9 Video Games That Were Recalled For Completely Bizarre Reasons

6. LittleBigPlanet

Sackboy Little Big Planet
Sony

It's hard to imagine a character like Sackboy causing offence to absolutely anyone, but strangely, the original LittleBigPlanet game stirred up quite the controversy back during its late 2008 launch window.

The play/create/share-focused title enjoyed a huge wave of positive buzz in the months and weeks leading up to its release, and everything was shaping up for the game to become another exclusive smash-hit for Sony.

Considering all this goodwill then, it took everyone by surprise when reports began to emerge that the game was about to be slammed with a last-minute delay of around two weeks.

Initially, the reason for this delay wasn't clear, but followup reports clarified that it was down to a strange issue with one of the game's early levels. During the review process, players discovered that one of the background tracks in the Swinging Safari stage contained two expressions that can be found in the Qur'an. Because of this, Sony decided to recall all copies of the game - on a global scale - in order to rectify things.

Fortunately, the game still received a warm welcome when it did finally launch, and went on to spawn one of PlayStation's most beloved franchises.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!