List of bugs and glitches

Various bugs and glitches appear in the Final Fantasy series, referring to a programming error, which results in behavior not intended by the programmers. Glitches can be harmless and only manifest as incorrectly displayed graphics, or they can be hazardous and game-breaking, effectively ruining the player's save file.

"Glitching" is the practice of a player exploiting faults in a video game's programming to achieve tasks normally impossible if the game's script runs as intended, such as running through walls. Glitching can be used to gain an unfair advantage over other players in multiplayer games.

Final Fantasy
The Intelligence Bug and the Critical Hit Bug are the most game-changing bugs in the original Final Fantasy; as a result, physical attacks are substantially more powerful on average than they would have been had the correct critical rates been used, and the Intelligence stat is broken, meaning Red Mages are just as powerful spell-casters as White and Black Mages. The Critical Hit bug has been retained through various remakes, but the Intelligence bug has been fixed in the most recent releases.

The spells intended to raise effectiveness of physical attacks and evasion are glitched in the NES version, as is the item House, which saves the player's progress before it restores their spell charges. Several weapons are also bugged in the NES version, in which the weapons' intended special effects do not take effect at all.

Most of the glitches have been fixed in later remakes, apart from the Critical Hit Bug, leading to the assumption that it was a conscious choice by the programmers and thus can no longer be viewed as a "glitch". The remakes also add some bugs of their own: in the Dawn of Souls Whisperwind Cove dungeon, the Angel Ring can never be obtained, as the piece of floor that is supposed to lead to it never appears.


 * Critical Hit Bug
 * Equipment Bugs
 * Intelligence Bug
 * Invisible Woman of Cornelia
 * Magic Bugs
 * Peninsula of Power
 * Running Glitch

Final Fantasy II
The Target-Cancel Bug is the most game-changing bug and is only fixed since the Dawn of Souls releases of the game. The bug would allow the player to level up their weapons and magic effortlessly by simply choosing a command and then cancelling it straight away.

A similar exploit is to purposefully finish battles with low HP and MP to gain more of these stats; this isn't really a glitch, as much as it's an exploit of the game's character development system. Most other bugs are only present in the original NES version, which had bugs related to equipment, spells and the dual wielding system with weapons that didn't work as intended.


 * 0 HP Character Bug
 * Dual Wield Bug
 * Equipment Bugs
 * Magic Bugs
 * Middle Character Target Bug
 * Party Magic Target Bug
 * Peninsula of Power
 * Target-Cancel Bug

Final Fantasy III
Various equipment and spell bugs were still present in the original NES release of Final Fantasy III, where certain spells and weapons don't behave as intended and the player is able to duplicate spells. The biggest exploit in the original NES version is the Item Upgrade Glitch, which would potentially let players get access to the game's most powerful equipment right at the start of the game.

The DS version is an entire remake and thus doesn't suffer from the glitches present in the original version, but it has a whole new glitch of its own, the Item Duplication Glitch.


 * Equipment Bugs
 * Item Duplication Glitch
 * Item Upgrade Glitch
 * Jumping Cid Bug
 * Magic Bugs
 * Magic Duplication Glitch
 * Peninsula of Power

Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV has been released multiple times on different platforms, and smaller and bigger glitches can be found across versions. Final Fantasy IV was the first Final Fantasy game to feature the Active Time Battle system, but in the original SNES version, it didn't have the time bar indicating the characters' turn order. When this feature was added in the Game Boy Advance version, the system was bugged.

In the original SNES version, there are various bugs concerning equipment, ranging from weapon effects that never take effect, and the Avenger weapon that, among many other glitches, fails to update the character's attack stats to those in the Avenger weapon, retaining whatever stats the character had in the previously equipped weapon, to weapon duplication glitches.

An especially hazardous glitch is the possibility of completely losing the Lunar Whale airship on the moon. Another fatal glitch is the Save Glitch, which erases all save files on a cartridge.

The Quake spell is bugged in the Advance version, and always hits the enemy party even when the caster is confused. In the Advance version, when using the Smoke spell, the smoke particles may not appear over the whole party, although it doesn't affect the ability's success.

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
There is a glitch during the third battle against the Creator, in which the Crystal, the item necessary to be able to attack the Creator, cannot be selected for use against the boss and is instead used on the character attempting to use the item. The cause is unknown, but as this results in a battle where no party will attack and thus makes the battle never-ending, the only way to escape this is to reset the game.

Another glitch occurs when equipping the Protect Ring and the Fire Scarf. The Protect Ring resists elemental damage, while the Fire Scarf absorbs fire damage. The game can only keep track of one resistance tier per character with absorb taking priority. This is why the Cursed Ring when worn additionally with an elemental resisting item (e.g. Diamond Armor) results in the element being absorbed. The drawbacks of wearing the Cursed Ring balances this, but this was not accounted for when designing the Fire Scarf, thus equipping the scarf and Protect Ring simultaneously has the character absorb all elemental damage.

Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy V doesn't have glitches that largely affect gameplay like in previous Final Fantasy games, but it does have its fair share of oversights. The most hazardous glitches are the ones where the player may permanently lose their airship, wind drake or black chocobo. If the player loses their airship, they are unable to finish the game. The encounter glitch lets the player completely avoid random encounters, and berserking Exdeath with the Kiss of Blessing Bug, lets the player completely skip fighting the game's true final boss, Neo Exdeath. Most of the glitches have been fixed in the GBA remake.

Final Fantasy VI
The Super Nintendo version of Final Fantasy VI has over one-hundred different glitches and bugs that were found by hackers, these bugs are graphical and gameplay in nature. A few major bugs were not fixed until the Advance port: the Evade Bug that makes the units' regular evasion stat do nothing, and the Vanish-Doom Bug where the invisibility status would override any unit's instant death immunity, making all enemies in the game easily beatable by this method. One of the most notorious bugs in the whole Final Fantasy series is the Sketch Bug, with various unpredictable results that rendered the use of the whole command risky until it was fixed in the Advance version.

The game also has a number of small glitches, such as Gau being unable to use the Tonberries Rage. Another bug makes it so that "invert damage if undead" attack property only affects healing abilities and so some attacks and statuses don't work correctly. The end result is that the majority of undead absorb Poison-elemental damage, when there were supposed to be a few select spells that hurt the undead, and that Sap hurts both the undead and the living.

While the GBA port fixes most of the bugs, it introduces some of its own to the mix, such as the Level Reset Glitch.

Here are some external links to sites full of Final Fantasy VI bugfix patches (including patches for countless minor bugs not listed on this wiki, as well as some patches that are more hacks than they are bugfixes):

Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII has various glitches, ranging from harmless graphics glitches to beneficial or even hazardous.

The W-Item Duplication Bug and its many forms and uses is one of the most known beneficial bugs in the Final Fantasy series. It allows the player to infinitely duplicate virtually any item in the game, apart from key items. Final Fantasy VII also has a notable instance of the overflow glitch, where Barret and Vincent can overflow damage with their ultimate weapons, killing anything in the game in a single hit. Another beneficial glitch comes with the use of the Gil Plus Materia: The player will always get twice as much gil from battles, even if the Materia only has one star.

The Magic Defense bug renders all Magic Defense values in all armor useless, as the stat is never used when calculating damage on a target. Another glitch occurs when a character uses an Elixir in battle, which triggers the Cover ability, where the character with the Cover Materia steps in to receive the Elixir instead of the intended person. The status Darkness halves the physical accuracy of weapon-based attacks, but due to a bug, the status only affects the commands Attack, Morph, Deathblow, Mug, Slash-All, Flash, 2x Cut, and 4x Cut. Because enemies do not use the above commands they are unaffected by it, making inflicting opponents with the status pointless.

A potentially hazardous glitch is the Save Crystal Glitch, which may permanently ruin a player's save. Another dangerous glitch lets the player avoid fighting Diamond Weapon, but it will ruin the player's save file. If the player enters the menu and saves their game exactly when the battle against Diamond Weapon is going to start, and then loads their game normally, Diamond Weapon has vanished. This leads the player unable to finish the game as the barrier over North Crater is still intact.

The phenomenon of seeing Aeris's "ghost" in the Sector 5 Church is associated with glitches, although the ghost itself is intended to appear. Some enemies have glitched attack patterns where they are meant to use a certain attack but never do. These bugs go largely unnoticed by players.

If Sneak Attack is used to revive fallen party members their ATB bars will never fill up.

There is a glitch that lets the player skip the entire returning to Midgar scenario all the way up to the boss battle against Helletic Hojo. When the player approaches the North Crater on the Highwind after defeating Diamond Weapon, a scene will trigger where Reeve Tuesti is in the Shinra Headquarters' conference room and will call Hojo on his cellphone and a scene of Hojo operating the Sister Ray's controls is meant to play. The player can trigger the boss battle with Helletic Hojo straight from the scene where Reeve phones Hojo, because during scenes like this the game is meant to cancel character movements, but in this scene if the player holds down, right and run buttons while the scene fades to Hojo's field, the game will consider the player to move towards the location and starts the boss battle.

Another glitch is the Repeating Boss Glitch that allows one to fight almost any boss on field maps twice (so the Weapons except Diamond fought on the world map are excluded). To do this, one must skip a random battle by opening the menu the instant the game wants to give a random encounter on a field map. This trick can be useful since it allows players to get the battle spoils twice.

All glitches present in the PS version are also in the PC version of the game. The PC version has a humorous graphics glitch that occurs if Vincent is in the party at Aeris's death, where his character model is stuck with one leg extended out into the air, although this was fixed in the 2012 re-release. Another glitch exclusive to the PC versions is the "Yuffie Warping Glitch".

Final Fantasy VIII
The PC-version of Final Fantasy VIII has many glitches not present in the PS version, ranging from the game crashing easily to minor graphical errors. A patch was released to fix the surfaced issues. Without the patch, when the player would cast Double or Triple, the game would say "Doppel" and "Trippel" during the spell animation, instead of the spells' proper names; also the animations displayed for the Devour command would be in German.

There were also issues of certain cards mysteriously disappearing from the card inventory, and the automatic scenes not starting; for example, when the player approaches Galbadia Garden stationed near Edea's Orphanage, the Battle of the Gardens is supposed to ensue; some players found that the scene triggering the war never begins, thus leaving them stranded.

Another known oddity is the Dummy enemy, a leftover test enemy in the game's data. Another thing that is rather more of an exploit than a glitch is the chance to duplicate items in Chocobo World. In general, Final Fantasy VIII has fewer glitches than most of its predecessors, and the only big glitch, the Junction Glitch, was fixed for the western releases.


 * Balamb Garden Balcony Glitch
 * Junction Glitch

Final Fantasy IX
The most known glitch in Final Fantasy IX is the Gold Chocobo Bug that happens if the player obtains the flying chocobo before they get an airship. This lets the player skip portions of the game, but also has downsides, such as missed items that can never be retrieved and Dagger being stuck in her mute state during battle, unable to enter Trance and her commands often failing.

Another glitch is the Thunder Slash Glitch that renders the attack mostly useless, as it will never connect.

Another, more uncommon glitch, occurs when the player boards the airship after entering the quicksands. After leaving the ship, the player will be stuck in the middle of the ocean, unable to move. The only way to fix this is to start a new game.

These glitches have been fixed to the most recent PAL-versions, but the Thunder Slash Glitch is still present in the game's most recent release in North America via the PSN.


 * Gold Chocobo Bug
 * Thunder Slash Glitch
 * NPC Event Skip Glitch

Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X doesn't have many glitches compared to the previous games. The only big glitch is the Home Glitch or "New Game Plus Glitch" it is sometimes referred as, which lets the player jump back in time and play portions of the game again, by going back to Home at a time it shouldn't be possible any more. This glitch was fixed in the PAL release, and only works in the Japanese International version.

Other than that, the game has some minor graphical glitches. For example, if Wakka is petrified by his own attack via the Stonestrike ability, his ball is stuck petrified high above his head, hovering in mid-air. Wakka's ball stays up in the air even after he is healed from petrification, although it doesn't hinder his ability to attack with it.

Some players find the Abyss Worm monster's Regurgitate attack is glitched and may end up making party members invisible, although it doesn't affect gameplay. If a person with Auto-Potion in their armor is KO'ed, they will still lose the item even if it isn't ever actually used. If the player has 8,000 gil or more they can fight Fenrir for free; no matter what the result is, the player won't lose any money.

The blitzball minigame has a glitch where the player takes the ball and stays behind the goalkeeper of his team, the opponents will never try to take the ball. If the player's team is leading, the player can wait there until the match end and easily win. Square Enix never fixed the bug even in the later versions, such as the International and the HD Remaster versions.

The Catcher Chocobo mini-game also has a bug where the player can hang the chocobo at the edge of the Calm Lands until the limited time (2 minutes) is almost up, then continue the race and take a hit from the bird on purpose just right before the time is up. By doing this the player will never get hit by birds in the next race. This bug only happens in the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy X for the PlayStation 2.


 * Home Glitch
 * NPC Event Skip Glitch

Final Fantasy X-2
The most notable bug in Final Fantasy X-2 is the Episode Complete Bug, that if the player gets Episode Complete in Zanarkand Ruins they are not transported back to the Celsius, meaning if Zanarkand is the last location the player goes to get Episode Complete, the scene where the Gullwings are given the ultimate dressphere never triggers, and the player misses out on it even if they fill the requirements.

Also, due to a bug, the Dark Knight can avoid damage from the Darkness command by equipping the accessory Ragnarok.


 * Episode Complete Bug

Final Fantasy XII
The Immobilize Glitch can cause enemies to disappear in the field, and also allow characters to "teleport" within large zones. Another useful glitch is the Zone Out Glitch, which tricks the game into thinking a dead monster has not been spawned yet, and thus respawns it. The Dead Character Glitch on the other hand sends a player character into a kind of limbo of having been flagged defeated, but still remaining on the screen, which messes up enemies' attack patterns.

If a player is riding a chocobo and the time is running out, they can get more time in the timer by quickly going to the menu at when the timer has 0.0 seconds left, enter the Equip menu and change equipment (it's easy to just use the remove all equipment command and then immediately choose the optimize option), come back to the field, and the chocobo timer has gained 1.8 more seconds. The player can do the trick again and again to basically ride a chocobo for as long as they like if they are patient enough.

Another notable thing that may be a glitch is that petrified enemies don't break the battle chain, but their loot drops are still calculated by the current battle chain. This means the player can rake a high battle chain with common enemies, and then go and petrify some rarer enemies and still collect their improved loot drops, without the chain breaking.

There is a glitch that occurs in the NTSC version of Final Fantasy XII, but seems to have been fixed by the PAL release, where the player may get stuck behind a standing Garif Herder in the Lull of the Land area of Jahara.

An example of a purely cosmetic glitch is the "flapping hair woman" in Rabanastre, close to the bridge near the Sandsea, wherein a NPC, when spoken to, will have wildly flapping hair for no apparent reason. One also exists in the Rabanastre Aerodome, but will only rarely be activated. Something that is more of a mistake than a glitch, is Dyce in the Nam-Yensa Sandsea. Before defeating the Garuda Dyce looks completely different than how he appears afterward.


 * Dead Character Glitch
 * Immobilize Glitch
 * Phoenix Down Glitch
 * Self-revival Glitch
 * Zone Out Glitch

Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII has some glitches regarding the computer controlled units' AI on the field. The player may find the enemy soldiers continually running around in circles, or their party members getting stuck in a jumping motion, endlessly jumping back and forth over a gap. The glitches are merely visual and don't hamper gameplay.

There is a glitch in the game that renders Snow Villiers's weapon outside of battle, letting him have a "different" coat on the field. If the player kills a beast on a mission with the Eidolon of another character, and the summoning is executed while the beast is attacking Snow, Snow's weapon stays on him, even on the field.

Final Fantasy XIII-2
In Final Fantasy XIII-2, there is a bug regarding the Live Trigger in the Archylte Steppe in the Year Unknown: it doesn't allow the player to collect a missing adornment when the Live Trigger scene occurs after the battle with Faeryl and if the player does not select the comedic response on the first playthrough of the area, they will not be able to obtain a monster adornment if they replay the area and select the comedic response.

There is a glitch regarding Yaschas Massif where if character will stand on a certain part of stair, the character will shake. This glitch is harmless and can be dispelled by moving the character away.

Some players have reported Mog getting stuck hovering or spinning in place in Dying World. Since Mog cannot be thrown in the area and the Historia Crux only allows the player to visit Serendipity and the Coliseum at the time, he remains unable to uncover necessary people and elements in the area, and the player cannot move forward in the story.

In battle, performing the Friendly Fire Feral Link with monsters such as the Circuitron will sometimes render the Auto Battle option unusable in the turn afterward. If the player attempts to select the Auto Battle option, the sound effect that plays when Auto Battle actions are queued will play, but no actions will be queued and the player will not be taken to the target selection screen. Players can still manually input abilities and use items, and after the turn has passed, the Auto Battle option will work as normal.

Final Fantasy Tactics
The original PS version of Final Fantasy Tactics had some glitches that were later fixed to the War of the Lions remake. The Quickening Glitch is more of an exploit of game mechanics than a glitch, and can still be performed in the War of the Lions remake.


 * Dragqueen
 * JP Scroll Glitch
 * Jump Glitch
 * Poach Bug
 * Quickening Glitch
 * Weapon Duplication Bug

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

 * Shara Glitch

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift

 * Double KO Bug
 * Requiem Counter

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
The most famous glitch is Benjamin's Cure when cast on the final boss, causing the Dark King to take over ten thousand damage due to the Overflow Glitch. The player can also gain a free level up from Battlefields that reward EXP, by leveling up during the final fight of the Battlefield. The EXP prize will cause the player to level a second time, even though it is not high enough to raise the player an entire level.


 * Equipment Bugs
 * Magic Bugs
 * Overflow Glitch

The Final Fantasy Legend
The most famous and peculiar bug in this game is the Saw Bug.


 * Saw Bug
 * Sound Test Bug

Final Fantasy Legend II
There are two known glitches, both of which can harm the player's game and render it unplayable if the player exploits them. There is also a glitch related to the Sound Test. A bug occurs where the save-counter value from the loading screen is carried over if the player happen to go there first, leading to overflow and illegal values for the Sound Effect option.


 * Human Fungus Glitch
 * Trash Can Bug
 * Walking Through Walls Glitch

Final Fantasy Legend III
By pressing the B button to retreat inside the Talon with careful timing, it is possible to move into the barrier surrounding Mt. Goht one square at a time with only the Hover unit. Not only does this allow the player to skip much of the game which includes the Underworld, but the trick can be used to beat the game with Dion: simply perform the trick before rejoining with him, defeat Agron (causing Dion to leave the party, even though he is not actually present Faye will be the one who leaves the party instead) and then acquire Dion by going to Porle. This will cause the player to lose Borgin in the process.

Dissidia Final Fantasy & Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy
Dissidia Final Fantasy had a number of harmless graphics glitches, which were fixed in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy. The biggest glitches, however, the Double KO glitch and the Holy Glitch exist in both games.

The Mirage Sandsea contains some errors in its terrain, the most notably being in the forest northeast to the Gateway Forgotten Trail, which will leave the player stuck, the only way out being resetting the game.


 * 0 HP EX Burst Glitch
 * Ability Sort Bug
 * Chaos Intro Glitch
 * Double KO Bug
 * Holy Glitch
 * Invisibility Glitch
 * Jumping Capsule Top Glitch
 * Walking in Air Glitch
 * Snooze and Lose Glitch
 * Chase Auto-Charge Glitch