10 Video Game Moments You've Always Misunderstood
3. Luigi Isn't A Ghost - Luigi's Mansion
And now for one of the strangest and most unsettling video game urban legends there is, one that's stuck like glue over the last 20 years.
In the original GameCube release of Luigi's Mansion, if players enter the Telephone Room and answer the phone during a lightning storm, a seemingly levitating shadow of Luigi will be visible on the wall.
This visual can be replicated in other areas of the game, but this is by far the most common place to find it. It led to the widespread belief that Luigi was actually dead during the events of the game, the shadow showing his corpse hanging from a noose (hence the levitation).
While Luigi being dead wouldn't be thematically off-key in a game very much about death and spirits, it's not very on-brand for family-friendly Nintendo, especially if the suggestion is that he hanged himself.
Nintendo responded by ensuring the shadow, effectively a lighting glitch, was removed from the 2018 3DS remake, basically confirming it wasn't true.
This wasn't the only time that Nintendo had to assure fans Luigi wasn't dead: hell, it wasn't the only time in 2018 that they had to do it.
That summer, a Nintendo Direct focused on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate showed a cinematic where Luigi died and his soul quite literally left his body.
Amid further concern from fans, Nintendo tweeted "Luigi is okay."