapt. No walls could slow the hovercraft menace. Hovercrafts learned how to scale skyscrapers.
On a specific map, one specific building as the right slope, allowing a hovercraft to mantle onto the side of the structure and drive right up to the top. Driving a hovercraft up a building in the (relatively) realistic setting of Battlefield 2042 is hilarious. Nobody can escape the hovercraft’s mounted gun — not even the sky is safe.
Grapple Into Hyperspeed [Halo Infinite]
Halo Infinite introduces a new open-world area for its campaign — and it feels like a natural extension of the franchise, which has always had large levels you can approach in different ways. Despite taking a leap in a new direction, Halo Infinite pulls it off with relatively few noticeable bugs. And the one bug we’re looking at here is really your own fault if you want to pull it off.
This bug is all about velocity. The explosives in Halo Infinite can apply insane velocity to vehicles if you activate the Cowbell Skull — which adds more velocity to explosions. Grab a few explosive containers, drop them near a Warthog, then toss a grenade into the mix. That Warthog will take off toward space. For even more fun, you can use the grappling hook to latch onto the flying Warthog, launching Master Chief into the stars. This glitch is purely for fun, but it is so easy to do, I have to recommend it if you’re the type that loves messing around.
Goldflake Error [Call of Duty: Vanguard]
And here’s a glitch that isn’t so fun. The Goldflake Error is just one of multiple errors that plague Call of Duty: Vanguard and make joining online games a real hassle. Some players have been experiencing these issues for months, completely blocking them from joining Warzone — and it is especially prevalent for the new Pacific map. It seems to be connected to putting your system into Sleep Mode. But the worst part is the fix players discovered.
On Xbox Series X, the community discovered that you could bypass the Goldflake Error by purchasing the Game Pass or Xbox Gold Ultimate. Seriously, if you were willing to spend extra money, you’d be less likely to get slammed with the dreaded Goldflake Error. Players without these upgraded subscriptions were locked out more than players with them. That’s a snapshot of Activision’s rotten practices in a nutshell.
Endless Invisibility Glitches [Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War & Vanguard]
Not just one game, but two Call of Duty games were plagued with the same issue in 2021. Over and over again, invisibility glitches haunted the lives of players just trying to enjoy a little shooting. In both Black Ops Cold War and Vanguard, there are game-breaking glitches that cause certain skins to become completely invisible. And we’re not even talking about the almost completely black skin that was simply super-hard to see — I mean ghostly, phantom invisibility. The funniest version of this glitch was so prevalent, the bug forced the developers to remove an entire vehicle. The Armored Truck had the magical ability to turn players invisible after entering it. Now that’s an aspect of war that I don’t remember from history class.
And the glitches continue into 2022. A new skin in Warzone Pacific is also causing an invisibility glitch. At this rate, the ghosts are clearly winning the war.
An Army Of Animatronics [Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach]
Another game with a lot of bugs? Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach. Considering this is an indie effort, let’s just call the finished project “loose” — there are bugs everywhere, and the weirdest literally clones your stalkers. Instead of one chicken animatronic chasing you, there are two, or three, or many more than that. I don’t know why this happens, but it absolutely does. I’ve encountered multiple Chica stalkers spawning next to each other. And it isn’t just Chica. Monty can spawn a small army of himself. Don’t even try to run.
Naked Animal Friends [Animal Crossing: New Horizons]
What might be the most infamous glitch of the year — Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ veneer of wholesomeness was shattered by this obliviously nude neighbors glitch. After the release of the Happy Home Paradise expansion. there was a brief moment where naked villagers would just show up at your home. First of all, that’s extremely rude (not to mention forward) but the glitch was squashed back in December. So that’s less than a month of animals living in absolute sin. You can remove your hands from your eyes now, because we’re moving on to much cleaner glitches next.
First Person Link [Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild]
Here’s a fun discovery for a not-new game. 2021 saw a huge uptick in glitch discoveries for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — and a very simple one allows you to see the world through Link’s eyes. By holding an item, bringing up your camera, then immediately cancelling out, you can get stuck in FPS-vision. If you played 150+ hours of Breath of the Wild like I did, seeing the world from the Skyrim perspective is truly surreal.
The One-Winged Angel Cascade [Super Smash Bros. Ultimate]
Sephiroth isn’t just OP in Final Fantasy 7, for a brief time he was also unstoppable in Super Smash Bros. due to a wild cascading glitch. By destroying one of the Pokemon Trainer’s Pokemon with Sephiroth’s Shadow Flare attack, all subsequent Final Smash attacks are totally broken. They all deal extremely lowered damage, and some of the effects were completely wonkified. The power of the One-Winged Angel can even interrupt Luigi’s Negative Zone — the darkest, most evil attack in the series.
Showing Off Your IP Address [Marvel’s Avengers]
And we leave on a sour note with this Marvel’s Avengers glitch that literally advertised your IP Address if you were sharing a screen. Streaming on Twitch? Recording a video clip for Youtube? Now the entirety of the internet can see (and sneak away with) your IP Address. The glitch was introduced in the V1.8.0 patch and primarily affected PS5 players, showing IP Addresses and usernames in menus. This is just another example in the long, storied history of fixes somehow causing even bigger problems in video games. This isn’t the only game that wants everyone to know your IP Address, but it is the latest in the lineage. Naturally, this was fixed — but still, come on Marvel’s Avengers.
Those are some of the best and worst glitches of the year. Is there a huge glitch we totally missed? Let us know!
