Skyrim small tables are actually shelves buried. If you can't see it ...
(Recreating my list of #gamedev tricks thread)

In Jak and Daxter if by any chance the Area/assets ahead aren't fully loaded the game will make you trip to give it more time to fully load. #gamedev

In Super Mario 64 to achieve the infinite stairs effect, Mario gets teleported back. Also the reason why Speedrunners can glitch and skip it using the backwards jump trick. #gamedev

There was a memory exception in Wing Commander on exit, because of the deadline they left it but change the error message to "Thank you for playing Wing Commander!" #gamedev

This #gamedev trick is from Undertale, to prevent NPCs to walk on pits, Magic glass.

In Fallout 3 the Trains are actually a character wearing a train model as a hat. Engine didn't allow for vehicles, so this way they could reuse NPC movement code. #gamedev

In Super Mario Bros. because of memory limitations clouds and bushes are the same sprite but using a different tint color. #GameDev

In Kirby's Dream Land for GameBoy, to save memory some enemies have the same "back" part of the sprite and only change the face. #GameDev

Here's one of my fav, in Zelda: A Link Between Worlds because a true top-down view in 3D would have perspective issues, they purposely tilt the objects, so the perspective looks good to the player from top. #GameDev

Duke Nukem 3D mirrors reflection were achieved by duplicating the room on the other side. If you deactivate clipping you can go to the other side. True reflections are computational intensive even today #GameDev

In NBA Jam: T.E. for Genesis/Mega Drive developers only found out after making the 250k cartridges, that there was a save bug. But playing the game in a certain order fixed it, so it got a day one "patch" in the manual saying how to initialize memory. #GameDev

In Super Mario Galaxy when Mario drowns in a swap his hand reaches out, but because of the size of the head devs had to shrink it so only the hand is visible to the player #GameDev