Halo 2: The Scarab Gun and What It Cost to Get It

Halo 2’s Scarab Gun — a giant energy weapon used by Covenant Scarab walkers — is not actually obtainable in normal gameplay. The weapon has no player-facing pickup prompt because it is too large to carry. Players obtained it through a technique that required two specific tricks in the level Metropolis: launching off an explosion to gain height, then using a specific melee-grenade combination to float across a section of the level that was not intended to be traversed.

Once across, a secondary Scarab walker’s gun turret could be triggered into a specific state by a precise grenade throw, causing it to drop a player-scale weapon pickup with the Scarab Gun’s stats and visual model.

Bungie acknowledged the Scarab Gun in developer commentary: it was not placed intentionally but rather emerged from the interaction of the explosive launch, the traversal exploit, and the turret drop table. Players discovered a weapon that existed in the game’s data but had no designed path to acquisition.

The Scarab Gun remains the most famous impossible weapon in the Halo series: technically present in the game, technically obtainable, and technically a result of physics exploits that Bungie had not imagined when they shipped the level.