Matrix Glitch.jpg

7 Weird Real-Life Glitches in the Matrix

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by Tara MacIsaac / bonus by Alexander Light

Some of the strange moments in our lives may make us question “Are we living in ‘The Matrix’? Was that a glitch?”

Here are some strange and funny moments shared on social media platforms Reddit and Imgur that might make you wonder…


1. Chicken or Shrimp?

“Me and my friend were at a Chinese restaurant and we ordered a General Tso chicken dinner and a shrimp lo mein dish. When we both sat down, we took out both boxes and set them on the table about two feet apart.

He opens the first box and we see a shrimp lo mein dish. It has all the things in there — noodles, shrimp, fried rice.

He closes the box and opens the other box. Inside that box is a shrimp lo mein — shrimp, noodles, fried rice.

Chinese food container (Shutterstock*)

“‘Oh,’ I think, ‘They must have mixed the order.’ I was just about to say this when my friend says out loud, ‘Looks like they made a mistake and gave us two,’ as he opens the first box again. Inside of it is a General Tso chicken order.

“General Tso chicken, white rice, and an egg roll. He froze and looked at me. I looked back at him, and we sat in silence. It took us five or so minutes to collect ourselves.”

2. Glitch in Passenger Design?

3. ‘I Wonder Who I Was’

“I had a (subjectively) long, involved dream where I was a vendor in a fish market. I remember getting up early, dressing, doing a whole morning routine, going to get tea, heading out to the docks, buying fish, loading them in a cart and going to get ice, then haggling for ice, buying some less fresh fish while I was at it, then going to a market to my stall, setting up and selling fish all day.

“It was so real. I talked to friends, smoked nasty cigarettes, haggled customers, ate lunch, had tea, and just lived through the day.

“At the end of the day, I cleaned up, counted my cash, paid the stall rent, went home, cooked some of the fish I hadn’t sold,… with some veggies and rice that I’d traded for. I drank more tea, relaxed for a while, then drew a hot bath, soaked, and smoked some more [cigarettes] … then went to bed.

“The next morning, I woke up refreshed, ready to go down to the docks to buy fresh catch…. Except I was in my house, next to my wife, truck parked outside and it was Saturday—no work. My wife and I were getting geared up to go skiing in Oregon and the car was already packed. Weird thing was….

“In the dream, I was single. And a smoker (I’m not). And the whole long dream had been in fluent Chinese, the effortless kind of fluency that only comes from a lifetime of speaking it. Oh, and I had been Chinese.

“I’m a big, hairy white dude—somewhat fluent in Spanish and I know a little bit of Russian, but I’ve never…. It was just weird. I’ve never worked in a fish market.

“I wonder who I was. I wonder what that was.” – ohfail

4. Glitch in Pedestrian Design?

5. Of All the License Plate Combinations, What Are the Chances?

6. Parlez-Vous Français?

“Several years ago I woke up in bed next to my (now ex-) girlfriend and we had a conversation in fluent French. I got up and got in the shower, and as the water started running I realized neither of us … [knows how to speak] French.

“When I got out, I asked her about it. She remembered it happening but was as confused as I was. I can’t even remember what we talked about, because I don’t … speak French. Brains are weird.” – WittyRepost

Another Reddit user replied to this post:

“I was in Paris on Christmas Eve doing a Contiki tour and was at a nightclub, absolutely black-out drunk and jumped in a taxi with one of the girls from the tour. She [came up to] … me in the morning telling me that she was impressed I spoke French so fluently.

“After I told her that I didn’t know how to speak French, she told me that I’d had an approximately 30-minute conversation in fluent French with the taxi driver.

“It blew me away, and she was so adamant it happened.” – Nobody

7. Display Glitch?

Bonus #8 Waking Up Speaking Different Languages

Benjamin McMahon, an Australian man, woke up from a coma four years ago, speaking fluent Chinese, whilst couldn’t remember English, his native language.

“I wasn’t consciously thinking I was speaking Mandarin, it was what just came out and it was what was most natural to me,” Benjamin said.

Benjamin went on to host a Chinese game show and study in Shanghai.

 Benjamin McMahon

According to the Daily Mail, there are at least two more similar cases :

In 2010, a 13-year-old Croatian girl woke up had replaced her fluency in her native language with speaking German.

More recently, a U.S. navy veteran was found unconscious in a motel room and had no recollection of who he was and spoke fluent Swedish in July 2013. — Read more here.

Czech speedway rider knocked out in crash wakes up speaking perfect English

18-year-old Czech speedway driver, Matej Kus, was knocked out during an accident, in 2007. When he woke up, Matej started conversing fluently in English with the paramedics, to everyone’s surprise.

Matej Kus

“Before his crash Matej’s use of the English language was broken, to put it mildly,” said Peter Waite, the promoter for Kus’s team.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Peter continued. “It was in a really clear English accent, no dialect or anything. Whatever happened in the crash must have rearranged things in his head.” — Read more here.

These four documented cases of people who woke up speaking fluently languages that they didn’t previously knew, are further evidence of how little we know about our organic vehicles (i.e. human bodies) and the world that they operate in.

Bonus by Alexander Light, HumansAreFree.com / Illustrations of a digital man and “The Matrix” via Shutterstock