Hilarious Overwatch emote swap bug is affecting every hero

Jeff Why/Blizzard Entertainment

One of the funniest Overwatch bugs we’ve ever seen lets any hero in the game use any other character’s looping emote, and we’ll tell you how to do it yourself right here.

Bugs and glitches are nothing new to Overwatch at all, but we haven’t seen anything as funny as this emote-switching one since Wrecking Ball players figured out how to activate crab mode.

Over the past few days more and more clips, like this one of Soldier: 76 busting out an Echo move, have started to pop up which show heroes using emotes they shouldn’t be able to. Now, Dexerto has discovered the bug is 100% reproducible, and pretty easy to do yourself, and we’ll explain how down below.

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It’s important to note that not every emote can be done by every single hero, even with this glitch. Only emotes that loop, like the anniversary dances or Lucio’s DJ set, can be forced onto other characters, like Pharah doing Torb’s little jig above.

The info on how to pull this off was originally posted by YouTuber Jeff Why, and before you get going you need to pick out which dance emote you want to rock with to start out.

It’s important to note that this glitch will not work in any regular Quick Play or Competitive match, but it will work like a charm in modes where your hero is randomly selected, like Mystery Heroes. How to pull it off is listed below (along with a video guide from YouTuber Not Muda):

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  1. Choose whatever dance or looping emote you want to use.
  2. Queue up for Mystery Heroes (or another mode where hero is chosen for you).
  3. Go to Hero Gallery and find your desired emote.
  4. Have emote selected on equip wheel when “game found” message appears.

If you do it correctly, using the default emote option on the control wheel should have you busting out whatever moves you selected, no matter who your hero is.

However, there is one major drawback to our fun here. If you die in Mystery Heroes, your emote will be reset, and the only way to get it back is to leave the game and do the entire process all over again. That said, it does work wonders as an incentive to try not and die right away!

Blizzard hasn’t made any indication that they’re aware of this glitch, but in all honesty, this is one they really should just leave alone. It can’t be used in Competitive, gets deleted with one death, and has absolutely no effect on gameplay other than letting everyone have a little bit more fun.

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We’d bet even Jeff himself would crack a smile watching Winston do his best Symmetra dance.