There's few things as aggravating as bugs in video games, which can wipe away a player's hard-earned progress or make certain segments of their game downright impossible to complete (as early players of Cyberpunk 2077 can attest). Games like Batman: Arkham Asylum, on the other hand, use the frustrating nature of glitches to their advantage by using "fake" video game glitches to trick players, mess with their expectations, and inspire them to think outside the box.

Video games are extremely complex forms of media, virtual worlds in which every single graphical asset, gameplay mechanic, and AI protocol has to be designed (mostly) from scratch by a team of programmers, then checked rigorously for bugs. Inevitably, a certain number of glitches will slip past the attention of developers and remain in the game after its official release. Sometimes, these glitches can be surprisingly beneficial, like the "frame-cancel" glitch in Street Fighter 2 that gave birth to the tradition of combos in fighting games. Other times, game bugs can be jarring yet entertaining, like the many glitches in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. There are even times where a single glitch can completely wreck the gameplay of a title, like Aliens: Colonial Marines' AI-ruining typo.

Related: Cyberpunk 2077's Funniest Glitches So Far

There are gag sandbox games like Goat Simulator that embrace the idea of game-breaking bugs as a source of fun and humor. The following games, however, incorporate fake glitches into their very narratives - sometimes to trick players into making mistakes, other times to evoke horror or tension. In both cases, these "fake glitches" are ultimately just another gameplay obstacle, overcome by players who think for themselves and question the assumptions the game asks them to accept.

Fake Video Game Glitches - The Prisoner (1980)

Dystopian Games The Prisoner 1980

An early text-adventure released on the Apple II, The Prisoner (1980) is a game based on Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner TV series, where a secret agent code-named Number 6 is trapped in a high-tech, charming, and thoroughly dystopian village ruled over by sinister figures collectively referred to as Number 2. Like in the TV series, the goal of The Prisoner's player character is to escape from their prison (called the Island in-game) while keeping a randomized three-digit code secret at all cost. The game uses all sorts of devious schemes and deceptions to trick the player into typing in their three digit code; at one point, it even surprises players with a fake game crash, displaying an error message with the player's 3-digit code in an attempt to trick them into typing it out for troubleshooting purposes.

Fake Video Game Glitches - Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Alexandra Roivas from the game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a GameCube-era survival horror game of black magic, eldritch abominations from beyond the walls of reality, and the sorely tested survivors who fight against them across different eras of history. Along with its innovative magic system and non-linear storyline, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem's "Sanity" system was one of video gaming's first, where game characters exposed to horrifying sights and enemies would slowly lose their sanity. To represent this loss of sanity, the game would unnerve the player by tampering with its interface in devious ways - assaulting characters with harmless hallucinations, inverting game controls, and, in one infamous case, tricking gamers with a false alert message claiming the files in their GameCube's memory card were being deleted.

Fake Video Game Glitches - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty

Metal Gear Solid 2 Campell talking to Raiden

Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid franchise, besides being a defining pillar of the stealth-action genre, is also an infamously quirky mix of social commentary and surreal humor that's not afraid to break the fourth wall. In Metal Gear Solid, for instance, a gas-mask wearing boss named Psycho Mantis demonstrates his fearsome psychic powers by making the player's controller vibrate and commenting on the video games they enjoy (by reading the PlayStation's memory card). In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the player can trigger a false "game over" screen using a fake suicide pill. The most notable example of fourth-wall breaking happens in the late-game of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, where the AI mission controller directing Raiden around gets infected with a computer virus, starts babbling nonsense, urges the player to turn off their console, and even tries to trick players with a fake game over menu (one where the words "Mission Failed" are replaced with "Fission Mailed").

Related: 10 Best Games Which Hideo Kojima Helped To Develop, Ranked

Fake Video Game Glitches - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman standing in front of the moonlight in Arkham Asylum cover art

The first game in the Arkham Asylum series, Batman: Arkham Asylum, traps Batman in its titular lion's den, an elaborately gothic mental asylum now taken over by many of the insane criminals Batman has captured over the course of his vigilante career. Each featured member of Batman's rogue's gallery challenges the player in their own unique way: The Joker sends waves of goons after Batman while taunting him over the loud-speakers; Bane tries to break his spine; the Riddler tries to assert his intellectual superiority through challenging scavenger hunts; and the Scarecrow douses Batman with Fear Toxin, hurling the player into hallucinatory gauntlets reflecting all the trauma from Bruce Wayne's past. The third and final Scarecrow encounter starts with a genuinely heart-stopping fake glitch, one where the game freezes up, then reverts back to the opening cinematic... Or, rather, a twisted version of it, where the Joker arrests Batman and commits him to an Arkham Asylum run and staffed by crooks.

Next: Batman Arkham Fans Will Still Enjoy Gotham Knights' Gameplay Despite Co-Op