History ThrowItIn / VideoGames

** Before the production of ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'', Sora's Japanese seiyuu jokingly whined about having to voice TheHero all the time and asked if Nomura couldn't give him a few more "evil" lines. And so, Nomura created [[spoiler: Vanitas.]]

** As it turns out, Link's upgrade to {{Bishonen}} status between ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening Link's Awakening]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'' was the result of an [[http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/1/7 offhand comment made by the wife of one of the developers.]]

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

* Fukua from ''VideoGame/{{Skullgirls}}'' was mostly designed as an April Fool's joke character to make fun of the MovesetClone trope in fighting games, and was partly to do a TakeThat against the infamous reveal of Decapre's addition to ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV''[[labelnote:Context]]Capcom had acted like they were going to add an entirely new DLC fighter, speculation about possible fighters abounded in the ''Street Fighter'' community... and then Capcom destroyed all the hype by announcing "Cammy with a mask" as the [=SF=] community put it[[/labelnote]]. Massive positive response lead to Fukua being a permanent addition. Her name is also derived from a common misspelling of the protagonist Filia (U/I and K/L are right next to each other on most keyboards), which likely went on to influence her CloningBlues personality.

*** The gunships firing at the [=RPGs=] as opposed to the player was originally an unintended consequence of the simple way gunships determine what to shoot at (they're told to attack the "most dangerous target", which is ''supposed'' to be the player, but an RPG getting close to it is flagged as an even bigger threat than the player). Valve realized it added an extra challenge to the gunships and left it in.
*** A similar case during playtesting. At one point in Episode 2, you're gently prompted into throwing a grenade into a dumpster full of boxes. Do this the first time and the Fast Zombie hiding in there will [[ItCanThink toss it back out]]. It was originally a physics glitch caused by the boxes that would fly out when the Fast Zombie emerged, but like Dog's IndyPloy, it was well received and left in.

** ''VideoGame/HalfLifeAlyx'':
*** The ability to cover your mouth to stop Alyx from coughing was inspired by playtesters. "Jeff" is a level where you must navigate around the titular mutant PlantPerson, who is blind but attracted to sound. The addition of spore clouds that make Alyx uncontrollably cough was a relatively late addition as a means of introducing another environmental hazard to the level. The developers then observed players trying to cover their mouths to protect Alyx, and this was made an actual feature shortly afterwards. This turned out to be an excellent addition to the level's horror atmosphere; as covering your mouth requires using one of your hands, carrying items become much more tense as a result.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** Prior to the release of ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue Red & Green]]'', one of the developers realized that, once he took the developer's tools out, there was room for one more mon. Since there were in-game references to the Pokémon Mew (where they got the material for Mewtwo), he decided to make it playable, but without a way to get it. No information was given about it, because except for the higher ups at Game Freak, ''no one knew you could get Mew''. He figured they could give it away later, and a tradition was born. The Mew glitch, discovered in 2005, allows you to get it normally by fooling the game into making it appear. This is due to the way the game handles numbers as code.
** ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'', in development, filled up the entire cartridge before it was even half-finished - until the late, great Satoru Iwata compressed the game so much and so well that, even with the main game finished, there was now room to also fit the entirety of Kanto, the previous games' region, as a second badge quest after beating the "normal" game.

* Fukua from ''VideoGame/{{Skullgirls}}'' was mostly designed as an April Fool's joke character to make fun of the MovesetClone trope in fighting games, and was partly to do a TakeThat against the infamous reveal of Decapre's addition to ''VideoGame/StreetFighterIV''[[labelnote:Context]]Capcom had acted like they were going to add an entirely new DLC fighter, speculation about possible fighters abounded in the ''Street Fighter'' community... and then Capcom destroyed all the hype by announcing "Cammy with a mask" as the [=SF=] community put it[[/labelnote]]. Massive positive response lead to Fukua being a permanent addition. Her name was also a mis-spelling of the protagonist Filia, which likely went on to influence her CloningBlues personality.

* Apparently when Fawful's dialogue was being translated for the English release of ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiSuperstarSaga Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga]]'', several translation errors were noticed but kept in the game anyway since Nintendo of America figured it would still be in character for someone like [[CloudCuckooLander Fawful]] to say.

*** Creator/HideoKojima had the motion capture actors for Naked Snake switched so that the one who specialized in action sequences did the dialogue scenes, and vice versa. In one scene, EVA leans in to kiss Snake, and Snake's actor, not used to doing romantic scenes, nervously edged away. They kept it in since the response was cute and fit Snake's character perfectly.

** The {{Honest Johns|Dealership}} character of ''VideoGame/{{Metal Gear Solid 4|GunsOfThePatriots}}'''s pet monkey was thrown in when they realized that Raiden's motion capture actor did a pretty good imitation of a monkey. That, as well as the fact that Drebin seemed too bland by himself in Kojima's eyes.

* While the creators of ''VideoGame/MortalKombat1'' were already well-prepared for the video shoots to create their digitized sprites and knew what they'd be shooting, they would also come up with ideas during the shoot that would then be filmed and added to the game. To take just the most notable example, Scorpion's iconic [[SignatureMove spear attack]] [[https://twitter.com/noobde/status/1447966875523162121 originated]] as a "cool-ass move" that Creator/EdBoon came up with on the spot while the ninja characters' sprites were being filmed.

--->'''Alyx Vance''': Well, Gordon... unless you have a better suggestion... He is a robot. He's done the math. ''[to Dog]'' You, uh, did do the math, right? \\

*** The head shaking originally was just a random IdleAnimation, but during a playtest it managed to sync up perfectly with the dialogue, and the playtester thought it was both intentional and hilarious; the devs agreed and made it an intentional part of the scene.
*** Interestingly, the gunships firing at the [=RPGs=] as opposed to the player was originally an unintended consequence of the simple way gunships determine what to shoot at (they're told to attack the "most dangerous target", which is ''supposed'' to be the player, but an RPG getting close to it is flagged as an even bigger threat than the player) but they realized it added an extra challenge to the gunships and left it in.

* The ''ending'' of ''VideoGame/{{Journey|2012}}'' arose from a glitch making it seem like the game had finished [[spoiler:after you die in the storm]] during one playtester's test. The playtester was apparently moved to tears by how profoundly moving it was, and as a result thatgamecompany went [[SugarWiki/DevelopmentHeaven almost a year and a half over budget and into bankruptcy just to achieve that satisfactory ending]].

* In ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosMelee'', the [[GoodBadBugs wavedashing technique]] was noticed early on. It wasn't so much thrown in as it was ignored because it was seen as harmless and the team was already struggling to finish the game on time. Then, its [[TournamentPlay real potential]] was discovered, and creator Masahiro Sakurai started to see it as [[CreatorBacklash not-so-harmless]]. It was [[ObviousRulePatch ripped out]] of ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Brawl]]'' as soon as possible, and while ''[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBros4 Smash 4]]'' onwards would attempt to acknowledge the tournament scene a bit more, wavedashing has never been seen since.

** The Spy class from the original ''VideoGame/{{Team Fortress|Classic}} VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' mod, and his ability to disguise as members of the enemy team, arose from a glitch that sometimes caused players to show up as the wrong team color. The Soldier's ability to rocket jump also stems from this.

* The ''ending'' of ''VideoGame/{{Journey}}'' arose from a glitch making it seem like the game had finished [[spoiler: after you die in the storm]] during one playtester's test. The playtester was apprently moved to tears by how profoundly moving it was, and as a result thatgamecompany went [[SugarWiki/DevelopmentHeaven almost a year and a half over budget and into bankruptcy just to achieve that satisfactory ending]].

** It happens, most likely completely unintentionally, in one of Shadow's missions in ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006''. The voice actor for the G.U.N. official accidentally says "Head to ''the'' Wave Ocean" instead of "Head to Wave Ocean." You then hear one of the writers mumble "Head to Wave Ocean." Afterwards, the voice actor reads the entire line over again. This is not subtitled and appears to be just one of the many errors that weren't fixed in the game due to it being ChristmasRushed.

** ''{{VideoGame/Deltarune}}'' is no stranger to this. Infamously, there was a stray pixel in the fight against King, so of course Toby Fox did the sensible thing and [[TrollingCreator added one to Queen's battle]] as well.

*** Then there's the Chapter 2 OptionalBoss: [[spoiler: Spamton NEO turns your SOUL yellow, marking the first time a SOUL color change occurs in Deltarune, while also introducing a ChargedAttack. A glitch was quickly discovered where players could rapidfire this attack, and rather than patch it out, Toby instead had the boss progressively [[TurnsRed turn red]] the more you use it.]]

** Prior to patch 1.8, if you went an extremely-far distance in your Minecraft world (12,550,820 in-game meters, or roughly 820 hours of straight walking) you would run across a place called the Far Lands, where the terrain would suddenly become severely distorted and laggy due to a glitch in the way in-game worlds were generated. Originally, Notch said he liked the idea of a mysterious place so instead of fixing it, he kept it in. But in patch 1.8, he accidentally fixed whatever it was in the world generation process that created the trademark appearance of Far Lands. A somewhat different, and this time intentional, version of the Far Lands now exists in the Bedrock Edition. It's even part of Telltale's ''VideoGame/MinecraftStoryMode'' in the fourth episode.
** Creepers are the result of a failed pig model.

*** Then there's the Chapter 2 OptionalBoss: [[spoiler: Spamton NEO turns your SOUL yellow, marking the first time a SOUL color change occurs in Deltarune, while also introducing a ChargedAttack. A glitch was quickly discovered where players could rapidfire this attack, and rather than patch it out, Toby instead had the boss [[TurnsRed turn red]].]]

*** [[TrollingCreator And added two more to the King fight for good measure.]]

* [[http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound2.shtml The running feature]] in the English version of ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' was originally added in for debugging purposes (hence why it simply doubles the game's overworld speed), but localization director and English script writer Phil Sandhop convinced the development team to leave it in the final game due to how slow and plodding the game felt otherwise. A more conventional run feature, which only affect's the player's overworld speed, was included in both the ''MOTHER 1'' half of ''[[CompilationRerelease MOTHER 1+2]]'' and ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''.

* Similarly, [[http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound2.shtml the running feature]] in the English version of ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' was originally added in for debugging purposes, but localization director and English script writer Phil Sandhop convinced the development team to leave it in the final game due to how slow and plodding the game felt otherwise. The ability to run on the overworld was included in both ''[[CompilationRerelease MOTHER 1+2]]'' and ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''.

** While the developers of ''VideoGame/SonicMania'' were programming the ending cutscene, [[https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/10/02/sonic-mania-dev-on-origins-of-easter-eggs-sega-references there was a glitch]] that caused there to be [[MesACrowd three Knuckles]] in the ending cutscene. They took this idea and [[AscendedGlitch ran with it]], ending up with the [[AscendedMeme "& Knuckles"]] mode that lets you pair any character with Knuckles, including himself. If you beat the game this way, you even get a special ending.

* Similarly, [[http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound2.shtml the running feature]] in the English version of ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' was originally added in for debugging purposes, but localization director and English script writer Phil Sandhop convinced the development team to leave it in the final game due to how slow and plodding the game felt otherwise. The ability to run on the overworld included in both ''[[CompilationRerelease MOTHER 1+2]]'' and ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER 3}}''.

** ''VideoGame/SonicTheFighters'' exists because a bored programmer at Sega [=AM2=] snuck Sonic and Tails into ''VideoGame/FightingVipers'' as playable characters.[[note]]The final version doesn't have them.[[/note]] Yu Suzuki found the gag amusing. He then showed it to Yuji Naka, who also loved it, and a collaboration was born. Incidentally, ''Sonic the Fighters'' runs on a modified version of the ''Fighting Vipers'' engine. 16 years later, Sega [=AM2=] did exactly the reverse. For the HD re-release, they put the finishing touches on [[DummiedOut previously scrapped character]] Honey the Cat, who herself is based on a ''Fighting Vipers'' character, and threw her in as a hidden fighter.