History Main / TheMissingNo

[[redirect:GlitchEntity]]

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1391960580006298500
%% Please do not change or remove without starting a new thread.
%%
[[quoteright:240:[[VideoGame/PokemonFireRedAndLeafGreen https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mnbattle_3531.png]]]]

The Missingno. is a VideoGame item or character whose very existence is actually just a flaw in the game's internal programming. Can be considered a GoodBadBug in and of itself, but all bets are off.

May be found in a MinusWorld, and often exists for the same sort of reason -- the game accidentally tries to load character data from a section of memory that is intended for some other purpose entirely, leading to the resulting "character" appearing. If a Missingno. is noticeably more powerful than anything obtainable at the point in the game that it can be gotten, using it treads into NotTheIntendedUse territory.

Because this character was [[EldritchAbomination never intended to actually exist]], merely ''encountering'' The Missingno. can trigger an unpredictable bevy of side effects, ranging from other GoodBadBugs to game crashes, or even [[GameBreakingBug more severe bugs]]. In the rare worst-case scenario, The Missingno. can even corrupt the player's save file, forcing them to erase it and start the game over from the beginning. Some Missingno.s can eventually become an AscendedGlitch, though.

----
[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Video Game Examples]]
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** The TropeNamer is the glitch Franchise/{{Pokemon}} "[[https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/MissingNo._ MISSINGNO.]]"(short for Missing Number) from Generation I. A similarly glitchy creature has a name consisting of a quote mark, the letter M, and two [[TheUnpronounceable unpronounceable]] symbols. It has been {{Fan Nickname}}d "M-Block." or "'M" (pronounced "Apostrophe M"). The glitch is actually caused by the game trying to interpret your PlayerCharacter's name as random-encounter data.
*** Missingno., its [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Glitch_Pokemon glitchy kin]], and the effects they have on the game make up an impressive amount of [[{{NightmareFuel/Pokemon}} Pokémon's Nightmare Fuel page]]. In fanworks such as ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'' and ''WebAnimation/StarterSquad'' they're often portrayed as a form of EldritchAbomination. [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall And not just in Pokémon, either...]]
*** [[GoodBadBugs Missingno. also has the benefit of increasing the quantity of the 6th item in your bag by 128]].[[note]]In short, every pokémon has two bits in memory for the pokédex to store whether you've seen and/or caught it. The seen bit for MissingNo. happens to be the most significant bit of the quantity of the 6th item, so if you have less than 128 of it, the game marks that you've now seen MissingNo., giving you 128 of the item.[[/note]] For competitive battling, this is quite the [[GameBreaker Game Breaker]]. Cloned Rare Candies + Cloned Technical Machines + Cloned Master Balls + Cloned Medicine = A team of six in the timeframe it would take to create one Pokémon without glitching.
*** Despite common belief, Missingno. and M-Block are actually relatively harmless; it only causes minor graphical glitches [[labelnote:Explanation]]The graphical glitches are caused by looking at Missingno.'s stats and can be fixed by looking at the stats of anything that isn't a glitch Pokémon[[/labelnote]] and corrupts the Hall of Fame data (and the Hall of Fame entries aren't required for playing the game anyway) [[labelnote:Explanation]]This is due to the unusually large values for Missingo.'s sprite data, causing the graphics engine to overwrite the information inside the Hall of Fame with its overflowing sprite data when it attempts to decompress Missingno's sprite into memory[[/labelnote]]. There are much more dangerous glitch Pokémon, but they require significantly more effort to make appear. Basically, a good rule of thumb to follow, is that if a Glitch Pokemon requires more effort to see or catch, it'll cause more damage to your game. [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78267 Apparently, Missingno. might actually be leftover data from removed Pokémon, while its unpronounceable kin are "garbage data" given form.]]
*** While not dangerous per say, one of the most known glitch pokemon that requires effort to encounter is a glitch pokemon only known as the typical female symbol. This glitch pokemon is infamous for it's never ending cry and some youtubers make videos of recording it's cry for very long amounts of time. Some youtube video makes even have done videos using emulator tools to significantly speed up the game from the default speed and recorded for a long time just to see if there is an end to it's pre-battle cry.
** 'M and Missingno. are probably the best-known examples in the series because you can encounter them without modifying the game in any way. With use of a VideoGame/GameShark and a Walk Through Walls cheat enabled, however, it's also possible to run into a number of different glitched Pokémon and trainers, many of which can do ''serious'' damage to your save file if you're not careful (or just plain unlucky). [[http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/BreakingBlue/ This LP]] of Blue version details many of them and their effects.
** From third gen onward, "Missingno." (in gen three, "???????", "? ? ? ? ?" or variants) is intentionally put in to catch these errors.
** Even in the modern day, Missingno. hasn't stopped causing mischief! Not only does it return in the 3DS Virtual Console re-releases of the original games, but if the player attempts to transfer it to ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', it will not be let through but will shift all your Pokémon's names over by one.
* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2'' had a glitch where using debug mode to create a metric buttload of a certain object would cause Sonic's palette to be overwritten, turning him green, black, and one other color (which would often also be green or black). This miscolored Sonic, nicknamed "[[http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Ashura Ashura]]", is a surprisingly popular "character", making bizarrely frequent appearances in fan works.
* There's also a white recolor of Knuckles in ''VideoGame/KnucklesChaotix'', nicknamed [[http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Wechnia White Echidna]] (shortened to Wechnia), who's actually what's left of Tails when he was cut from the game. Playing as him is as simple as selecting him in the hidden level select. Though be aware certain actions with him will crash the game, even touching the ground sometimes.
* ''[[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles Sonic 3 & Knuckles]]''
** Has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqi5H0Myo8c Blue Knuckles]], who plays like a mixture of Sonic (his palettes and level routes), Knuckles (abilities), and Tails (uses his name at the end of act tally). The only ways to play as him are through hacking, VideoGame/GameGenie, or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1atT6qrRLY a massive glitch in Lava Reef]].
** Also, if you turn on DebugMode, use Stage Select in ''Sonic 3 & Knuckles'', go to the Doomsday Zone Act 1 as Knuckles and beat the level, the ending sequence will feature a palette swap of Sonic, Knuckles, and the Tornado.
** Generally trying to get either Tails or Knuckles into The Doomsday through this method will make their sprites garbled up, as the game still recognizes both of them as being Super/Hyper Sonic, who is supposed to be the only character allowed to face this level and the game's [[AnotherSideAnotherStory first]] TrueFinalBoss.
** Since the game dynamically loads enemy sprites and tiles as you go through a level, if Sonic goes too fast while in SuperMode, he can outrun the sprite loading and cause enemies or backgrounds to be garbled.
* ''VideoGame/SuperPitfall'' often has random sprites appearing at the edge of the screen, including miscolored copies of Pitfall Harry that WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd refers to as "The ghost of Pitfall Larry" and "Pitfall Gary"
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast'' has a mysterious invisible enemy called the ghost of Misery Mire that were an UrbanLegendOfZelda that turned out to be true. Investigation of the game's code revealed that the ghosts are actually Kus that are glitched due to being placed on the wrong type of ground tile. Kus can only exist on deep water tiles, but a few have been placed on shallow water. They can't attack but can be killed, although doing so may cause other glitches depending on what weapon was used.
* The original ''VideoGame/MortalKombat'':
** While it did ''not'' have a character named Ermac ([[UrbanLegendOfZelda it was an April Fool's joke]]), ''did'' give us Glitch Reptile and Silver Goro, two glitch characters that trigger during the game's three Endurance Matches in one-player mode. Glitch Reptile occurs when you do the trick to get to Reptile during one of the Endurance Matches; you'll fight two Reptiles as a result, but the second Reptile will be a graphically glitched version of random characters in the game. You get Silver Goro when you perform a fatality on the second opponent of the last Endurance Match with Raiden or Sub-Zero, then throw your projectile at Goro as he falls from the top of the screen. Do it right, and his colors will be glitched to a weird silver for the remainder of the round. Good memories, good memories...
** In the UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}} port of the second game, do the friendship on the ''morphed'' Shang Tsung, and you're now just controlling the lost brother of Glitch Reptile.
** The SNES version of ''Ultimate [=MK3=]'' has one of these in Tournament mode. Do Random Select and the cursor may land on the Random icon. This creates a "character" that appears to be the leftover data from Sheeva after she was DummiedOut (sometimes called "Ghost Sheeva"). She's represented as only a few blood pixels (or sometimes nothing at all); some characters can't hit her at all, and she's capable of extremely damaging attacks. Oddly enough, you can perform Fatalities on her - she even still has her Babality sprite! - but it's very hard to do anything to her without crashing the game.
* ''VideoGame/StreetFighterAlpha Anthology'''s [[EasterEgg hidden bonus game]] Hyper Street Fighter Alpha brings us [[SecretCharacter hidden versions]] of Alpha 2 M. Bison and Sagat with scrambled Missingno. sprites. They both share a partial Evil Ryu moveset, have no super meter, and cannot be hit while standing still.
* In ''VideoGame/UltimaVI'', one could grab ''any'' dead body from the enemies you kill, and have a Healer resurrect it as if it were a party member. The result is a bizarre graphic mishmash (usually depicted as a pile of floating gold coins) with an unintelligible name, now a member of your party. Stats were extremely erratic, but it was good to send on a suicide mission as a [[WeNeedADistraction distraction]].
* If you get more than 10 lives in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros'' it appears that the game “rewards” you on the start level screen with a crown in the place of the tens digit (crown-3 for 13 lives, etc). This is actually just random graphical glitch based on the programmers’ rather lazy assumption that no one would ever get more than nine lives. Once you get more than 20 lives numbers disappear altogether and the digits are replaced with random chunks of nonsense. The chunks always appear in the same order, however, meaning have managed to decipher the "code."
* A couple of these can be seen in the DummiedOut "lost levels" of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'', such as a Koopa with Chain Chomp sprites, as well as in certain ROM hacks. With the help of Game Genie codes, you can also create strange power-suits. One of the weirdest turns the player character into a conglomeration of blocks that can swim in the air (a Lakitu Cloud on the map screen).
* In ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars: Dual Strike'', it is possible in the CO select menu screens to choose only one CO and leave the second slot blank, then swap the CO with itself, leaving the first CO slot blank and the second CO slot occupied. Starting the game, you are given control of a "null" CO with glitched graphics and Andy's theme song. Your CO power charges instantly and activating it will freeze the game. This was fixed for the European version and, notably, inspired the [[AscendedGlitch legitimate feature]] of selecting no CO in ''Days of Ruin''.
* ''VideoGame/{{Contra}}'''s Energy Zone on the NES: The pallette for the level changes at the end to make room for that level's boss sprite. If one of the soldier {{Mooks}} follows you there, it turns into a sprite barf when the pallette changes. The game luckily keeps going as usual, and you can shoot it.
* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'':
** ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'': From the final level, "The Maw", in the last hallway before you enter the engine room there exists a Flood Combat Form which is assigned to be on the side of the Covenant. This is most likely a case of this enemy being assigned the wrong faction by mistake, as this quirk is very hard to notice in the heat of battle.
** ''VideoGame/Halo2'':
*** The "Honor Guard Councillor" (Honor Guard armor with Ultra palette and Councillor or other random helmet), a UniqueEnemy faced during "Gravemind" was supposed to be a Zealot Elite, but is glitched up due to a programming error; it was flagged to have a "dogmatic" personality, but the level contains no data for Elites of that type.
*** From the same game, during "Sacred Icon", there is a single "Needler Sentinel", a Sentinel that fires Needler rounds and will drop one when destroyed. After being discovered, WordOfGod confirmed that this was an experimental enemy concept that they forgot to remove from the level.
** ''VideoGame/HaloReach'': The Armor hologram glitch. If you use hologram and either go into monitor mode or die, the Hologram model will be randomized, sometimes with impossible armor combos.
** ''VideoGame/Halo4'': In the Spartan Ops mission "Switchback", there is a Promethian Crawler that awkwardly carries a [=LightRifle=], most likely for similar reasons as the aforementioned Needler Sentinel in ''Halo 2''.
* Some enemies from the infamously glitchy ''VideoGame/{{Action 52}}'' games seem to fall into this category. For example, the sprites in Level 5 of ''Ninja Assault'' are all scrambled, but appear to be birds and a rhino-type boss. Also, most of the enemies in ''Spread Fire''. In ''Thrusters'', your ship turns into one of these when you crash in the second level, which is {{unwinnable}} anyways unless you have the right ROM and emulator.
* There was a custom physics model for ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' that turned the player's weapons and the [=BOBs=] into stuff like this. Glitches (or cheating) could add a "pirated [[UsefulNotes/MacOS Copland beta]]" or "copy of Windows NT" to your inventory. Per WordOfGod, these were placeholder strings for a DummiedOut weapon and its ammo. In Missingno. form, they were ammo for the (normally disposable) Enforcer gun.
* ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny'' had such a hidden character who was DummiedOut, but still gettable because of a bug. This led to many fans believing the character was edited out of the US version only, when in fact you weren't supposed to be able to get them in the Japanese version either. The developers merely corrected the bug in the US version.
* [[https://zelda.gamepedia.com/Glitches_in_The_Adventure_of_Link One glitch]] in ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'' lets you travel to earlier dungeons, only using the graphics from later dungeons, enabling you to do things like see unused window graphics if you go from a dungeon that had no windows to one that did. However, this also results in the boss of the dungeon you're visiting being pieced together from the sprite of the boss of the dungeon you were in before, as can be seen in [[http://youtu.be/wm8008y41_0?t=5m43s this video]], just under six minutes into the video.
* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' parodies this with the Bugged Bugbear monster, and later the Baby Bugged Bugbear familiar based on it. Neither is actually glitched, but both have chunks of their images replaced with ones and zeroes, and both spit out [=MySQL=] error messages with almost everything they do.
* The ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' VideoGame/GameGenie code VYUOKITE allows you to select from ''244'' of these at the beginning of the game. A large number of those are automatically killed when used, but a surprising number are actually usable.
* The character models in the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 ''Franchise/{{Rocky}}'' game can glitch up horribly, resulting in such things as Clubber Lang having one or two of his legs coming out of his head.
-->'''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd''': [[NightmareFuel It's a Clubberfuck!]]
* In ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'', occasionally you will find yourself fighting someone named BOSS_NAME. They're perfectly normal bosses of the appropriate faction, in all but name.
* Due to the way ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' loads factions, the player can load a perfectly good faction from the credits, a sound file, some graphics, or even nothing at all.
* When [=PS2=] [[UsefulNotes/{{Emulation}} emulators]] became almost fully functional, a lot of [[DummiedOut dummy data]] was found in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX''. This included several weapons, including a [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII buster]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gom-qajs__A sword]], but they're very glitchy and crash the game in most cases.
* ''VideoGame/TestDrive Unlimited'' has a neat-looking [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHoFYvBBqwg car]] substituting for any corrupted car in your save file or game installation. It looks somewhat like an [[CoolCar Alfa Brera]] and [[DevelopersForesight clearly has had a lot of work put into it]] for something that is only supposed to appear in case of a fatal flaw in the game.
* The dungeon crawler game ''Mordor'' has one of these called the GOBLIE. This is a very weak companion monster that would be completely useless even if they didn't always turn up dead. It arises from a flaw in the acid spit attack that some monsters have. Occasionally an acid spitter will attempt to spit on your companions, but if your character has never had a companion then it generates a GOBLIE and immediately kills it.
* A common glitch in a number of Creator/{{Bethesda}} games, including ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', dead-on-arrival characters may accidentally be spawned as "living" people with no dialogue, usually eerily standing silent near puddles of blood and piles of gore. There's also the "walking gibs" glitch in the ''Fallout'' games. Furthermore, in those, autosaving into a [[CycleOfHurting looping death]] will sometimes result in the character melting into a taffy-like mess, similar to the "demon babies" glitch in ''VideoGame/TheSims4''.
* The fourth chapter of the ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy'' series has "The Glitch" as a BonusBoss. It is portrayed as a mix of static and pieces of game sprites, is immune to everything except non-elemental attacks, and has an "overflow" attack which deals zero damage, but causes instant death all the time.
* In ''VideoGame/SoldierOfFortune II'', enemies that have sustained ordinarily fatal damage may fail to actually die, and continue to wander or follow the player in a "[[DeadCharacterWalking living dead]]" state.
* In ''VideoGame/LostIsle'', there's a Gleeok in Bhalstok Castle, but, due to a palette incompatibility, it displays as an all-black "Shadow Gleeok." Seriously, this guy is almost as cool as Ashura...
* ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption'' has the "Manimals" glitch, where NPC's take on the behavior of birds, cougars, and other animals, sometimes horrifically contorting their models.
* ''VideoGame/WWFNoMercy'' has a glitch where, during the Hardcore Championship path in Championship Mode, you can fight [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP582u6x1Ro "Data-2500"]], a bald, semi-naked, glitch wrestler who has The Rock's face, no in-game name (both his name plate and Attitude meter have no text on them), no music or titantron, no entrance motion (he will instead float around during the entrance while in his fighting stance), and whose attacks consist of nothing but knife edge chops that barely hurt the opponent at all. Using a VideoGame/GameShark code to access the extra CAW slot intended for [[DummiedOut the unused Game Boy Color championship path]], one can reveal Data-2500's character slot, but the character itself cannot be cloned.
* InUniverse example: [[VideoGame/DotHackR1Games .hack//MUTATION]] introduced the Net Slum, which are made of and populated entirely by junk and garbage data given form. Quite notably, while all player character data are rendered in 3D, some sentient AI within the Net Slum are simply 2D sprites, or 3D models with missing meshes.
* Used InUniverse in ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' with the hidden character of Dr. W.D. Gaster. You have to mess around with the "fun" values in the game's coding to learn anything about him. [[spoiler:He was the royal scientist before Alphys, and rumored to have created the CORE, but he was scattered across space-time after falling into one of his inventions, with all memory of him gone. It's implied that he's ''aware'' to some degree and forced to watch the world functioning exactly the same without him. Oh, and did we mention that a later patch ''removed'' the need to mess with the files, randomly allowing him to appear in non-edited worlds?]]
* ''VideoGame/DistortedTravesty 3'' has an in-universe example: the appropriately named [[EldritchAbomination Abomination]], an [[HopelessBossFight indestructible]] pile of junk data that got locked into the Vault because of its sheer destructiveness. [[spoiler:It's also under the control of Hexor through a parasite implanted into it, and [[ICannotSelfTerminate has been secretly begging the player characters to kill it]] throughout the game]].
* Another InUniverse example occurs in ''VideoGame/DevilSurvivor2'''s ''Record Breaker'' arc. [[spoiler: Miyako was brought into being as a replacement for a character who pretended to be RetGone, but wasn't, and was merged with the EldritchAbomination Cor Caroli during universe generation. Her simultaneous existence with Yamato breaks the laws of the universe, making it possible to destroy Canopus, the divine guiding order of the entire universe.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' has the [[WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}} Despicable Neutral]] which is an AI personality for any Empire that is contacted prior to the second day of the game's internal clock. This is impossible in normal game play and was built to handle a situation just in case it happened. They favor all things equally.
* In old versions of ''VideoGame/EverybodyEdits'', a fully black block can be selected and [[LevelEditor placed in levels]] despite not being a proper block, though it seems to function like any other solid block. The unintentional button for selecting it is a single column of pixels on the ActionBar to the right of the block bar. Eventually, the fully black block was [[AscendedGlitch added to the game as a proper block]].
* In ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'', the hidden boss “not_intended” is an in-universe example, since the game itself is set in {{Cyberspace}}. She lives in a MinusWorld-inspired area, speaks in glitchy text boxes and pop-up error messages, and her fight involves copious amounts of InterfaceScrew.
* In ''Videogame/Borderlands2'' there is a rocket launcher called [[https://tcrf.net/File:BL2-ERROR-MESSAGE.png ERROR MESSAGE ERROR MESSAGE]] which is intended as an ExclusiveEnemyEquipment that never meant to be picked up and used by player.
* In the NES version of ''VideoGame/DoubleDragon'', weapons normally disappear during scene transitions, but if you pick up one just as the last enemy in a scene finishes [[EverythingFades blinking out]], it will instead turn into a graphically glitched baseball bat that can be carried over to the next scene, and the process repeated.
* ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic'' has an ore/item of this sort; it looks like some manner of default texture cube, you can gather it but not interact with it once mined beyond looking at its name, and it's called ERR://23¤Y%/. Far too functional to be a true glitch, it remains a mystery what they actually are; there's even an achievement for gathering five of them, whose description is still completely unsure what they are; only that they're hot to the touch and smell of tarmac. The dwarves can only make comments along the lines of "what the hell is that" when pointing at it.
* In ''VideoGame/Metroid1'', invincible frozen Zebetites and Mother Brains appear in the secret worlds found using the door glitch.
* In ''Franchise/StreetFighter'' specifically ''III: New Generation'' a beta version of Hugo, who wouldn't officially debut until the next game, exist in the game's data. This version can't attack, glitches out easily, and when walking has numbers next to his character model. Strangely he also comes with a version of his stage that WOULD debut next game that features events that were removed in ''Second Impact'' such as transitions from round one and two.
* In ''VideoGame/WizardsAndWarriors'' a glitch exist where the stage's weapon can be taken with the player into the next round. Usually it is taken away when a player gets a piece of the IronSword. Effectively the Windbane could be taken up until late level 3 but has to be replaced since the stage's boss can't be hit with the weapon's arc but as it isn't meant to appear past level one the shots can look like glitchy messes (but still work as intended).
* The bosses from ''VideoGame/StreetFighterII'' even though they appear in normal gameplay the ''World Warrior'' versions have always been Missingnos in their own right. In ''World Warrior'' they behave very differently from the playables and can't be controlled by the player even if they are chosen through cheats. It was discovered later through being manually fixed to be controllable they had quirks fighting each other or just being controlled that didn't apply to the regulars. Balrog couldn't duck or jump over Sagat's high tiger shot, Vega goes abnormally high when jumping off the cage from his BG when battling another boss, and Balrog also had uncancellable transition frames crouching and standing up.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Non-Video Game Examples]]
[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* ''Anime/DennouCoil'':
** Illegals, sentient viruses that feed on metabugs, and may or may not have been cyberpets once.
** The Nulls are an especially disturbing example, as even though the original ones were just 'Null Carriers', intended to temporarily separate cyberbodies from the actual persons for experimental purposes, it's implied that [[spoiler:at least some of the "feral" Nulls were once people who have been separated from their real bodies, and undergone severe data corruption and decay.]]
* ''Anime/DotHackSign'' and the first set of [[VideoGame/DotHackR1Games games]] had "Data Bugs." Glitched monsters (and corresponding wonky graphics) within the [[{{Cyberspace}} Virtual Reality]] MMORPG with infinite HitPoints who can send players into comas (not as permanently as the [[BossBattle Phases]]). Only a game reprogramming device like the Twilight Bracelet can defeat them.

[[AC:Film]]
* ''Film/{{Inception}}'' has stray projections that get in the way of dreamsharing. There's Mal, a violent, nigh-unstoppable projection born from Dom's guilt, who takes the form of his dead wife. She rages through the dreamscape, generally messing everything up for the crew. There's also Dom's kids, who are less violent, but always faceless and whose appearance usually indicate danger.

[[AC:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'''s Lord English is implied to be this, [[spoiler: being the result of two players who share a single body entering a SBURB session that was designated for one player only, something that was explicitly stated to be impossible]]. Appropriately enough, [[spoiler: he's even caused the game to glitch, causing spans of MissingTime for the protagonists.]] [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse]]. [[spoiler: A single-player session]], though radically different from the base game and incredibly difficult to set-up, can have one of two possible outcomes: Either the player 'gives up all ambition' and dies, but becomes instrumental in stopping a great evil... or tackles an incredible challenge and gains unconditional immortality and the power to destroy anything he or she wishes. The only way to stop them? ''[[LordBritishPostulate Glitching reality]]''.

[[AC:WebOriginal]]
* The Wiki/SCPFoundation: [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-951 SCP-951]], an anomalous [[DarkIsNotEvil (but apparently friendly)]] video game glitch named "LUCAS" [[spoiler: AKA LOGICAL UNIFIED CENTRAL ANOMALY SYSTEM. It was deliberately engineered but flawed as it would "die" when the game ended and couldn't remember anything when the game restarted]]. Missingno gets a shout-out in a chatlog about the mysterious glitch:
-->'''Lizalfos ██ ███ ████, 9:40'''\\
Hey, has anyone played Pauper Rise of the Monster King? I found it at a garage sale recently and so far it's pretty cool. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because I found a pretty awesome glitch monster that kind of breaks the game and I was wondering if anyone else found it.\\
\\
'''[=ReGGie=] ██ ███ ████, 9:42'''\\
@Lizalfos, are you talking about lucas? lucas is fucking bro tier\\
\\
'''Wetualo ██ ███ ████, 9:45'''\\
LUCAS is definitely up there with shit like Missingno, although I didn't care much for the way he fucked with my screen.

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
* ''WesternAnimation/WreckItRalph'', which is about video games at an arcade, has Vanellope Von Schweetz, from the racing game ''Sugar Rush''. She mostly looks like an ordinary Sugar Rush character, but glitches in and out (replacing her normal appearance with lines of code) whenever she's emotionally compromised. It really sucks to be her -- she's a bullied outcast, not allowed to race despite wanting to be a racer, and she has to live in a DummiedOut bonus level. [[spoiler: She is actually a real and intended character in the game, but was turned into a glitch by Turbo, who disguised himself as King Candy to take her place as the game's ruler.]]

[[AC:RealLife]]
* One of the theories for why we dream is that the brain mistakenly interprets vital maintenance information as sensory stimulation while asleep, which would explain why dreams are often so weird. For example, the theory that dreams of flying/floating come about as the brain's best attempt to reconcile the sensation of moving about in some way with the fact that it can't actually sense your arms or legs moving.
[[/folder]]
----

** The TropeNamer is the glitch Franchise/{{Pokemon}} "[[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Missingno MISSINGNO.]]"(short for Missing Number) from Generation I. A similarly glitchy creature has a name consisting of a quote mark, the letter M, and two [[TheUnpronounceable unpronounceable]] symbols. It has been {{Fan Nickname}}d "M-Block." or "'M" (pronounced "Apostrophe M"). The glitch is actually caused by the game trying to interpret your PlayerCharacter's name as random-encounter data.

** It's also been confirmed that "Ashura"'s color palette was the inspiration for [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehog Scourge's]].

** ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'':
*** From the final level, "The Maw", in the last hallway before you enter the engine room there exists a Flood Combat Form which is assigned to be on the side of the Covenant. This is most likely a case of this enemy being assigned the wrong faction by mistake, as this quirk is very hard to notice in the heat of battle.

** ''VideoGame/HaloReach'':
*** The Armor hologram glitch. If you use hologram and either go into monitor mode or die, the Hologram model will be randomized, sometimes with impossible armor combos.
** ''VideoGame/Halo4'':
*** In the Spartan Ops mission "Switchback", there is a Promethian Crawler that awkwardly carries a [=LightRifle=], most likely for similar reasons as the aforementioned Needler Sentinel in ''Halo 2''.

* There was a custom physics model for ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' that turned the player's weapons and the [=BOBs=] into stuff like this.
** Glitches (or cheating) could add a "pirated [[UsefulNotes/MacOS Copland beta]]" or "copy of Windows NT" to your inventory. Per WordOfGod, these were placeholder strings for a DummiedOut weapon and its ammo. In Missingno. form, they were ammo for the (normally disposable) Enforcer gun.

** Considering that the Freakshow faction spoke Leet, this could be a reasonable name for one of their bosses.

* A common glitch in a number of Creator/{{Bethesda}} games, including ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', dead-on-arrival characters may accidentally be spawned as "living" people with no dialogue, usually eerily standing silent near puddles of blood and piles of gore.
** There's also the "walking gibs" glitch in the ''Fallout'' games. Furthermore, in those, autosaving into a [[CycleOfHurting looping death]] will sometimes result in the character melting into a taffy-like mess, similar to the "demon babies" glitch in ''VideoGame/TheSims4''.

** It was notable in ''Hyper Street Fighter II'' that debuted "Edition Select" where players can not only use a character but a specific incarnation from any previous ''II'' game, for example the M. Bison from Hyper Fighting can go against the Ken from New Challengers. The only condition was that the specific character had to be available in said game so for example Cammy can't be chosen in "World Warrior" "Champion" or "Hyper" since she wasn't in the game. The "World Warrior" bosses couldn't be chosen despite them being in the game. If they are forced into the game many of their properties and sprites are glitchy and they can't attack. The very little that does work is shared with the other incarnations of the characters.

* ''Anime/DennouCoil'' has Illegals, sentient viruses that feed on metabugs, and may or may not have been cyberpets once.

* ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'''s Lord English is implied to be this, [[spoiler: being the result of two players who share a single body entering a SBURB session that was designated for one player only, something that was explicitly stated to be impossible]]. Appropriately enough, [[spoiler: he's even caused the game to glitch, causing spans of MissingTime for the protagonists.]]
** [[FromBadToWorse It gets worse]]. [[spoiler: A single-player session]], though radically different from the base game and incredibly difficult to set-up, can have one of two possible outcomes: Either the player 'gives up all ambition' and dies, but becomes instrumental in stopping a great evil... or tackles an incredible challenge and gains unconditional immortality and the power to destroy anything he or she wishes. The only way to stop them? ''[[LordBritishPostulate Glitching reality]]''.

*** Despite common belief, Missingno. and M-Block are actually relatively harmless; it only causes minor graphical glitches [[note]]The graphical glitches are caused by looking at Missingno.'s stats and can be fixed by looking at the stats of anything that isn't a glitch Pokémon[[/note]] and corrupts the Hall of Fame data (and the Hall of Fame entries aren't required for playing the game anyway). There are much more dangerous glitch Pokémon, but they require significantly more effort to make appear. Basically, a good rule of thumb to follow, is that if a Glitch Pokemon requires more effort to see or catch, it'll cause more damage to your game. [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78267 Apparently, Missingno. might actually be leftover data from removed Pokémon, while its unpronounceable kin are "garbage data" given form.]]

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'' parodies this with the Bugged Bugbear monster, and later the Baby Bugged Bugbear familiar based on it. Neither is actually glitched, but both have chunks of their images replaced with ones and zeroes, and both spit out MySQL error messages with almost everything they do.

* If you get more than 10 lives in SuperMarioBros it appears that the game “rewards” you on the start level screen with a crown in the place of the tens digit (crown-3 for 13 lives, etc). This is actually just random graphical glitch based on the programmers’ rather lazy assumption that no one would ever get more than nine lives. Once you get more than 20 lives numbers disappear altogether and the digits are replaced with random chunks of nonsense. The chunks always appear in the same order, however, meaning have managed to decipher the "code."

* There's also a white recolor of Knuckles in ''VideoGame/KnucklesChaotix'', nicknamed [[http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Wechnia White Echidna]] (shortened to Wechnia), who's actually what's left when you take Tails out of the game altogether.

* ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic'' has an ore/item of this sort; it looks like some manner of default texture cube, you can gather it but not interact with it once mined beyond looking at its name, and it's called ERR://23¤Y%/. Far too functional to be a true glitch, it remains a mystery what they actually are; there's even an achievement for gathering five of them, whose description is still completely unsure what they are; only that they're hot to the touch and smell of tarmac.

*** Missingno., its [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Glitch_Pokemon glitchy kin]], and the effects they have on the game make up an impressive amount of [[{{NightmareFuel/Pokemon}} Pokémon's Nightmare Fuel page]]. In fanfiction, they're often portrayed as a form of EldritchAbomination. [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall And not just in Pokémon, either...]]

[[AC: FanFiction]]
* The TropeNamer itself appears in ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'' as a recurring antagonist. It's a creature created as the result of Cyrus' tampering with reality as a remnant of the previous universe, and delights in tormenting Ash with the knowledge of things that have happened (or will happen eventually) to his friends while Ash is powerless to stop them. During the story it displays the ability to [[VoluntaryShapeshifting transform into]] [[AFormYouAreComfortableWith any form it wants]], [[RealityWarper alter reality]], [[DreamWalker enter the dreams of people]] and [[TimeTravel travel through time at will]].

[[AC:WebAnimation]]
* The [[TropeNamer trope namer]] itself shows up in ''WebAnimation/StarterSquad''. [[spoiler: It's completely immune to all attacks except by [[PsychicPowers Mewtwo]], and corrupts and [[TheAssimilator assimilates]] any Pokémon that come near it into itself.]]

* An AlternateUniverse [[{{ItMakesSenseInContext}} version of the]] TropeNamer turned out to be the true BigBad of a rather memorable StoryArc on ''WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall''. Due to his immense power as a universe-corrupting and universe-consuming entity, he’s been elevated to the status of an EldritchAbomination, a member of what are referred to as Outer Gods, essentially the Great Old Ones in all but name.

*** In another armor ability glitch, if the player goes into Armor Lock, switches to monitor mode, and choose to delete all of the Armor Lock items from the map, the player will have permanent Armor Lock upon returning to player mode, and it will not go away until the player dies.