The discovery of hidden secrets is one of the most exhilarating moments that a player can experience when enjoying a video game for the first time. The developers of video games know much the players love secrets, which is why they endeavor to include them at the end of the most difficult challenges and hide them behind hard-to-find areas, in order to make the discovery all the sweeter.

There are some video game developers with a twisted ideal who love to hide terrible video game secrets in their games. A bad video game secret can be anything from a useless item to a message that outright insults the player for bothering to play the game that they paid for.

It's hard to say why video game developers feel the need to insult their fanbase – it's possible that they are bitter from spending several months (if not years) of their time slaving away over hot numbers in order to craft a game, only for some reviewer to trash it in the pages of a magazine. It's also possible that some developers just like to poke fun at the people who play their games and want them to take their hobby a little less seriously.

We are here today to discover which video game secrets weren't worth the effort of discovering – from the 100% completion reward that insulted the player to the time when Jeff Goldblum wanted video game fans to blow the stink from their bodies.

Here are Twenty Video Game Secrets That Punished The Player For Finding Them!

Final Fantasy IX Has Underwater T-Shirts

In Final Fantasy IX, there is a Chocobo named Choco who grows more powerful as you use him to hunt treasure. It's possible for Choco to change color, which allows him to travel to different places, such as being able to cross water and run up mountains.

When Choco turns navy blue, he can run on the ocean, which allows you to search for underwater treasure. The underwater treasure can be found by looking for patches of bubbling water and using an item to start the search.

One of the hidden underwater treasures is a set of Southern Tropical Outfits for each member of the party. The Southern Tropical Outfits are the worst pieces of armor in the game and they don't even alter the physical appearance of the characters who equip them, which may not have made them worth the effort to find.

Dark Souls 2 Gives You The Ladle Of Uselessness

The starting area of Dark Souls II has two massive Ogres wandering around that can slay your character in a single strike. The player is far too ill-equipped to deal with the Ogres at the beginning of the game, which is something that completionists and speedrunners took as a challenge.

If you defeat the two Ogres in Things Betwixt and speak to Milibeth, then she will reward you with the Handmaid's Ladle, which is just a wooden ladle that you can equip as a weapon.

The Handmaid's Ladle is one of the worst weapons in the game and is hardly a worthy reward for slaying the two Ogres, especially for those who took the time to do it at the start of the game. Then again, the kind of player who wants to test their skills against the Ogres at the start of the game would probably welcome the chance to slay the likes of the Smelter Demon with a spoon.

Resident Evil 2 Rewards Your Hard Work With A Lump Of Tofu

When Resident Evil 2 was in development, the producers created a character model that was just a white block in order to test hit detection. The producers thought this test model looked like a lump of tofu, so they added into the game as a playable character, named Tofu.

In order to unlock Tofu, you have to complete Resident Evil 2 at least six times while achieving an A-ranking. If you manage to complete this difficult task, then you get to play as Tofu in a separate mode, where he has no weapons (except for the knife) and has to run to the end of the stage while dodging hits in order to complete his stage.

The recent remake of Resident Evil 2 made unlocking Tofu a lot easier, as you now only need to complete HUNK's scenario in order to play as him.

Snowboard Kids 2 Wants To Steal Gamers Money

Snowboard Kids 2 was a snowboarding game for the Nintendo 64 that used a similar style to the Mario Kart series, as you could pick up items and weapons while racing across the stage and use them against the other players in order to help you win the race.

There are secret boards that you can unlock in Snowboard Kids 2 by completing the Story Mode while on the Expert difficulty. If you complete the Sunny Mountain course through this method, then you will unlock the Poverty Board, which would cause you to lose coins as soon as you gained them, which prevented you from collecting them at the end of the stage.

Final Fantasy XII Rewards You With A Terrible Sword

Gilgamesh is one of the few recurring characters in the Final Fantasy series that is said to be the same person each time, rather than being different iterations of the same kind of character, as is the case with the summons that appears throughout the series.

There is an Elite Hunt in Final Fantasy XII where the player has to hunt down Gilgamesh and face him in one of the trickiest battles in the game.

In the original version of Final Fantasy XII, the prize for hunting Gilgamesh was the Masamune blade, which was a powerful weapon. The prize for defeating Gilgamesh in the re-release version of Final Fantasy XII was the Excalipur, which was a joke weapon that only dealt a single point of damage with each hit.

Xenoblade Chronicles Rewards Your Hard Work With The Worst Weapon In The Game

Xenoblade Chronicles is a game with a lot of side quests, some of which can involve a lot of running around and delivering items to individuals who are spread across the world map. One of the sidequests in Xenoblade Chronicles is called Bana the Betrayer and it involves the discovery of one of the of the Nopon race being a secret crime lord, which leaves you with the task of confronting him about his secret dealings with the underworld.

Once you reach the end of the Bana the Betrayer questline, you have to face an incredibly tough battle against a level 78 creature called Frenzied Bana. If you are strong enough to defeat Frenzied Bana, then one of the treasures you can loot is the Monapon, which is the weakest weapon in the game for Riki, who is already a physically weak character.

Grand Theft Auto III Has A Hidden Plane That Doesn't Work

The first two Grand Theft Auto games were 2D, which meant that the action was restricted to landlocked vehicles. When the series made the jump to 3D in Grand Theft Auto III, it became possible for the developers to add flying vehicles to the game in order to allow players to cause havoc from the skies.

The developers of Grand Theft Auto III decided to be mean by adding in a plane called the Dodo, which could only stay in the air for a few seconds before crashing to the ground.

The joke was on the developers, however, as some players managed to find a way to keep the Dodo in the air by using exploits, which allowed them to access hidden parts of the world map, such as the infamous Ghost Town that was used for filming the opening cutscene.

Final Fantasy Tactics Has The Hidden Pig Sword

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that is notorious for having some incredibly unfair boss battles, which eventually become easier as you are given powerful unique party over the course of the game.

There is a hidden sword in Final Fantasy Tactics called the Nagranok, which has the lowest attack score in the game. The Nagranok can only be found by poaching a Swine enemy or by using the Move-Find Item ability in Nelveska Temple.

The Nagranok will cast the Toad spell when it hits the enemy and will turn them into a small amphibian. The ability to transform an enemy into a toad might sound useful, but most bosses in the game (like the Lucavi) are immune to the effect, which means that the sword would only be useful in random battles and there are far more effective strategies for dealing with enemies in Final Fantasy Tactics than using status effects.

WWF Smackdown! Just Bring It Rewards You With... Fred Durst

There have been a number of different WWE games released over the years and the developers have sometimes had to cut wrestlers from the roster at the last minute, due to that wrestler leaving the WWE without warning.

WWF SmackDown! Just Bring It was one of the few WWF/WWE games to include someone who wasn't d with the company. If you completed the Slobber Knocker Mode within the time limit while playing as the Undertaker (which is one of the most difficult tasks in the game), then you could unlock Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit as a playable wrestler.

The reward value of being able to play as Fred Durst is relative to your love of bands from the Nu-metal era, but most players probably don't want to go through the trouble of unlocking the singer of such classics as "Rollin'" and "My Way."

Gex Insults You During The Credits

Gex was one of many platform games of the mid-nineties that tried to turn its animal protagonist into a mascot character, which in this case was a Gecko named Gex.

If you discover the hidden portal in every level of Gex, then you can travel to a secret world called Planet X, which contains several additional levels and will allow you to access the secret ending of the game.

The secret ending of Gex consists of the main character watching a TV screen with an eye-searing static effect that carries messages from the developers that appear in the form of a credits sequence. The credits initially praise your skills, before becoming sarcastic and insulting you for spending so much time playing a video game. The berating lasts for almost ten minutes before you are given a glimpse of the concept art for the game.