The frying pan in Battlegrounds is one of the best weapons in the game thanks to its bulletproof qualities. And like many of the best pieces of game design, that’s only in the game by mistake.
“We wanted to eventually make it that you could hit a grenade with the frying pan,” the game’s creator Brendan Greene recalls during an interview with Eurogamer. “Just to give that level of detail. As Pixar say, it’s ‘bumping the lamp’. You wouldn’t expect to be able to do it, but if you can, then why not? Someone will notice and someone will love it.”
During testing one evening they got the grenade-swatting working then went home for the day, not realising that the version of the game they’d been messing around with had been the one being pushed live to the game’s exploding playerbase.
The next day, Greene woke up to a game where players had quickly learned that the same properties that allowed the frypan to swat grenades had also made it bulletproof.
“We didn’t realise it would protect against bullets,” admitted Greene. “And then when we saw it, it was like: well, that’s awesome. I’ve seen people use the frying pan and bat a bullet out of midair. It’s amazing. Stuff like that is truly emergent. Something that you can never really plan for.”
You can read the full interview at Eurogamer.