8 Video Game Mysteries Developers Had To Solve

Here's an especially hilarious example of developers solving a mystery for players because, in this case, they didn't actually mean to.

Shortly after the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, players who trawled through the game's code discovered a secret cutscene in which Venom Snake appears to have facilitated complete disarmament of nuclear weapons worldwide.

The problem? Nobody could figure out how the hell to activate it, and though the working theory was that it required every single MGS V player to willingly dispose of their own accrued nukes, that was one hell of a tall order considering human nature and all.

And yet, players ultimately didn't have to wait for collective better instincts to prevail, as in early 2018 - roughly two-and-a-half years after the game's release - the cutscene was accidentally triggered in the PC version of the game.

Players were confused en masse given that thousands of nukes were still in play, and so Konami revealed that it was in fact a bug.

The cutscene was seemingly finally triggered for real in the PS3 version of the game in July 2020, yet investigations since then have suggested that the whole thing might've been rigged by Konami, and players never actually had a chance of triggering it themselves.

If so, the fact that a ghost in the machine triggered the cutscene condition literally years early is an absolutely hilarious, well-deserved L on the part of Konami.