The video game industry has become extremely serious, with so many multi-million dollar investments and high expectations of profit and relevance that practically no one dares to do something just for the sake of fun.
While I appreciate that the interactive medium has grown and is now much more mature, focusing on more than just entertainment, I think we’ve gone to the other extreme, where most games seem to lack soul and only focus on checking off a list of trends.
However, there are still developers who, whether through small details or in their entire products, rise above the corporate rhetoric and do things that we could practically define as unpopular, but which give their work a lot of personality.
Thus, there are circumstances that can make me smile, either because of how funny the situation is or how surprising it is that they’ve included it, which you can read about in this list of ten times developers trolled their own players (and it was hilarious).
10 DmC: Devil May Cry
Dante Wearing a Wig
I’ll never forget the immeasurable hatred DmC: Devil May Cry received for Dante’s aesthetic change, something Ninja Theory, however, seems to have anticipated.
In one of the game’s opening sequences, this revamped demon hunter is seen fighting his longtime arch-enemies, eventually landing on his head with a white wig that momentarily restores his original design.
“Not in a million years,” he replies upon seeing himself in the mirror, and I can’t help but think the developers are mocking all those who couldn’t tolerate the fact that, as a reboot, the game opted for a different interpretation of the protagonist.
You can complain about its edgy story or Vergil’s poor portrayal, but seeing Dante teasing the series’ purists ended up being so accurate that it went beyond embarrassing and became a magnificent image.
9 Hollow Knight: Silksong
Fake Bench in Hunter’s March
I’m sure Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s development must have been one of the most fun in video game history, both because of the years it voluntarily took and the unfathomable amount of pranks Team Cherry threw at it.
The entirety of Bilewater as a three-hour joke could be mentioned as the biggest example, but I prefer to stick with the fake bench in Hunter’s March because of the sheer number of people who fell victim to its naivety.
I’m not speaking from personal experience because, whether due to having good reflexes or sensing that an area full of traps might do something like that, I didn’t fall for it, yet I’ve laughed a lot watching the countless clips of people getting annoyed at being tricked.
It’s a minor detail that doesn’t even kill you instantly or is located in a difficult-to-access area, but it ended up claiming so many lives in Hollow Knight: Silksong that I simply had to include it.
8 The Wicher 3: The Wild Hunt
You Can’t Romance Yennefer and Triss
Role-playing games are characterized, among other things, by the freedom they give you to make all kinds of decisions and see the consequences of each one; a department in which The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt reigns supreme.
Seeing the side effects of each path Geralt takes is utterly magical, although that magic is lost when you realize that, no matter how much you can flirt with Yennefer and Triss for countless hours, you can’t be with both of them simultaneously.
CD Projekt RED anticipated the community’s greed, assuming they would do anything to be with both characters, and punished them by making them believe they could fulfill their dreams, only to be rewarded with a hilarious cutscene of our beloved Witcher tied to a bed.
Furthermore, trying to court both of them results in not forming any romantic connection, so all I can do is applaud the developer’s courage in doing what many RPGs don’t: putting a stop to the users’ carnal greed.
7 God of War: Ragnarök
Fake Death Against Thor
Despite being a AAA game studio, Santa Monica has repeatedly proven that they’re not afraid to include unexpected breaks from the norm, but my favorite example is in God of War: Ragnarok‘s introduction.
After the cliffhanger ending of the 2018 title, Kratos and Thor finally meet at the start of the sequel to duel, but our Spartan is powerless against the Norse god and ends up dying… Or so the game leads you to believe.
God of War: Ragnarök then presents you with a loading screen right after “failing” a quick-time event to make you think you have to restart the fight, though it’s just a fourth-wall break where Thor pulls you out of that transition and back into the fight, which almost made my jaw drop.
It’s a section of only a few seconds, but the memory will stay with you forever. Rarely has an enemy in a video game mocked me so much as to extradiegetically give me another chance to continue beating me up, and it was fantastic.
6 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Guardian Ape’s Revival
When a video game presents itself with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice‘s sobriety, it’s practically impossible to imagine it has the capacity to mock you in any way.
Yes, every now and then it throws a flying kamikaze at you, but there are no cheating enemies, no environments designed to annoy you, no difficult-to-navigate areas… It’s a serious game through and through, until you encounter the Guardian Ape.
At first, you think it’s just another incredibly difficult boss, so you dedicate a dozen attempts until you finally see the calming “Shinobi Execution” that unfailingly signals your victory, only to have your morale completely shattered when the headless ape rises for the second round.
If you’re like me, and your first “victory” caught you with no healing, low health, and no will to continue, you’ll probably resign yourself to defeat and try again from the beginning. However, the look on my face during the event was priceless, and I commend Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for breaking its coldness at least once.
5 Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
There Isn’t Permadeath
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a game that, within its ludonarrative coherence, is entirely designed to get inside your head and confuse you, making you feel like you’re in the shoes of the grieving Senua.
Its dedication to breaking you is such that, from the very beginning, the game promises that if you die, you’ll lose all your progress, which generated a kind of collective hysteria at launch due to the fear of having to start from scratch.
In the end, of course, it turned out to be a hoax, but what only involved a couple of lines of text in the title’s intro ended up being among the most iconic and thematically relevant trolls in video game history.
They didn’t mock the players for no reason; rather, they used the medium’s interactivity to raise the stakes and instill a sense of tension and anxiety even before the adventure began. If that isn’t a testament to how special Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is, nothing is.
4 The Stanley Parable
Unachievable Achievement
If the conversation is about games that break the fourth wall, I don’t think there’s any alternative that surpasses The Stanley Parable, a game that trolls you at every turn.
I could cite dozens of examples that would guarantee it a spot on this list, but my absolute favorite is the Unachievable Achievement, an accomplishment that has baffled countless trophy hunters because it’s never static.
For some, it’s been entering a room; for others, turning off a monitor; and some have even gone so far as to modify the game files to achieve it, but there’s no surefire way to do it.
Years go by, and people still haven’t found a clear answer, and sometimes Reddit erupts again due to the naivety of someone who thinks they’ve cracked the code. It’s hilarious, and a reminder that teasing players is The Stanley Parable‘s forte.
3 Hades 2
Chronos Can Unpause Your Game
As much as video games make you feel ultra-powerful or mega-vulnerable, there’s a reality that transcends those sensations. When you stop playing, turn off the console, or close your eyes, you control a dimension the game can’t access, unless it’s Hades 2.
In the sequel to Supergiant Games‘ masterpiece, you have to fight against time itself, symbolized by Chronos. He’s a truly difficult adversary and will force you to face him several times until you can defeat him comfortably, but even then, he’ll catch you completely off guard when he demonstrates his ability to unpause your game.
The first time he did it, a chill ran down my spine, because I felt both humiliated and impressed. Right after, he proceeded to defeat me because the shock was so great that I didn’t even have time to put my hands back on the controller.
The fact that he actively talks about this being his territory and that you can’t control time strikes me as superb writing and even better ludonarrative, which is yet another reason to praise Hades 2 as one of the greats of 2025.
2 Dark Souls
The Pendant Does Nothing
Dark Souls is one of those RPGs where you start with absolutely nothing, except that FromSoftware gives you a Starting Gift that allows you to begin your journey through Lordran with a slightly greater chance of success.
These gifts can be souls, bombs, keys, rings, or more, but you can also choose the most special item of all: a pendant whose description states it “has no effect”, which was enough to drive an entire community crazy.
For years, even after Hidetaka Miyazaki himself said in 2012 that it was a prank on the players, hundreds of thousands of users did everything possible to find some secret, special interaction, or novelty that would make this obscure object relevant.
Considering the kind of things Dark Souls does, like placing the entrance to an alternate world behind a painting whose key is a doll found many areas away, people simply decided not to believe Miyazaki’s words and kept searching.
To this day, it’s become the longest-running non-joke I can remember, because I’ve still read people trying to make sense of the pendant. It’s hilarious, though it also demonstrates the PTSD some Dark Souls fans have developed.
Solid Snake Is Not The Protagonist
However, even adding together the nine previous entries in this article wouldn’t equal the ultimate trolling in the video game industry, orchestrated by Hideo Kojima, who took his mockery of the interactive sector’s violence to a level completely unimaginable, even by today’s standards.
After Solid Snake became a fan favorite thanks to his starring role in the glorious Metal Gear Solid, expectations for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty were sky-high, especially after the trailers and the prologue itself promised an unprecedented adventure.
The game’s demo, advertising, interviews, artwork, and cover, among other things, were further tools of this subversion, where everything pointed to a standard sequel, only to deceive players and introduce them to Raiden, a new protagonist whose own story mirrors the game’s players.
The sense of betrayal felt by a large part of the community was palpable, with many people choosing not to play the game or requesting refunds. Even the remarkable graphical, technical, and gameplay advancements didn’t matter because people were too deeply hurt by Kojima‘s colossal trolling.
Fortunately, time has done its work, establishing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty as one of the best and most revolutionary pieces of media ever created, but it will also be remembered for its ability to deceive everyone like no other title in history.
- Security Camera Installation – indoor/outdoor IP CCTV systems & video analytics
- Access Control Installation – key card, fob, biometric & cloud‑based door entry
- Business Security Systems – integrated alarms, surveillance & access control
- Structured Cabling Services – voice, data & fiber infrastructure for new or existing builds
- Video Monitoring Services – 24/7 remote surveillance and analytics monitoring
Author: 360 Technology Group
