In the world of software development, some bugs are like hidden time bombs, waiting decades to detonate. The recent discovery of a long-dormant bug in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reveals how undefined behavior can lurk silently in code, only to emerge when least expected.

The bug centers on the game's vehicle loading mechanism, specifically the Skimmer plane. Online commentators discovered that a tiny oversight in variable initialization - a common pitfall in early 2000s C++ programming - suddenly became visible in Windows 11 24H2. What previously worked through sheer luck of memory layout now spectacularly fails, launching the plane into the stratosphere.

The root cause? An uninitialized variable that would randomly take on whatever value happened to be in that memory location. In previous Windows versions, this worked fine because the memory layout remained consistent. But Windows 11's changes to critical section implementation shuffled stack memory just enough to expose the underlying code weakness.

This isn't just a quirky tech story - it's a stark reminder of the dangers of relying on undefined behavior. Game developers in the early 2000s often took shortcuts, prioritizing shipping a fun product over absolute code perfection. The irony is that the game's massive success masked potential technical debt for nearly two decades.

The incident also highlights the incredible backward compatibility efforts of modern operating systems, which strive to keep ancient software running despite fundamental changes under the hood.