Plants vs. Zombies Heroes/Glitches

Glitches are normal to appear in any game. Glitches and bugs are software errors that can cause drastic problems within the code and typically go unnoticed or unsolved during the production of said software. These errors can be game caused or otherwise exploited until a developer/development team repairs them. Complex software is rarely bug-free or otherwise free from errors upon the first release. This article is a list of the glitches found in Plants vs. Zombies Heroes. If you think you found one that deserves to be on this page, feel free to add it.

Repititive description jump glitch
Sometimes, this glitch causes the description of a card in battle to repetitively come back and forth automatically.

Connection Error
Before update 1.22.13, there was an issue where the game could not load due to a connection error during startup. This doesn't matter based on your device, it will not connect even if the Wi-Fi is off and cellular data is used. Update 1.22.13 was released to fix the problem for a few people, but it did not fix the problem for everyone. Before the update though, unofficial fixes such as uninstalling or reinstalling or using a hackjob (although it can give others access to the user's account) would've worked. If update 1.22.13 did not patch the bug for the player's device, the player must play on a different device.

Time Travel Paradox Glitch
PopCap has stated that attempting to time travel (via the phone's settings app) can result in disastrous results and can corrupt the game. Time traveling backwards work fine, but tickets won't be saved if the player goes back to the main menu. If the player does manage to time travel forward, the following can be seen:
 * If the player reverts the time to normal, the game may crash.
 * Daily Challenges may no longer be available since the button to start a daily challenge is grayed out with "Unavailable" on it.
 * Timer for quests may change, sometimes it may increase to 24 hours for a new quest or reach the negatives.
 * It is possible to go backwards or ahead for weekly event cards. It only works for any event cards that cannot be created in the update via sparks.

Unable to Watch Ads Glitch
For some players, watching ads for gem rewards is impossible, as the button in the shop is always gray and the button in the main menu is missing. Alongside, in some cases players may be able to watch ads but not get gems from them. Strangely, they may work on Daily Challenge replays. It is unknown what causes this or how it can be resolved.

We will fight
Unknown how this glitch starts, but this applies with zombie and plant heroes. Plant heroes can fight against plant hero and so do zombie heroes.

The game would then be glitched as the following may occur:
 * The player cards may look like they are "face-down" and show the symbol on the back.
 * Any placed plants or zombies will be placed onto the player's or opponent side. If the teammates gets "played" to the opponent's side, then it is impossible to win. Sometimes plants and zombies can be placed on the front as if it had Team-Up. Should the "Team-Up" teammates attack, they will damage themselves.

x2 Cards in Deck Building Bug
Strangely, sometimes adding, removing, etc., 2 cards while building a deck will sometimes only display it as one (Ex: Added 2 cards to my deck, but going to the deck only shows x1). The bug is fixed by clicking the card.

No help from the game
Sometimes, while playing online and you fail a mission 3, 4, 5 or more times, the game won't give you a Premium Pack in an ad. It is currently unknown why this happens, although it could be a way to stop players from abusing the free pack system.

Concede Card Glitch
This will only happen if you redraw a card. If your opponent concedes while you redraw a card, all cards disappear except the fourth card.

Animations Glitch
Electric Boogaloo's animations used to be severely glitched. This ranges from going faster or slower than normal, as well as reacting to hits late. It is unknown what makes this happen.

This may also happen to any hero in newer versions, though such thing to occur is more rare.

No Defeat animation Glitch
After the 1.6.27 update, the Defeat animation can now appear earlier than when the hero explodes. But when both plants Team-Up hits the zombie hero, they can cancel the defeat animation. The first plant must finish the opponent hero's health to 0 and the plant Team-Up will continue the attack to cancel the defeat animation. And the opponent hero gets defeated without the defeat animation, even after the game ends. Also, when you win as Nightcap, he will disappear with a smoke bomb showing up, but after 5 seconds he will appear suddenly without smoke. It is also possible to do this if a, Power Pummel, or Shooting Starfruit destroy the zombie hero but the initial damage for one lane is not enough to destroy the hero. It will do its defeat animation with health but when the "Plants Win" screen appears, they will warp its health to 0 and fill the Super-Block Meter, and go back to the idle animation after performing their hurt animation. It also used to work with for zombies but it no longer works after the Galactic Gardens change.

On a similar note, if a player concedes while their hero is doing an idle animation, their defeat animation will not play, but the player will still lose.

Auto-skip Zombie Phase and 10 second turn Glitch
This glitch occurs when a hero super-blocks and the Superpower trick fails to return to player's hand due to a lag. The game will automatically skip zombie phase. When it's time for tricks, the player will only have 10 seconds to play tricks but they can still play Superpower trick card for free.

Move a Dead Plant Glitch
If both Portal Technician and a plant is destroyed in same fight and the Portal Technician spawns Sumo Wrestler or Rodeo Gargantuar. The plant can still be moved even the health is 0. If you moved another plant to the plant with 0 health, it still cannot move to its lane until the plant is fully destroyed.

Playing with Fire Glitch
In the 39th zombie mission boss, the music will become higher pitch. This is because of the preplaced plants and zombies.

Undead Boosting Glitch
If a fighter with a self-boosting effect activates said effect at zero health, it will still live if its health was boosted.

Duplicated Reward Glitch
After you get a higher rank (or have been promoted to a higher league), play Casual and beat it. After you beat it, you will get a notification that you ranked up and it show that you will get an amount of gems, and even it show that you have been promoted to a higher league and then give you another amount of gems. But if you checked again, no reward was given.

Selfish Engineer Glitch
If a science zombie deals damage but dies in the process of a Zombot Drone Engineer to the immediate right buffing said science zombie, the Drone Engineer will receive the buff. It seems to be a visual glitch.

Undead card glitch
Rarely when a card's health is reduced to zero, it will not be defeated. Instead, it will just stay on the field and continue like they have health left. Attacking it again will destroy it.

Zero Health Hero
Unknown how this glitch starts, but sometimes the hero has 0 health. May be a visual glitch only.

A possible cause, is that the more damage glitch occurred and the enemy hero did not know, and didn't do the amount of damage needed to lower the real health. (Ex. the health might show zero when the hero actually has 5 left.)

This also occurs with heroes and teammates if Lily of the Valley is Conjured via a Cosmic Flower. This is because Lily will deal 3 damage but it really does 1, causing some errors as a result like 0 health heroes or allies.

Card size glitch
Sometimes, when a card is placed on the field, it will be larger or smaller than it normally is. Placing the card but with lag interfering between the process of placement causes this glitch.

Card has no strength when planted, but icon still shows
If a card with no strength points, such as the Prickly Pear, is boosted and had strength points added to it and is then bounced, its strength points will return to zero, but the strength icon will still be visible with 0 on the icon. This applies to both when the card is played and on its card.

Low health animation glitch
When a hero heals him/herself when they have low health and the health exceeds more than 5, they will continue to do their animation even though circumstances stand otherwise. This glitch has been fixed in 1.18.13 update.

Seedling Transformation Glitch
If the Plant Hero ends their turn by placing a Seedling and pressing the button, both heroes can see what the Seedling will transform into in the next turn. This also works with Tomb Raiser Zombie's created gravestones, but only the zombie hero can see it.

Invisible Card Glitch
Sometimes, when the plant or zombie hero places a card, it will be invisible, but its stats will still show and can absorb damage and attack normally.

Z-Mech Stolen Superpower Glitch
When you receive Z-Mech from a Premium Pack, and when you click on him, it will show the image of Possessed instead of.

Transparent Superpower Glitch
Sometimes when the Super-Block gives a superpower, some of the superpowers appears to be missing it's frame.

Living Card
If a berry with 2 attack or less attacks a Kangaroo Rider with a Sergeant Strongberry on the field, Sergeant Strongberry will attack the Kangaroo Rider after it has bounced. Leaving both its idle animation and its card icon in the player's deck. The card background is invisible.

Gray Glitch
This glitch is a visual glitch that makes zombies or plants a darker color when played. It can be triggered when you play a plant or zombie quickly as the turn starts.

Sergeant Strongberry and Berry Blast Glitch
When you have Sergeant Strongberry on the field, and play a berry trick (like Berry Blast), the extra damage will not take effect. This only works sometimes, as Berry Blast does normally take Sergeant Strongberry's effect.

Letting the Air Out of the Band
Upon the end of a Multiplayer match, when the game plays the main theme for the quests menu, if the button to go back to Multiplayer menu is timed just right, the note for one of the instruments does not properly end, and it will keep playing until the music is changed. This is easiest done if the player completes one hero quest, where it seems to be around the quickest timing possible to advance, but you can do it all the same even without completing a hero quest.

With proper timing, it can be further brought to different screens, including an entire multiplayer match, where the instrument will play during the whole match, outside of occasional glitching or being temporarily muted for a signature superpower being played.

It's unknown exactly why this happens, as replications are scarce and almost entirely random due to the unknown timing. However, one possible cause is the game's music could potentially be a .midi file played in real time, and not an .ogg or an .mp3 played, and thusly, by timing the end of a song just right between when a note starts and a note is supposed to end, the game is never properly told to end the note, and the instrument keeps playing. Upon the song changing, it's told to stop all instruments in the song playing, and that's why it is fixed.

Wrong Class Glitch
Sometimes, cards appear in the wrong class when viewed in the almanac. They may also be played in games with the wrong class, causing certain heroes to play cards that they weren't supposed to be able to play.

Negative Sun/Brain Glitch
Sometimes at the start of turn the sun/brain received is shown to be lower than the actual sun/brain that should be received. After cards are played, the brain/sun may go to a negative number. However, this is only a visual glitch. It usually occurs when a Brainana steals brains.

"A Dark and Stormy Glitch"
This glitch is rare, but sometimes when tap the store icon on the menu, the screen will strangely turn black- however you can still see your gem values. This can be solved by closing and reopening the game.

Muffled Card Sounds
Sometimes, during a match, all sounds produced by cards will sound as if they are muffled, and will be very hard to hear. Music and other sound effects won't be affected, only card sounds are affected, in battle and while viewing their stats. This glitch occurs when the player taps the button to view their friends list. The glitch stops when the battle ends, or can be resolved by viewing the friends list again.

Flute Noise Intensifies
After a match ends, the flute for the victory/defeat music will rarely continue playing on one note. It's a little hard to hear, so use headphones if you think you hear it. Interestingly, the glitch persists during a battle, layered on top of the music. This is probably due to how complex the music is, as the instruments constantly change depending on the Hero and setting. The glitch ends when you reset the game.

Binary Stars Glitch
If Bad Moon Rising gives Binary Stars, all zombies on the field at that time get a permanent x2 boost, meaning if the Binary Stars stays on the field, everything has a x4 boost. Once Binary Stars dies, all the zombies that Bad Moon Rising created will still have a x2 boost, but new zombies that are played are normal.

Hero-Deck Switch Glitch
To trigger this glitch, a player must have a PvZH file split across multiple devices, and earn Gems on each device without reloading the app. Select decks for different heroes on each app. Close and reload one app, then go straight to single player and select random battle. There is a chance the device may load the hero from one device, and the deck from another, resulting in a hero using a deck they can't normally use, such as Green Shadow using the "Bullseye Beatdown" deck.

Wrong Phase Glitch
This happens on multiplayer. If the player playing as the zombie hero presses the button to end their turn right at the start of the turn, then the phase indicator shows as if it is currently the fight phase. The glitch is resolved when the turn ends.

Red Stinger Glitch
To trigger this glitch, the player has to play a red stinger behind a plant to transform it into a 6/2. Next, the red stinger has to be bounced. Then play the red stinger on its own but not behind a plant. The texture of the red stinger will be a combination of the 2/6 form and 6/2 form where half of the petals will be sticking out while the other path will be covering it's face. It stays as a 6/2 and attack animation is normal. After it attacks, it will change to its 2/6 sprite for a splitsecond, then change back to the glitchy sprite.



Patched Glitches
The following glitches were patched out eventually.
 * Before version 1.6.27, if a fighter was given a trait from another fighter, such as an Imp getting Deadly or a getting Frenzy, was bounced, the card in the player's hand would still have the trait icon on the health or strength. This continued to apply when the card was placed, and it did not go away until the fighter was destroyed. This however was purely an aesthetic glitch and the fighter would behave like usual.
 * Before version ???, if a Seedling transformed into a plant (or transformed from the effects of Petal-Morphosis) that had a "When played" ability, it would not have activated its ability. Should this have occurred with Wild Berry, the game will not allow the turn to end, forcing the player or their opponent to concede.
 * Before version ???, the game would not have responded and soft-locked if a Bungee Plumber was used on the plant hero while a Soul Patch was on the field, since back then, all attacks made on the plant hero had an animation where the attack went in the direction of the Soul Patch.
 * Before version ???, Soul Patch would have taken damage for Wall-Knight even if he used Uncrackable, where he would not have taken any damage in the first place.
 * Before version ???, it was much harder to clear Electric Boogaloo's Shocking Moves since only tricks could be used on the heights lane of that mission, and yet zombies could be played there as normal.
 * Before version 1.6.27, Neptuna's trident experienced a visual glitch when using a superpower trick. If the player used a superpower trick or Neptuna's Signature Superpower: Octo-Pult, they would notice the yellow glow clipping out of Neptuna's trident.
 * Before version ???, if the player skipped a quest in the Daily Quests, a new one would appear but did not replace the old one. Although the old quest could be completed, it did not give its reward. Skipping to the next day made it disappear permanently and would not have a new quest to replace it.
 * Before version ???, in A Fight to the Finish Line, there was a cosmetic glitch where the second lane which was supposed to be a ground lane actually looked like an aquatic lane.
 * Before version ???, the icon for Yeti Lunchbox was missing its lunchbox. Only the light was present.
 * Before version ???, it was possible for the textures in the game to be replaced with pink textures, similar to the pink textures used in Plants vs. Zombies 2 where textures are replaced with either sun sprites or pink textures with a black X if the player locked their device with the game still on or opened the notifications while playing the game.
 * Before version ???, scrolling left from the first card in the player's deck would have shown a 3/3 card, a sun icon, and a brain icon.
 * Before version ???, it was possible for a Bounced card to not properly return to its owner's hand.
 * Before version ???, it was possible for insta-blocks to occur, even though they were removed in version ???.
 * Before version ???, it was possible to play a card outside its intended lane, though it was a visual glitch.
 * Before version ???, it was possible to play Trick-or-Treater as a plant hero either from Petal-Morphosis, Seedling, or the special rule of the boss battle of Peel that Orange! for Citron's side. If that happened, Trick-or-Treater will, in the fight phase, hurt and destroy himself but otherwise would act normally in the zombie trick phase.
 * Before version ???, is shown to have the attribute "Shielded" and the multiple attack attribute star on the Collection menu. It is purely cosmetic and doesn't act differently. This also happened with the Jugger-Nut.
 * Before version ???, in multiplayer, it was possible to plays a card where it won't be placed where it is supposed to be, instead it will be placed out of the lawn.
 * Before version ???, it was possible for to become glitched when it bounced itself at the end of a turn, its card became glitched and unplayable while the yeti itself became a background,
 * Before version ???, if Mixed-Up Gravedigger was played and a non-amphibious zombie appeared in the aquatic lane, when bounced, it will be missing the card details and its card background.
 * Before version ???, sommetimes cards can be dragged anywhere on the screen and they would not have dropped back to the player's hand nor could be played on the field.
 * Before version ???, if playing as a Zombie hero, after the opponent's turn, they would play their thinking animation forever. The glitch stopped after the battle, but continued if you start another one as a Zombie hero. This did not occur if the opponent was a zombie.
 * On version 1.18.13, the animation that plays when the Cryo-Brain is used does not play. This was patched in update 1.22.12.
 * Before update 1.22.13, the game wasn't completely optimized for iOS 11. Sometimes, the game might crash at the EA logo if the user was using iOS 11, and would remain like that. Reinstalling/offloading the game may or may not resolve the problem, and if it didn't worked then the user must play on a different device.
 * Before update ???, if the player opened the prompt to recycle multiple cards, it was possible to recycle the cards multiple times if the player quickly press the scrap button. It would add those sparks also and the player would lose more than one of the cards scrapped.
 * Only on update 1.14.13, it was possible for Mad Chemist to get the following cards that should not been seen by the player as a programming error that allows these cards to spawned even though they are normally used in AI decks. Any other conjuring ability would've worked such as Eureka or Peel that Orange!'s boss rule:
 * Blank Zombie, which is otherwise used in early AI decks and some Witty Wednesday as filler. It costs 99 brains and is a trick card with no tribe or ability. The player is completely unable to play this, thus causing a waste in the deck.
 * Plumber, which is the Bungee Plumber used by in the tutorial. It is similar to Bungee Plumber but cannot target the plant hero, has Uncommon rarity, and has no tribes.

Patched softlocking glitches
These glitches could at one point softlocked the game but were patched out:
 * The game asking the player where to move a Surprise Gargantuar made from Gargantuars' Feast even if there are no empty lanes for him to move to. (Before latest version 1.16.10)
 * The AI softlocking the match due to a lack of a solid plan for the turn. (Before latest version 1.18.13)
 * using his ability on himself to damage/destroy certain plants such as and Prickly Pear while there was a Headstone Carver on the field. (Headstone Carver will have attempted to boost Electrician but due to boosting a non-existent zombie, the game will soft-lock) (Before version 1.14.13)
 * Planetary Gladiator taking damage from plant abilities such as Grapes of Wrath when it was destroyed (Before version 1.18.13)
 * Two Mixed-Up Gravediggers made from Bad Moon Rising (Before version 1.18.13)
 * Tomb Raiser Zombie summoning Mixed-Up Gravedigger (which should not be possible as he does not have the Gravestone attribute, before version 1.14.13)
 * Having a Barrel of Deadbeards be destroyed while on during the combat phase, due to Barrel of Deadbeards formerly summoning the Strikethrough Captain Deadbeard that would now be used via  (Version 1.18.13 only)

Gallery of patched glitches
This is where all pictures of patched glitches are to be placed once the glitch can no longer be performed.