As everyone likely knows by now, glitch and easter egg focused videos are not a rare sight on YouTube. Indeed, whether it’s A Start Show or Aurum, D Pad Gamer or Beta64, the platform is just brimming with lists about bugs in games or hidden content left on the disc by developers.
Thing is though, most of them are really not all that interesting.
Oh sure, they’re well presented yes. And for a complete beginner, they do indeed give a decent enough overview of the game and its content regardless.
But the information is usually old, documented all over the place online, and (in most cases), just taken wholesale from the Cutting Room Floor Wiki or various speedrunning Discords.
This is where about 99.99% of articles and videos about unused content get their material
It’s lazy, it’s unimaginative and for many viewers, other rather redundant too.
However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in today’s interview, we’ll be talking to the YouTuber whose channel is one of these exceptions.
Namely, Oddheader. Known for his videos about creepy secrets and glitches in games, Oddheader’s videos are a veritable smorgasbord of interesting stuff, with many of his discoveries being new to not only TCRF, but also much of the internet as a whole.
And with 320,000+ subscribers, it’s clearly paid off for him too. His channel has exploded onto the scene since its launch in 2018, and shows no signs of stopping at all.
So in this article, we’re gonna talk to him about all of it, glitches, unused content, YouTube fame and all.
You ready? Let’s do this!
Starting with a bit of personal info first. Who are you? Who is Oddheader?
Thanks for having me! My name’s Randall Rigdon Jr. I guess you could call me a YouTuber journalist, musician, glitcher, and easter egg hunter!
And where did your username come from? Is there an interesting meaning behind it?
I don’t know about how interesting it is, but in college I had to make a Twitter for a project and I was trying to come up with a throwaway name—I wasn’t planning on really using Twitter at the time. I was on my laptop, digging through whatever files I could find and came across one called Odd_Header, which I didn’t realise until last year was likely a resource for adding headers on every odd page in a Word document. A lot of people assume because it’s used in programming that I come from that sort of background, but it was more a coincidence. I only know how to make games in Flash or RPG Maker so that’s not where my expertise is.
It’s a bit like how Guybrush from Monkey Island got his name from the filename used for his character sprites.
Either way, how did you get started with games?
I had a NES as a child, but my younger brother Matt had a tendency of taking things as a toddler that didn’t belong outside and leaving them out in the rain—needless to say he destroyed that thing! I’ve forgiven him since.
Years later my friend in first grade said he wanted a PlayStation. I thought he was talking about a Playskool toy set and remember thinking something may have been wrong with him. Then I told my dad about it and he was like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to set up the PlayStation your grandmother got you!”
When we rented Crash Bandicoot 2, that was the first time I was really captivated as a gamer. And the Pizza Hut demo a little while later that had Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Metal Gear Solid we borrowed from a neighbour. That was a life changer.
What about your first game? What was the first one you played?
Pretty sure it was Super Mario Bros. on the NES. I was like 4 I think. I thought it was absolute BS when I beat Bowser and it said “Your princess is in another castle.” So that may have been why I didn’t get back into gaming until sometime later, besides my brother destroying the system. (Again though, no hard feelings.)
How about now? Which games are you actually playing at the moment?
The last thing I actually sat down and played was Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and that was for the mystery in the last video. Unfortunately, I don’t get as much time to play games outside of work, but when I do get to play games for the videos that’s my little time to enjoy myself. Though I do sneak games of Rocket League in wherever I can. Horizon Zero Dawn is the last game I really sunk my time into.
The last game Oddheader played prior to this interview
Onto YouTube now. What inspired you to start up a channel anyhow?
It was a lot of things. I was doing freelance journalism that was getting stale. Same thing with my music; I wasn’t getting the composing gigs I had hoped for … so I wanted to create a channel that would hone both of these together and represent me a little better. Then, funnily enough, as soon as I started doing that I suddenly had the biggest audience I ever had, so I made the decision pretty quickly to make it my focus.
And why did you choose to make gaming videos in particular?
I actually had a small taste of what I think you would now call “online virality” in gaming long ago before YouTube was a thing.
I made a mark back in the day on the sites HighImpactHalo.org and Mythica.org when Halo 2 came out. High Impact Halo was this great community for showcasing Halo glitches, and Mythica was the server where we all used to upload and submit our discoveries to HIH. And Mythica, you can see on Wayback Machine, was super archaic with no graphics, just a list of videos and its download count next to each video.
As a young teen, nothing better to do—and an intense love for Halo—I dedicated hours to finding discoveries and hosting them on Mythica. To my surprise, they would get tens of thousands of downloads. Then Mythica went down, causing me to lose all the stuff I didn’t back up (which was nearly everything). People moved on from HIH and all was forgotten (besides a Discord server that still reminisces to this day).
I always wanted to get back to that. I always knew there was an audience for this stuff because I had good numbers on it before people were even streaming video. The thought in the back of my head when I was building up the channel was, How do I capture that kind of audience that ate up all those discoveries I used to do when I was younger? Because it was just such a fun part of my youth and I missed it, honestly.
Did any other YouTube channels inspire you here?
One of the first guys I looked at was Generalkidd, diving into old Halo theories and proving things right and wrong with today’s knowledge. At the time I said I wanted to do something like that, but I didn’t want to do exactly what he was doing. I also didn’t want to limit myself to just a single subject or game like Halo.
Another guy I was watching at the time was Minimme, another YouTuber I highly recommend with many cool ideas for gaming content.
Caption: You may have heard of him from his videos about graphically ambitious handheld games, and obscure but great licensed titles
Regardless, it’s the unused content and easter eggs that are the focus of most of your videos, and the thing you’re most known for now. What inspired you to cover these topics?
I’ve always had an intense gravity for this kind of thing, even at an early age. I used to be (actually still technically am) an admin for eeggs.com, which I’m certain is the first original easter egg website on the internet, period. I was 9 or 10 when I got on that site and I immediately made it my first “home” on the internet.
Whereas cheat codes sort of died but were once as popular as the games at one point (Contra Code), easter eggs have this timeless, evergreen quality. For example, Big Head Mode as a cheat feels super dated, super ‘90s. But an egg could be 20, 30 years old, and still manage to completely shock everyone to this day and the next. I don’t think at any point in time the image of Pajama Sam wiping his ass with his own cape is going to be a “dated” or “irrelevant” image.
I don’t know though, I’ve always considered myself a “glitcher.” I’ve been doing glitch video and music art for a while now, still am in some capacity. There’s just something that really fascinates me about technology doing things it’s not supposed to and when it’s hiding things we’re not supposed to see. There might be something innate about that which rings true in a lot of people since there seems to be this big audience for it coming out of the shadows.
How did you choose which topics to cover?
For something like my most popular subject, Out of Bounds Discoveries, going out of bounds in a game has always been one of my favourite things, and there have been plenty of instances of people documenting it across fan and cheat communities like GameFaqs, another place I’ve considered an online home. But I never saw anybody compile and package out of bounds glitches altogether as a singular concept, at least not in a video format or in any way for a mass audience.
For Unfinished Areas, that was my leap into the material I’m doing now and I talked about exactly that, just some geography in games that existed without explanation that I had always wondered about. My audience at the time, even though I think they were mostly extreme sports gamers, seemed to be really into the idea and wanted more. So the next one for me was something I was good at, which was Out of Bounds glitching.
So it was like, OK, obviously I can’t just show getting past invisible walls, that’s only so interesting … so I wanted to show examples of finding things that actually made going out of bounds a memorable experience like I had, as well as to educate on the subject enough to drive interest in more players about exploring out of bounds in their games, because I’ve always thought we needed more people covering more ground.
It was a thing where I collected all the materials for an “out of bounds” video and then it was like OK, what do I even call this? I guess ‘Out of Bounds Discoveries’. Now it’s like popular terminology I see all the time, even by people like Shesez who’ve been pretty foundational in the scene for a while. So I think that shows that I achieved what I was aiming for: finding a way of making glitch concepts more accessible.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHTnEwQKNwm49CQeCVZogMw
Editor’s Note: Did you know we actually interviewed Shesez a while back? Check out that interview here!
When I explained cartridge tilting in one of my recent videos, I had many, many people tell me they had never heard of that, which seems crazy, but then I think back to when I was just thinking of ways to present the concept on my channel and I found there wasn’t a whole lot of information that wasn’t—I guess I would say gatekeepy. Whereas I was able to explain cartridge tilting in one sentence with a quick one second visual, most of the information online would go on about the relationship of the memory and the console and the cartridge and so on.
Now my mom can watch these videos and actually have a grasp of what’s going on when it comes to glitching, which honestly I think a lot of it just comes down to the presentation. Like how do I commentate on this in a way that’s going to pertain to viewer interest? I don’t think there’s been a whole lot of strong attempts at that approach when it comes to this material, so that was something I wanted to accomplish with this kind of content.
What about the games included in your videos? How do you choose though? Cause you certainly like to keep things varied there…
I always say I let the actual content of the discoveries dictate what’s going in over any other thing. If I watch it and I feel most people will have a reaction regardless of whether or not they play that game, it should be included.
Another part of that is I try to throw my preference in there toward certain games. If I can throw something in from one of my favourite games, I’m going to. Which is why you’ll see something like Broken Sword or Jet Set Radio Future randomly tossed in there.
But again, if the content of the bit itself is good or striking enough, everyone’s going to watch it whether or not they play the game.
Interestingly, unlike many channels focused on unused content, your videos actually include a lot of new information and not just stuff from TCRF. How do you find it all?
Well, the channel right now is in the great position of being a platform to showcase other people’s discoveries, so a lot of people are sending me stuff right when they find it, which is absolutely incredible, as I really strove for that from the beginning. It’s great to see that coming around.
For the most part, though, it’s a shit ton of surfing the internet and diving down these long rabbit holes. Like really diving for hours on end. There’s a lot of damn stuff uploaded to the internet that just hasn’t been given the proper time of day and I’ll stay up all night looking for these things sometimes.
And thanks to the glitching and easter egg communities throughout the years, I think I’ve developed an eye for it, knowing where and what to look for.
You also seem a lot more willing to credit people for their discoveries compared to other YouTubers covering this stuff. Do you feel disappointed at how many seem reluctant to credit their sources?
Honestly it’s an integral part of the channel. I talked about High Impact Halo before—the reason I did so many discoveries and glitches and content for Halo back then was to get recognised on the front page of that site. The front page was run by this guy named Ducain. He always added his commentary to the discovery. He once named my “trick”—as we called them back them—the best trick ever, because I figured out how to disable fall damage when doing warthog launches. But he didn’t say it was because it was ingenuity or anything like that, he said it was because I took the discoveries and observations of others in the community and combined them to find something new entirely. He took my trick to make this great statement for the community. And obviously that really resonated with me.
I mentioned before that sometimes the information on the net about this stuff can be a little gatekeepy, and I know I’ve probably been guilty of it myself in the past. But I always remember the way Ducain had it, where we showcased our discoveries, celebrated each other, and worked as a community … that made us willing to give up our game secrets. And for that reason, recognising the efforts of gaming and glitching communities is an extremely important thing for me.
As far as being disappointed at others who seem reluctant to do so, absolutely, I think that’s bullshit. There’s no reason not to credit someone besides maybe to stroke your own ego. It hurts absolutely no one to credit someone for their efforts, and not to do so may even get you into legal troubles in the worst of extremes. So why wouldn’t you do it?
Then there’s those that are full stealing my and others’ content, many times trying to play off my research and other discoveries as their own. And that’s just really pathetic. Everyone has something original to offer. If you’re just copying and pasting another person’s work, then why are you really on the platform? (Besides to do some shady stuff.)
Either way, let’s talk a bit about the content of your videos now. What are the most interesting things you found in games while making one of your videos?
In the newest video Unsolved Mysteries III, the audio found from Borderlands that moans when you minimise the game was one of the first things that shook me in a long time. And this guy Rewind on my server just found that if you sped it up, it’s actually dogs whimpering. We even just got a statement from Gearbox on it .. and the rabbit hole just gets deeper. I’ll definitely be updating more about it on the channel.
Any things you wish to share, but which don’t really fit into a video?
There’s some things I’ve held off with because of concerns with Youtube policy. I always try to be on their better side. Like I personally found a backmasked message at the beginning of a game you totally wouldn’t expect that says something like, “the religious right is cuckoo.” I also forget which Mario it is that has a photo from a terrorist event in the files. It’s like, damn, that’s so in line with the content from the channel but like the exact thing Youtube would take issue with, and perhaps so would viewers.
A very Mario like easter egg this is not
I’m sitting on a whole chunk of material I’m hesitant to toss in a video. I want to do a video called, “Things I Can’t Cover on YouTube,” but obviously the challenge is where would I put that video…
Editor’s Note: The Mario game referenced here is Mario Kart Arcade GP, which (for some reason) has a photo of the Beslan School Hostage Crisis hidden in its files. No, we don’t know why either.
I’m also gonna guess you’ve had a few duff sources in the past too. What do you do in that case? What’s your response if a glitch or unused content claim turns out to be fake (or simply impossible to prove/replicate)?
It’s definitely an aspect of the channel I’ve expected to deal with and have dealt with from the beginning. Sometimes even my most credentialed sources will feed me some inaccurate details that will get in there that a team of maybe five people wouldn’t even catch, but a viewership of a couple million is surefire going to jump on. So that’s bound to happen, and I can only try to make it as accurate as possible before all the “experts” finally show their faces on the matter way after publication. Even so, I’d say 99 percent of everything still remains accurate, but some end up becoming retroactively less accurate as more information uncovers over time, which is the whole point of a mystery.
Ever had to scrap a video because the topic didn’t have enough examples to make it worthwhile?
The only one I can think is after I did Easter Eggs That Got People Fired, I got pretty far in making a Video Games That Got People Arrested video, but it felt pretty dark. It was a lot of depraved stories, hence why the people are serving time now. I had about six examples, and two or three of them were pretty funny and the rest were like, Uh … that’s actually pretty sad. I was recording that one and stopped right in the middle of it. Easter Eggs That Got People Fired was actually funny most of the way through, even if it was sort of depressing. So, I remember actually standing up and thinking, Let’s try to keep it fun.
Yeesh, that does sound disturbing. Still, which of your videos is your favourite and why?
100 Things You Didn’t Notice in Tony Hawk is a definite proud one for me. A lot of my own stuff is in there, and it’s just a fun video. I accomplished a lot of things I wanted to do with that one, like cataloguing every goat in every game. Everyone had always either forgot the THPS4, the THP8 or the THPG one when trying to compile them.
How about least favourite? Any videos you feel don’t hold up well now?
I think it’s clear to anyone who’s seen my first two videos that the quality is comparatively abysmal. But I still love those videos. People think the first video is like some long-lost video re-uploaded from another time, but no, I just recorded that one on my laptop because I was still experimenting with the content and seeing if I could even do it. It was never designed with this huge audience in mind like the material is now. I was thinking I’d slowly try to build my own audience over time, learn the ropes, and instead I had to saddle up real quick.
Still, even your least favourite is likely doing pretty well right now given your 320,000 subscriber fanbase. Did you ever expect to become this popular?
It’s been amazing, a welcome surprise from the very beginning. I’ve spent years on my music project, Dark Colour, just to get that off the ground at all, so to get this huge audience in less than a year’s time is a blessing I’m very, very thankful for. I love my audience, and I only have them to thank for going out of their way and choosing to use their free time to give my content a chance.
Caption: one of Oddheader’s songs from his Dark Colour project, which gets used in his videos quite a bit
What’s it feel like knowing hundreds of thousands of people watch every video you post?
It feels amazing that so many people not only enjoy my creative work, but also connect with the material. I knew this stuff could be popular, but to find that there’s that big an audience out there for it blows my mind. It’s like one of those cliché life things, where you wonder how many people are out there like me, and then you come to find there’s hundreds of thousands … It makes you feel that we can really connect on any level if we find the same common ground.
Your videos seem to be especially popular on Reddit, with posts on subreddits like creepy gaming racking up the votes. What’s it like knowing people on these sites are sharing your videos there?
r/creepygaming has always been one of my earliest supporters from the beginning. My first video Creepiest Obscure Games You’ve Probably Never Heard Of was designed as a video for them, because I always loved that community. They’ve always seemed to be supportive of new voices on the subject, and they were always finding awesome things. So to have that love coming from there is amazing. It was a goal of mine that’s been fulfilled.
Your Discord server seem to be doing quite well too. Are you happy to see such a popular community building up around your videos?
From the beginning I didn’t want Oddheader to just be a “YouTuber” channel, but a community and brand that people who love fringe stuff could belong to. So, me and the other people managing it that have been there from nearly the beginning, like Robert, Starlord, Trashii, Chris, Dr. Love… we really put a lot of effort there to make that an enjoyable community for everyone. I feel really proud of everything we’ve accomplished, especially with the one-year anniversary only days away on the 3rd in which we plan to do one big voice chat! Can’t wait to see how smoothly that goes!
And are you ever surprised at just how many interesting things get discovered there? After all, quite a few of your recent video ideas were based on topics and discoveries posted on the Oddheader server…
Absolutely, I feel we’re starting to find some of the craziest things in games before anybody else—I think that really showed in the last video. My hope was always to get something like that going, where the community goes hard on these video game things and solves them. Considering I just saw one of my Discord members in an IBM subreddit requesting info on how to decrypt an obsolete file encryption just so they could solve the mystery I covered in Tak in the Power of Juju—I think we’re there.
What are you plans to monetise that? Anything beyond just ads and Patreon?
Building Oddheader out as more of a brand. Not as an endorsement thing, but as a community like I was saying, where people feel invested in Oddheader because they identify and belong to the community. More Oddheader products, and definitely more Oddheader music is on the way.
What about making it your full time job? Is your YouTube channel your career now?
It is! I always wanted an opportunity like this, so when I started to make more at this than at my day job, my only thought became, You might only have this opportunity once, might as well strike while the iron’s hot. My brother sort of put it as an artist with some hit singles—they gotta follow that career while the singles are charting, and that’s sort of what’s going on now. I view my videos as singles, and right now, they’re charting.
Good to know. Still, what are you backup plans if YouTube runs into any issues? After all, we all know how badly YouTube has treated creators in the past, especially where monetisation is concerned…
In my experience, so far it seems as though YouTube’s been pretty good at communicating what’s going on on their end, so I haven’t been super panicked about that lately. If something were to go south though, I’m still composing and I’ve always loved editing, so I’m hoping my base right now would be willing to follow me to the next thing. I hope to work on a game or a film one day.
Do you ever think about having a website to go with your channel? Seems like it could have some extremely interesting articles on it…
That’s actually something I really want to do. If I could bring on some writers and contributors that would be interested in doing it with me, I’d love to do it. I’m also wanting to get a Wiki together that catalogues everything I’ve talked about on the channel so the public can stay up to date with each individual mystery update.
Well, we hope you make that website. It’d be awesome. Either way though, what are your plans for the future of your channel? Any interesting new series or video ideas coming up?
I have some really good haunting discoveries I’m saving for later in the year for the spooky season. So definitely stay tuned for that. I have a couple other series ideas, too, but there’s still a few pieces I need for those to come together. Definitely more developer interview stuff, one-off material, and the followup to the Tony Hawk video.
What about plans for collabs or what not? Considered working with any other YouTubers on these videos?
I plan to do more with the Easter Egg Hunter. We’ve already collaborated on one video so far. He should be in my next video actually! I really hope to do some more in the future. I’ve also been working a lot with game modder and YouTuber, Slippy Slides, and we’ve been doing a lot of stuff together. You’re going to start seeing a lot of that in the next video as well.
What other YouTube channels do you recommend and why?
I have to continue to recommend The Easter Egg Hunter and Slippy Slides. These guys seriously do the hard work when it comes to this material. They actually dig individually for their each and every find, and I definitely know how difficult a feat that is when running a YouTube channel at the same time.
Other random channels I’d recommend would be Luminar Light if you like Jak and Daxter discoveries, Look Mum No Computer for awesome synthesizer stuff, and Lazy Game Reviews for nostalgic PC content.
Finally, what advice would you give someone who wants to start up a gaming channel and why?
People just want to see and hear about things that you’re genuine about—if you’re not being genuine about what you’re sharing on the platform, that’s going to be clear. Just be sure when you’re doing what you’re doing that you’re able to ask yourself, “Is this what I want to be doing?” If the answer is yes, then you’re doing the right thing.
Wise words there Oddheader. You definitely need to stay true to yourself to succeed on sites like YouTube, otherwise you’re likely to burn out before long.
After all, look what happened to the Irate Gamer. His whole channel was built on riding the coattails of the Angry Video Game Nerd, with Bores himself having very little interest in gaming or YouTube beyond the money he could bilk out of the platform.
And it worked. For… maybe about a year or two.
Then people realised how little he cared about what was doing, noticed the thousands of errors in every one of his videos and moved on. He went from hero to zero in no time at all, and has now faded into history as a result of it all.
If you have no passion for your work, it shows, and it will usually catch up to you in the end.
So make the kind of videos you want to make, and share your true interests, not just whatever promises to bring cheap clicks. That’s how you build a lasting brand in the online media world, and that’s how you get real fans, not just lurkers and hangers on.
Still, for those of you who aren’t interested in running your own channel or site, what did you think of the interview? Did you enjoy the look into how Oddheader finds information for his videos, or how they’re made overall? And which of the unused video ideas did you find the most interesting to hear about and why?
Tell us your thoughts on the matter in the comments below, on the social media platform of your choice, or on the Gaming Latest forums today!