Traveling through the wasteland is a time of reflection. You get to see the destruction that man has wrought. If you turn your Pip-Boy radio off, you can just hear the eerie silence of the empty railways and playgrounds. On your journey, you see misery, abandoned cribs, and shapes whose very positions on a park bench tell a whole story on their own.
Then you turn around to your faithful companion, Dogmeat. At that moment the Fallout aesthetic turns into water and slips through your fingers. You see Dogmeat’s face glitch through a door, his panting snout sticking through the rotten wood. That’s when you remember this game was made by Bethesda and is infamous for its vibrating trees, flying raiders, and speech loops.
I love Fallout, but fans cannot hide the crazy, hilarious, and sometimes infuriating bugs that they run into. Sometimes they add to the fun of the franchise, giving us something to laugh about. Other times though, it can be a game-breaker where you better hope you have multiple save files ready. For certain gamers, they even take advantage of the in-game bugs and find ways to obtain unlimited ammo, experience, and caps.
Some fans make mods that fix these bugs, but let’s admit it: glitches are part of the Bethesda experience. Let’s dive into some of the craziest glitches!
25 Adult Baby
Fallout 3 for PlayStation was a game changer for the franchise in terms of world-building, visuals, and popularity. But that was also a stepping stone for the glitches and bugs. Technically though, this isn’t a glitch because you were not meant to see your character in 3rd person the first place.
It must be very awkward when your dad holds you.
This little discovery is at the beginning of the game when you are exploring as a baby. You see the world through your baby eyes and are not supposed to see in 3rd person yet. However curious gamers decided they wanted to see what they look like and hilarity ensued when the truth was released that you are just a small adult. Some even dared to play the whole game as a baby.
24 Fallout Shelter Bugs
Despite being an app on your phone, yes, Fallout Shelter is also littered with bugs. Some of these have been fixed over time. Others still remain.
Like most phone games, it’s very addicting and tries to limit your use of resources in the game by limiting you to real-time rules. For example: send a vault dweller to go on a mission…and then wait nine hours. Cheating this real-time mechanic is child’s play though, as anyone who can get as addicted and obsessed like me knows that you just change the clock on your phone to fast-forward time and ta-da, no time at all!
But other times you are just the unluckiest person alive and radroaches can become invincible for no-reason and end all your dwellers. Yay!
23 Automatron Glitches
Oh boy! A DLC where you can build robots and command them in Fallout 4? There is no way that could go wrong!
This DLC has become known as a bit of a mess when it comes to the robot mechanics and behaviors. It’s all very exciting until you build a robot with sentry legs and find out that the size of the legs make it so the robot cannot even leave the workbench it was built on.
These robots certainly aren’t taking over anytime soon.
Or there was that time we thought an assaultron head would look cool on our robots. Then it took away two hours of our lives when it shot its face-laser and made a permanent red-tint on everything that could only be fixed by reloading a previous save file.
22 Dogmeat’s Eyes
I laugh out loud reading complaints on forums about this little bug. Yes, Dogmeat’s eyes can escape from their very sockets.
I wonder what he’s looking at.
In Fallout 3, many players have produced images and stories of Dogmeat’s eyes popping out and floating vertically next to his head after combat. There are temporary fixes such as respawning him by changing his armor and some mods. Crafty PC gamers also are able to use resurrect console commands to temporarily fix the issue.
I want a cartoon of the Lone Wanderer just going “Aw, oh jeez,” as he/she take Dogmeat’s floating eyes and slowly squishes them back into his sockets. Gamers go through a lot of trouble in Fallout 3 anyway. I was one of those people who reloaded the game every time the dog disappeared.
21 Dogmeat Face Glitch
Fallout 4’s Dogmeat gets his nose in a lot of objects. You’ll see his face stick through the door until you open it for him. Then you ask him to get a gun for you that his face obviously was not accurately programed to hold.
Imagine running from some Super Mutants in a near end experience. You rush towards an old door and is that…Dogmeat’s snout sticking out of it?
You furiously click on the door to escape but instead you click on Dogmeat and his dialogue box comes up. As Super Mutants capture you, your last words to Dogmeat are, “Good boy, who’s a good boy?”
Dogmeat looks so realistic in Fallout 4, how can you get mad at his sweet happy dog face?
20 Escaping The Map
Games are full of invisible barriers; even open worlds like Fallout have their limits. But there are those precious moments when you find a hole.
Ever get tired of the Capitol Wasteland? Treat yourself to a field trip, just leave!
The hole in Fallout 3 lies in Takoma Industrial on the far East side of the Pip-Boy map. Prepare for some feral ghouls and Super Mutants. There is a video that shows how the glitch is done.
For those that have not broken through a game map before, it’s very exciting when you to it for the first time. It’s like you cracked a secret code and get to see the world for its shapes and mistakes that got you through in the first place.
19 No Face
Yeah, your face can just disappear. If you’re unlucky, it’ll at leave you your eyes and mouth and make you look like a monster.
It’s really sad when a glitch like this can happen straight from the get-go, at the beginning of the game during character-creation.
This glitch is not game breaking. It doesn’t corrupt or limit your character in any way. Still, I pity any gamer who gets this glitch. Talk about breaking immersion. I cannot in my right mind come up with in in-story reason for your face to disappear.
We could pretend it’s your character disassociating from the entire trauma they’ve been through and their lack of face is how they see themselves. Or maybe radiation did the deed. Hey, we see radiation do a lot of weird things to the human body!
18 Stretchy Bodies
Sometimes people in this franchise can just stretch like Elastigirl except instead of fun and heroic is annoying and horrifying.
This glitch stretches more than people though; it stretches the very textures that make the Fallout world you explore. It can happen to the clouds, cars, and cans as much as any raider.
They are going to be so good at hugging now.
Few things shatter the illusion of reality in a video game quite like watching a man’s head extend five feet in front of his body, his neck shaking like some sea-monster from a parallel reality. You stare on in horror; suddenly his arms begin to stretch as well in horrible direction and flailing wildly.
He tells you, “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for nuclear winter.”
17 Twisting Heads
In the ever dangerous and hazardous world of Fallout, you must always keep your head on a swivel. This glitch takes that a little too literally. The twisting head bug is most infamous in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3. NPC heads can rotate like clock hands.
This is among one of the funniest glitches though, especially when speaking to the buggy NPC. The NPC acts like nothing is wrong the whole time while his or her head reaches a 160 degree angle.
“Tunnel Snakes rule!” Butch cheers as his head twists like an owl at 90 degrees.
It would really ruin an epic moment, like meeting Father for the first time in Fallout 4 or when your father ends in Fallout 3.
16 Flying Monster
Mutated chameleons, also known as Deathclaws, are the most ferocious enemies of the wasteland. If the glitch gods are merciful though, they may send a monster flying mid-combat!
The truth is that this glitch does not only affect them. There are also reports of Yao Guai, robots, and ghouls with dreams of flight in the middle of combat. Most who witness this glitch do not find the enemy again, and presume they are now outside the earth’s atmosphere.
Vertiberds are not the only thing in the wasteland skies.
I think they crash land and perish on impact. That is, if there is any mercy in this universe. There may be a village that suffers torrential downpours of live, angry ghouls, robots, molerats, deathclaws, and radroaches.
15 Unlimited Caps
Yay for Fallout 4 glitch exploitation!
Oddly enough, you’re going to get more caps through shopping. Just go to any vendor, buy all of one kind of ammo without completing the transaction. Next, you sell one single kind of ammo from the type of ammo you just bought. Then you sell it all.
Buy Codsworth that hat he always wanted.
If these steps are followed correctly, there is a glitch that that creates an unlimited ammo stash in your inventory that you can sell for infinite caps. Note that this is not how you get unlimited ammo, because this stash is a glitch and therefore doesn’t actually work as ammo.
Now you can buy all those fancy guns with fancy names! Get yourself some cute clothes.
14 Headless
In Fallout 4 some glitches can make people literally lose their heads.
This glitch at its worst makes your playable character headless. In the less extreme situations, you may meet some headless NPCs.
There are survivors of the most extreme case. Reports have shown one player got the glitch after a nasty run-in with a deathclaw and his body has never been the same. Apparently the loss of your head is not a game-breaker.
I like that the player with this glitch’s perception became 0 due not his loss of eyes but his charisma is fine despite having no face. I guess charisma really is all in the body language. I mean, if you stay in 1st person, it can almost be like nothing happened.
13 Lost Companions
Before the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC in Fallout 4, I despised losing a companion. Due to playing the game on the PS4, I did not have the pleasure of console commands and would instead cry.
I could not believe that Bethesda did not consider marking a companion location on the map. Fallout 4’s map is huge! Looking for a lost companion would be like looking for a needle in a haystack!
Friends are the best thing you have in a wasteland!
Bethesda must have realized that mistake when they created Vault-Tec Workshop DLC and added the mechanic to track your companions through a terminal. I was lucky enough to never lose someone permanently, but it was the biggest headache in the world to find them. I am very pro-companion.
12 Power Armor Glitch
No, that is not Slenderman.
Careful when you get others into Power Armor in Fallout 4, because they can just fuse into it and become a monster. Apparently they also refuse to exit the armor once they fuse with it and then they just become your local village nightmare.
It’s some good nightmare fuel.
This is not just one character. Gamers have reported this to happen to Preston Garvey, Sturges, Marcy Long, Piper, and settlers. Based on that, I think this glitch can happen to any NPC.
Gosh, it’s like Mr. Fantastic and the Iron Giant did the fusion dance. When I thought of man and machine becoming one, this was not what I imagined. Imagine seeing that settler walking around at night. I would have to craft some special room or banish them.
11 Skinless NPCs
Did you ask for this? Me neither!
Only a real sicko would ask to see anyone in Fallout 3 without skin. So just…why? All these muscles, bones, and organs all out to see but it’s all weirdly mushed together… or in this case all over the background?
This is what feral ghouls should be looking like. This is what should be waiting in a car or in a Super Mutant’s stomach. It’s the ideal abomination. I wish there was a video so I can hear it talk and watch it move because it would not be moving like we’d expect. It would say something like, “You’re an adult, I hate you,” and then eat some fungus before sleeping sweetly on a mattress.
10 Speech Loops
I love games where you choose your own dialogue. Unfortunately that comes with the risk of speech loop glitches. You talk yourself into a trap where you and an NPC cannot end a conversation and end up repeating and repeating.
One notable time this happened was in Fallout: New Vegas DLC, Old World Blues. Long story short, you get into an argument with your own brain that has been harvested from you (it’s best that you just don’t think too hard about it).
Nothing like getting stuck in a speech loop with your own brain.
If you try to compromise with your brain and reminisce about the adventures you’ve had together, the brain will get caught in a speech loop like, “Oh yeah, that time we did this and that and this and that,” until the brain is just repeating the same adventures over and over again.
9 Stealth Boy Glitch
Guess what, you can now be invisible forever!
Stealthboys are great for sneaking around and pickpocketing, but is always a little intense because of their time limit. However, there is a bug in Fallout 4 where the time limit just stops and you’re stuck being invisible.
Someone should write a book about an invisible being living in the post-apocalypse. Maybe there are multiple invisible beings. Some are tricksters and others are kindred spirits that help people survive.
Or you could be like those Super Mutants in Fallout: New Vegas that got addicted to stealthboys. To be real, this bug would be their dream come true. I can’t blame them. Invisibility would be very useful in avoided raiders and steal.
8 Stuck In Furniture
Fallout 4 introduced the crazy and amazing idea of building your own settlements. You can spend hundreds of hours perfecting and gathering settlements. It’s almost like SIMS in terms of addiction level and mechanics.
But of course life is misery so everything can and will go wrong. People will get stuck in furniture. They will stand through mattresses. You can and will wake up with a Brahmin mooing as it glitches through your wall.
If you are a perfectionist, you will hate this.
You can build a fence but it remains at a certain level above the ground because there are hills and it can’t both connect to another piece of fence and adapt to the ground level. Your settlement will never be perfect and that is the harsh truth.
7 Swimming In Air
As luck will have it, this can happen to any NPC. As someone who has experienced this glitch in her game firsthand, I can also say its pure non-game-breaking entertainment.
Dogmeat doggy paddles and people breaststroke through the wasteland. Even when you talk to them, they look at you in the eyes and speak while still swim-flying. I think this happens after a swim and the companion or NPC is not recognizing that they have been on land for the past two hours.
The good news is that they are grounded. Despite the game thinking they are in water, they will not swim up into space or down into the earth. They are like majestic dumb birds, not strong enough to fly up and never quite free.
6 Toxic Cloud Glitch
This was among the worst glitches in Fallout: New Vegas’s DLC, Dead Money. This is my favorite DLC the series has provided, but the toxic cloud glitch was game-breaking.
It took the Courier to a casino filled with traps in a giant toxic cloud. Players had to constantly be alert to their health bar, as the toxic areas would poison them and their health points would tick away the longer they remained in the toxic cloud. This gave players a challenge they could enjoy along with amazing characters and story.
Talk about the least funny or fun glitch ever.
This glitch made it so the toxic cloud was always with you. Even when you beat the DLC, the poison would follow you out into the Mojave Wasteland and tick away at your health forever.
