Before the Internet became a reliable fact-checking tool, myths about video games spread like wildfire. A friend of a friend unlocked a secret character. A classmate swore blindly that they had witnessed something impossible in the forest. The magazine printed a fake guide and thousands of players followed it faithfully for weeks.
These rumors were shared gospel, spread across playgrounds and early game forums with absolute conviction. Some arose from mistranslations and some were deliberate frauds. Some grew out of real glitches that got wildly out of control. They all completely fooled us and honestly, every single one of them deserved it.
10
Mew Hiding Under A Truck In Pokemon Red And Blue
Few rumors in gaming history have gotten as far as the one about the truck. Near Vermilion City, behind the SS Anne, sits a lone truck with no in-game purpose. Myth: Mew, the 151st Pokemon, was hidden underneath, accessible if you stopped the ship from leaving before getting HM Strength and returned to move the truck.
10 Game Features We Didn't Appreciate Until They Were Gone
We've swapped cheat codes and split screen for battle passes and 40GB updates. I'm not saying we've lost the war, but…
None of this works. The cart cannot be moved. The cruelty is that Mew exists in the game's code – obtainable via the MissingNo bug – just so close to Vermilion City. The rumor wasn't so much made up as it was catastrophically wrong.
As a result, it became one of the most iconic “video game rumors” of all time.
9
Aerith's Ghost haunts the church in Sector 5 in Final Fantasy 7
Aerith's death in the Forgotten City is the game's most famous tragedy, and players were never quite ready to let her go. In the months and years following the release of Final Fantasy 7, there were reports of a ghostly figure visible in the Sector 5 church – the place where Aerith tended her flowers – that resembled her silhouette. Get close to it and it's gone. Stand and it persisted.
Unlike most entries on this list, the truth here remains truly ambiguous. Under certain conditions, a sprite appears in the church. Whether this is intentional – an intentional memorial, a trace of Aerith's presence planted in the world – or simply an artifact of the game's code is something that Square has never officially confirmed. The myth persisted not because it was easy to believe, but because it was never fully disproved. It remains exactly what it always was: a question without a definitive answer, tucked away in a game that was already full of sadness.
8
In Tomb Raider there is a cheat on naked Lara
The 'Nude Raider' cheat was gaming's worst-kept open secret: a button combination – which varied depending on who told you – that would supposedly remove Lara Croft's clothes entirely. In forums and school playgrounds, smuggling circulated with urgency.
No such code ever existed. The rumor rested on the wishful thinking and discourse surrounding Lara from the mid-1990s, in which her appearance was seen as a constant source of speculation. The closest thing to reality was a third-party PC mod that Core Design had nothing to do with. The legend outlived it by decades.
7
Sheng Long is the hidden master of Street Fighter 2
Ryu's winning quote in Street Fighter 2 is “You have to beat Sheng Long to stand a chance.” For players who didn't know that “Sheng Long” referred to Ryu's own Shouryuken – Rising Dragon Fist – it read as a direct challenge: find Sheng Long, defeat Sheng Long.
In April 1992, Electronic Gaming Monthly responded with an April Fool's Guide outlining the exact conditions under which the hidden main character would appear. Thousands of people have tried. None succeeded.
The mythos was so deep that Capcom eventually created Gouken – Ryu and Ken's master – to fill the void. A mistranslated win quote gave birth to a canonical character.
6
Pikablu is a secret pokemon that you can unlock
Before Pokémon Gold and Silver reached western shores, the Rumor Factory produced Pikabla: a secret blue evolution or Pikachu counterpart that can be obtained through specific and conveniently unverifiable methods. It was spread with total conviction. The players claimed they had it. Others swore they knew someone.
Pikablu was just Marill – a water-type Pokémon briefly seen in promotional materials for the Pokémon movie, introduced in gold and silver, and not yet officially named in the West. There was no code. There was no hidden encounter. The name 'Pikablu' was invented wholesale by the player base who saw a small blue ball Pokemon and landed on a completely logical portmanteau.
The myth worked because it had something that most rumors on the field lacked: photographic evidence. Marill did exist, she was publicly spotted and simply not explained yet. The space between “this Pokemon is real” and “here's how you get it” was wide enough to be filled with almost anything, and players filled it enthusiastically and incorrectly.
5
Herobrine is stalking you in Minecraft
Herobrine looks like Steve. The same boxy proportions – except his eyes are blank white voids and he's watching you from the tree line. They build strange structures in worlds you've never shared.
He was never there. The original screenshot was produced. Minecraft's procedural generation and low-res textures make it easy to convince yourself that something is moving at the edge of your vision.
Mojang's response kept it up: it regularly included “Removed Herobrine” in the official patch notes, a joke that worked perversely as a confirmation. You don't fix something that was never there.
4
There is a secret cow level in Diablo
So many players clicked on cows in Tristram – repeatedly and purposefully, convinced that a certain precise number of clicks would open a portal to a hidden level. The myth became so widespread that Blizzard addressed it directly: “there is no cow level” was added as a cheat to StarCraft, allowing players to skip the current mission directly.
There was no cow level. And then Blizzard created cow level for diablo 2.
The secret cow level, full of halberd-wielding two-legged hell-bottles, came with its own response on the loading screen: “Citizens of Refuge, please remain calm. There is no such thing as a cow level.” Denial followed the myth to the very game that made it real.
San Andreas is huge, and its rural sections are terrifying in a way that the show's cities never manage to be. Screenshots circulated: blurry, grainy images of something large and bipedal in the tree line.
Bigfoot was never in the game. Screenshots have been modified or created by modding. But the creature became the centerpiece of a cluster of myths that gave San Andreas an almost folkloric quality—UFO sightings near Area 69, ghost cars driving through Bone County, the Loch Ness monster spotted in a reservoir.
When Bigfoot appeared in GTA 5 as part of a story mission, Rockstar gave the community exactly what it had insisted was already there for years.
2
Ermac is a hidden fighter in Mortal Kombat
The original Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet displayed a diagnostic counter on the pull-up screen: ERMACS — Error Macros, a technician's shorthand that means nothing to anyone who played. The players decided it was the character's name.
The logic wasn't bad: Mortal Kombat did hide content – Reptile could be unlocked under unclear conditions – so a second secret fighter wasn't unlikely. The myth claimed that somewhere in the code lurked a red-robed ninja, accessible by methods no one could agree on.
Midway denied it for years and then they made the Ermac real – the bug counter became the canon fighter. Kinda cool.
1
In Final Fantasy 6, you can save the Lion General
General Leo is one of Final Fantasy 6's best creations: honest, conflicted, and strong enough to feel like a permanent party member. He has a unique ability – shock – available to no other character.
Kefka kills him. Players spent years refusing to accept it as final. There were rumors of dialogue choices that could change the outcome, flags in earlier scenes that would change the Floating Continent sequence, a path that allowed Leo to join the permanent roster. Final Fantasy 6 is full of obscure optional content – if it could hide Gogo in a monster's belly, it could plausibly hide a surviving Lion.
It couldn't. Leo's death is hard coded. The myth persisted not because it was plausible, but because the alternative seemed a waste. Leo died because he had to, it couldn't be undone and it was possible.
10 great games that got better as we got older
With age comes wisdom and a better understanding of the complex themes of these games.
