In a beautifully ironic twist, a YouTuber attempting a pacifist run of Bully discovered a secret weapon hidden for almost 20 years: 'I can see why they tried to lock it inside a building'

There's little chance we'll ever see a sequel to Bully, but there are still secrets to be found in Rockstar's fondly-remembered schoolyard sim. A whole new weapon was recently discovered in the 2006 open-world game, one that's been locked tantalisingly away from players for more than 20 years. Now though, players can get their grubby mitts on it thanks to a glitch discovered by a YouTuber.

Said YouTuber is JustGarrison, who, in a zingy twist of irony, stumbled upon the glitch during a pacifist run of Bully. JustGarrison's plan to complete the game without fighting anyone ran smoothly until he encountered Norton, a boss players must defeat during the mission 'The Tenements'. It's here where JustGarrison inadvertently unlocked the weapon—a sledgehammer that was previously only usable during the boss fight.

During the boss fight, Norton tries to bash Jimmy's head in with the sledgehammer. But once Norton is defeated, Jimmy can equip the sledgehammer and use it to retrieve some key quest items through the medium of smashing. That's all he can do with it, however. He cannot take it outside. Like Greyfriars Bobby, the weapon is destined to remain by the side of its fallen owner forever.

It's this limitation that JustGarrison discovered a workaround for. The process isn't that complicated, either. Prior to the fight, Jimmy must pick up a trash-can lid that he can use as a shield during the confrontation, then lure Norton to smash a web of planks that barricades the boss arena from the rest of the tenement.

Once shattered, players must then move Jimmy down to a specific corner of the staircase, and then repeatedly crouch to glitch Jimmy through the wall. This is the trickiest part of the process, with JustGarrison mentioning that bypassing the wall is easiest on the Android and Wii versions of the game.

If successful, players will fall beyond the limits of the game map, then warp back to the main world outside of the tenements. Now, if Jimmy re-enters the tenement, the window through which he accesses the building remains unlocked, allowing both Jimmy and Norton to go outside. From here, you just defeat Norton as you usually would, and bingo, the sledgehammer is yours with which to bash whomever you like.

While JustGarrisson says that unlocking the sledgehammer is "such a cool thing to find", he soon comes to understand why Rockstar locked it away. "Immediately just running around with this weapon, I can see why they tried to lock it inside a building, because it looks so violent," he says. "With all the drama that was around Bully's release, I really get why they didn't want players to have this weapon."

That drama was, of course, an unwarranted moral panic that led to Bully being renamed as Canis Canem Edit in the UK. But I can understand why Rockstar wouldn't want to fan those flames by letting players whomp other schoolkids with a massive hammer.

Bully's newly liberated sledgehammer isn't the only discovery related to Rockstar's game that recently came to light. In September last year, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser revealed that Bully 2 never happened due to "bandwidth issues" among the company's management.

Starving Bully fans did briefly get a sort-of-new experience in the fan-created Bully Online. Those multiplayer joys proved all-too fleeting, however, when the mod shut down for unspecified (but probably cease-and-desist-related) reasons.