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List of Crashes
Animation Set Crashes
The game uses different animations for Link during cutscenes. The game changes what set of animation Link uses according to an event flag sets by watching the cutscene before the Helmaroc fight. By default, the game uses animation set 1, while after helmaroc it uses animation set 2. Watching a cutscene with the wrong animation set loaded will crash the game. This happens when trying to watch an early game cutscene with animation set 2, or a late game cutscene with animation set 1. See Animation Sets for more information
Courtyard Cutscene Crash
Attempting to watch the Courtyard Cutscene in Hyrule 2 without the King of Red Lions loaded in will crash the game. The crash occurs exactly as Link attempts to get off the ship. The consequence of this is that beating the game requires beating the Forsaken Fortress 1 to unlock KoRL, or use Actor Unloading to skip this courtyard cutscene which is quite difficult.
Interestingly, the Switch 2 version does not crash here like the gamecube versions do, but the cutscene still softlocks at the end so it isn't useful.
Storage Crashes
Drowning Cash
If you drown with Storage while in the backwards or sideways swimming animation, the game will crash. Be extra careful to avoid this for tricks that involve drowning with double storage, like for example Greatfish Cutscene Skip !
Killer Bees Crashes
Interacting with the Killer Bees on Windfall Island while having Storage can crash in a couple different ways. Firstly, finding a kid's hiding location with storage will immediately crash the game. Secondly, bonking into the tree near the bomb shop to make the joy pendant fall down while having storage will also crash the game (this one is weird as it occurs a bit delayed). There are also other ways to crash with them, like finishing hide and seek with storage also crashes, among other interactions. The one safe and useful action you can do with storage is catching them during the hide and seek game.
Text Storage Crashes
One crash that can occur with Text Storage is storing a textbox that uses an arrow to progress the text, then pulling out an item such as the sail or a letter. If you attempt to progress the text, the game will crash.
Another known crash is related to the NPC Animation Transfer glitch. If you store Abe's text during the prologue on Outset, then attempt to talk to Sue-Belle, the game crashes.
Discovered by Abahbob
Text Stacking Crashes
Text Stacking is a glitch that involves having several textboxes open at the same time, which is normally impossible. There are too many possible crashes related to this to cover them all here. One of them is used as an entry point for Arbitrary Code Execution.
Door Storage Crash
Inside dungeons, if you have text stored, and close the text to interrupt the first frame where the door starts closing, the game crashes. This is frame perfect.
Door Storage DRC Route Crash
If you perform Door Storage to load several rooms at once in DRC, and one of these rooms is the central room, it is very common that trying to re-enter it crashes the game. The reasons are not completely known, but there seems to be several different possible crashes. This occurs very often when trying to follow the Door Storage DRC Route.
Death Storage Crashes
Performing several Death Storages without reloading inbetween will cause the game to crash. This happens because the death cutscene creates a J2DScreen in the FopMsg heap, and the game won't normally load anything else in that heap for as long as that J2DScreen is loaded. Dying again will create a 2nd J2DScreen in the FopMsg heap and will cause the game to crash upon triggering a loading zone due to failing to delete the 2nd object, and storing the death cutscene 10 times without reloads will crash instantly due to overloading that heap as well.
Actor Unloading Crashes
Unloading Specific Actors
There are many different reasons why the game would crash while performing Actor Unloading. Some actors trying to load but failing will always crash the game, such as lightning strikes at low GAME, but also bombs shot by canons or battleships, barrels from the spectacle island canon shooting minigame. This can happen both at low DYN and low GAME, but it is much more common to happen at low GAME because in this case data will sometimes accidently load in the gamecube header due to accidental null pointer writes.
Hyxost Bomb Crash
Another possible crash related to Actor Unloading occurs when performing the Hyxost Bomb glitch, then trying to pick up the unloaded bomb afterwards. These bombs linger through loading zones, so even attempting to press A in a different stage but at the same coordinates will crash the game just the same.
Tott Crash
If you unload actor [Bg] of Windfall Island (which is basically the room model/collision itself), the game will crash if Tott touches the ocean floor. This can occur in Back in Time or with the Schrödinger's Text glitch.
Unloaded Chest Crashes
Dungeon Chest Reload
For more information, see Dungeon Chest Reload.
Chests are stage actors and are always loaded inside dungeons from anywhere, but turned invisible. By landing on an Out of Bounds chest and pulling out a bomb, the game will crash as the room ID will be wrong. On all versions but the Switch 2 version, you also crash by playing the Song of Passing on top of an unloaded chest, due to attempting to read from a null pointer.
Landing on an OoB chest can also crash for other reasons sometimes. One of them being when going OoB from the 2nd room of Wind Temple before killing the wizzrobe. That wizzrobe checks every frame if it's been defeated by checking a room-specific flag, and this causes landing on an OoB chest when coming from that room to always instantly crash the game as this check fails.
Ghost Ship Chest Crash
Trying to get on top of the ghost ship chest crashes the game. The ghost ship stage has 3 rooms in it. The actual used ghost ship is in room 2, while rooms 0 and 1 are unused. However, these rooms all have chests overlapping at the same coordinates, and they all exist just like dungeon chests, simply turned invisible. Thus, by going on top of the ghost ship chest, the game checks collision to see in what room Link is in. Because he is on top of all 3 chests at once, he is simultaneously above collision from rooms 0, 1 and 2. In this case, the game prioritizes room 0, thus Link is thought to be in an unloaded room. Just like in the 2nd room of Wind Temple, some object inside the ghost ship is checking for a room-specific flag every frame, but this check fails and the game crashes.
Forest of Fairies Crash
The Forest of Fairies can easily become a source of crashes when performing Outset Escape. If you attempt to enter the Forest of Fairies before having saved Tetra in the Forest, and it is either night-time or you've beaten Forsaken Fortress 1 already (which progresses the layer of the forest), the game will crash, either as the FoF intro cutscene ends or about one second after entering the forest if you've watched it already. This crash is related to some check failing in the event manager.
The only way to avoid this crash is by either: saving Tetra by defeating both bokoblins and watching the cutscene afterwards (or skipping it with storage); or simply never entering the forest at night or after beating FF1 to not have to deal with it.
This crash is very relevant to 100% speedruns, as a wallet lies in the fairy fountain inside the Forest of Fairies. Current speedruns opt to obtain this wallet before beating FF1 to circumvent this crash, which is not particularly convenient but necessary. Another option would be to save Tetra and get the wallet later.
Endless Night Outset Cutscene Crash
If you skipped the gossip stone in FF1, Outset Island will still be in prologue state. During endless night, if you have the bombs, there is a cutscene trigger that appears around Outset Island. Trying to enter Outset Island and triggering this endless night Outset cutscene while Outset is still in prologue state will crash the game. It cannot be avoided with Storage. This crash is related to Beedle's Ship actor. To avoid this crash, it is recommended to either make sure Outset is not in prologue state, or have this cutscene cleared beforehand somehow.
Exit ID 00 Warp Crash
The Exit ID 00 Warp glitch will crash the game if performed on a stage where exit id 0 has an invalid spawn id or room id. The easiest example of this is by clipping out of bounds on the overworld travelling pirate ship stage (after leaving Outset Island during the Prologue), and voiding out repeatedly into the water until dying. The game will attempt to warp you to the test map I_TestM at an invalid entrance and the game will crash.
Overworld Travelling Pirate Ship Savewarp
If you save the game on the overworld travelling pirate ship stage (stage A_umikz) while having fixed savewarp flags, the game will crash as the the selected scene is invalid.
Demonstration in HD
Salvage Item Manipulation
Performing the Salvage Item Manipulation glitch will crash the game if you salvage the sunken chest without storage, or if you close the item textbox afterwards normally. You can also crash the game if you are knocked out of the boat on the exact frame the grapple hits the sunken treasure and then attempt to re-enter the boat, as the chest animation won't be able to play without the grappling hook out.
HyoiKam Crash
Discovered by Legendoflinkk
Get Storage then enter KoRL somewhere you are not allowed to sail (thus before you have farore's pearl), and near seagulls. Use a hyoi pear to control a seagull, and KoRL's textbox will appear. Closing the textbox will cause the auto-sail cutscene to start but you will still be in control of the seagull. The game will crash when a room transition occurs.
The glitch occurs within the calcWeight function. The HyoiKam becomes the new player actor, so when it unloads from the Link actor leaving the quadrant calcWeight will be pulling pointers from whatever actor has spawned where HyoiKam previously was in memory.
Arrow Shot Crashes
With Cutscene Items
By shooting an enemy with an arrow and then pulling out a cutscene item on the same frame the arrow hits the enemy (such as drinking a potion or pulling out the tingle tuner), the game will crash when the cutscene item animation finishes playing. This crash occurs in the damage checking fonction of the enemy you shot. The function ChkTgHit() is triggering from the enemy getting hit, but when GetTgHitObj() runs to figure out what object hit the enemy the object info won't be there for some reason. This will cause a variable to get set to 0, which triggers a crash in the function def_se_set which is used to determine the sound effect that is supposed to play.
With Big Octos
Figured out by LagoLunatic and wooferzfg
A rare crash can also occur when attempting to defeat Big Octos with arrows. The arrow actor keeps track of both the proc ID of the actor it hit and which joint index within that actor it hit. The joint index variable is only updated while the arrow is moving, while the proc ID is updated by the callback function. If the arrow hits something with more joints first (e.g. Big Octo) and then something with fewer joints (e.g. Big Octo eye), the joint index could wind up higher than the size of the joints array for the second actor, and so when the actor tries to stop on that joint, it would wind up copying invalid joint data as matrix data. Invalid data can sometimes be NaN floats, and storing those as the arrow actor's position would cause an assertion error as positions are supposed to be valid numbers.
Item Swap with Grandma
If you item swap the bottled fairy used to heal Grandma, and you don't have an empty bottle left in your inventory, the game crashes. This crash occurs in the message manager, as the message attempted to be used doesn't exist.
Swordless Orca Crash
If you attempt to challenge Orca for the heart piece while having no sword equipped, the game crashes. This is because the hit counter in the lower left corner of the screen attempts to load when the challenge starts, and this counter requires a sword icon, but the sword icon texture is not loaded in when you have no sword equipped.
Fountain Idol Crash
If you place a Fountain Idol at a pedestal, then remove it and repeat this process, the game will eventually crash after only placing it a couple times.
House of Wealth Minigame Crash
If you've broken some of the antique vases inside the house of wealth before, you can then talk to Mila's Father to play a minigame where he will throw three red rupees into three random vases. If you've broken the vase before starting the minigame (by using item swapping to pull out bombs inside the house), then the game will crash as Mila's Father throws his rupees in the air.
Hookshot on Helmaroc
If you aim the hookshot at helmaroc's broken mask, the game will instantly crash. Part of the code for the hookshot's sight expects entities you look at to have a pointer in a specific place. The broken shards of Helmaroc King's mask don't have that pointer so looking at them with the hookshot crashes.
Hammer under Helmaroc's Fortress
Discovered by nap42
If you swing the hammer in a specific spot while out of bounds in helmaroc's room, the game crashes. The game seems to fail to get some information about the hit collision polygon.
Boulder Break on Room Transition
more info coming soon
Miscellaneous
Molgera Softlock
It is interesting to note that sometimes, something that looks like a crash might not actually be one. For example, the Molgera Softlock that can occur on JPN or PAL is not actually a crash despite thought to be one for many years. The game is still running in the background but it is stuck in an infinite loop, similarly to some versions of Map Glitch.
Renderer Issues
Another example of this would be building up millions of speed on the overworld and attempting to release it into the open. It will look like the game crashed, but it will actually still be running, but incredibly slowly. This is because the renderer is having a difficult time generating the next frame when Link is so far out of bounds. At some point, the game will run so slowly it might as well be treated the same as a crash.
