Skyrimwas a game that captured the imagination of an entire generation of gamers. For perhaps the first time a player felt like they were truly inside a fantasy world, and that they could go anywhere and do literally whatever they wanted.

And lots of players did just that. I’ve personally witnessed several of my friends end an entire village’s population simply because the option was available to them.

Now, I’m not saying that’s what everySkyrimplayer did (I myself never felt the need to go on a spree that would put modern attacks to shame), but what I am saying is that it was the first time you truly felt like the world was without limit. You could be exactly the kind of fantasy hero you’ve always pictured in your mind’s eye.

That kind of freedom may have drawn in more gamers to a single player experience than had ever happened before, but it also drew something else: comics. The bizarre tales that people would weave through their time inSkyrimwould go on to become immortalized in digital ink and shared the world over. Or they’d poke fun atSkyrim’s ridiculous plot and mechanics. Y’know, whatever you gotta do for a laugh.

Speakin’ of which, here’s some ofSkyrim’s more hilarious comics from throughout the ages. Enjoy!

20 The Reason Never To Take A Follower

There's a reason I never took a follower with me on any adventure that allowed me to go solo: they'd always wind up getting in the way. Either they'd try and muscle me out of a fine duel I was having, or they'd step in front of my arrow just as I'm about to let it fly, or they'd jump into a cone of flame I was directing at a Draugr Warlord. Every. Single. Time.

Eventually, I just gave up and left all my followers wherever their home was. That still didn't stop Lydia from accosting me every time I came back to Whiterun, inevitably my base of operations for the rest of the game. She never said she was upset at the fact I was abandoning her to go on grand adventures, but she'd always try and stand in the doorway whenever I tried to leave.

19 Detected

Let's be honest - we all broke into people's houses at one point or another while playing Skyrim. First of all, it was inevitable if you did certain sidequests, but second of all, there was loot in there! That's free Septims just waiting to be plundered and turned into a fancy new sword!

But thievery was not as easy as it would first appear. Being out of sight of the guards wasn't enough - the animals would give you away too if you weren't careful. I'm not sure when horses and cows developed a sense of justice, or even object permanence, but in the world of Skyrim the fauna can sometimes become the ultimate arbiters of the law, and you'd best stay on their good side. That is to say, stay on their blind side.

18 That Mud Crab Was Three Days Away From Retirement

Attacking a creature in Skyrim often yielded items of exactly what you'd expect - things like teeth, and bones, and hide, and chitin. But every so often you'd kill a wolf or a bear and find something completely unexpected, like a bag of gold coins or a scroll of fireball. How did that wolf manage to get their hands on gold? And a fireball scroll?

What if they're organizing? What if the wolves are going to unleash a torrent of spells upon the unsuspecting residents of Whiterun? What if I've I'm the only one who could warn the townspeople!?

I'm sorry, this cannot wait - the villagers must be told!

17 It's Not Stealing, It's Just Reselling

Theft is an odd thing in Skyrim. Some things are fine to take from someone's home, while other things are off limits. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to it, too - a jewel-encrusted necklace would be ripe for the taking while sitting right next to a bound copy of "The Lusty Argonian Maid" that would come up as "steal" whenever your hand hovered over it.

The benefit here is that anything that wasn't labeled as stolen could be sold to any merchant in town, making it an incredibly profitable to just enter people's homes and see what they're fine with you carting away.

Ulfberth War-Bear is strangely fine with you taking many items in his shop. But don't touch that dagger - that one's special.

16 They're Like Dandelions, Only Pointy

One of the problems faced by all Skyrim players was the fact that there were so many things for you to pick up that the game sort of devolved into a massive scavenger hunt. Running through a field was no longer a means of getting from point A to point B, but an excuse to go pick flowers and snag the wings off of butterflies.

I can think of no other game that has ever made it fun to stop and smell the roses. And then pick them. And then turn them into poison so I may murder my enemies that much easier.

However, it does mean that I often wind up with a backpack full of thistles, since they seem to coat Skyrim like dandelions coat most of North America. At least, the parts of it that aren't desert.

15 Ever Wonder Why Some Draugr Are Worse Than Others?

Draugr were always a problem. I could be reasonably certain that my arrow would kill any random bandit in one shot, but Draugr were weird. Some would go down in a single blow, while others required the Skyrim equivalent of a nuclear bomb to put down.

Why were some Draugr so tough? It was clearly a life of strict diet, exercise, and training, followed by an afterlife of diet, exercise, and training. Who knew that undead flesh could get so jacked?

However, this doesn't explain the Dragon Priests, which are magic wielding Draugr of incredible power. One suspects there may have also been some after-death tutelage in the arcane arts as well.

14 An Eloquent Language Made For Discourse

I'm a pie-guy myself. But it's not because I think that cake is the technically worse dessert, I just happen to be lactose intolerant. Although that makes having my pie a-la-mode somewhat difficult. There's always meat pies for when you want to have your dessert and dinner all at once.

But seriously, it must be really difficult to have a language where almost every word spoken could involve some magical spell. What if whenever I said "cello" a bolt of lighting came from the sky? What if uttering the phrase "buy 2, get one free" actually resulted in a stampede of wild creatures eager for a deal? What if the saying "the cake is a lie" actually produced a cake from thin air?

You can see where there'd be a lot of problems in this language.

13 Keeping Your Dark Side At Bay

As I mentioned in the intro, I have friends that actually struggle with this very issue. They can't seem to go into town without accidentally attacking at least one NPC, and that's on a good day. On a bad day, they massacre the whole town before even selling a single looted sword. It can be a real problem for the local economy.

I keep telling them that the simplest way to avoid bloodshed is to just unequip all weapons and damage dealing spells, but they just look at me with blank stares, like I asked them to cut off their arms or something.

We eventually settled on me performing all the mundane tasks of Skyrim, like conversation and transacting with the locals, and they would just do all the murdering and pillaging.

12 Frickin' Bears Man...

Bears. There's nothing in Skyrim that fills a Dragonborn with more dread than the sight of a big, burly, brown thing barreling down a barrow with clear intent to brutally butcher the heroic barbarian.

Sorry, bears make me break out in b-words. It's like a stutter tied to a post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a serious thing - go look it up.

This comic perfectly describes the terror the player feels when they're already engaged in combat with a tough enemy, and then have to deal with a new and terrifying beast that can tip the scales in favor of their foes. Unless of course, you manage to convince the dragon to start fighting the bear, in which case you can just walk away and come back later for some free bear hide and dragon bones. Win-win.

11 Tell Me, Doc, How Much Time Have I Got Left?

I hated Arcadia. Every time I go to her store to make a potion or to buy something she'd always pipe up with whatever disease she thought I had. Then I'd waste time going through Skyrim's esoteric menu system to check my status, only to find that there was nothing wrong with me.

Except there was that one time she actually was right about some disease I had, so even though she's wrong 99% of the time I still check for that one time she turns out to be right.

It's like she's the reverse of a hypochondriac - she thinks every else is sick. I don't know what the word for that is, but I'm sure it exists somewhere.

10 Praise Talos

On the other hand, the physics engine did allow the player to pick up and place literally any object they could find. That, combined with the fact that the NPC AI seems pretty copacetic with anything short of physical violence, and you've got a recipe for some hilarious selfies.

I should mention that the process is laborious, time-consuming, and frustrating as you never know when the thing you put the item on is going to be a flat surface or a jagged edge that'll send whatever thing you're holding careening off into the wild blue yonder. It seems the person who snapped this photo has infinitely more patience than I do, as well as fantastic photography skills.

How she managed to balance a cheese wheel on Ulfric's head I will never know.

9 Be Like The Wind: Silent, But Deadly

I must admit, this was basically my playstyle the entire time I was playing Skyrim. If you can murder from afar, and without alerting anyone to your presence, then why not just make it your modus operandi?

And it worked for utterly no reason. It was entirely possible only because the enemy AI was dumb enough to stay put after their friend takes an arrow to the face from out of nowhere. If I was ever actually spotted I was in real trouble and had to run and hide until whatever was chasing me lost interest and went back to being stupid.

Which they inevitably did, which then allowed me to shoot an arrow through their head. Persistence was key with this strategy.

8 When In Doubt, Throw Followers At The Problem

vvia azany on DeviantArtI will admit, followers did have one particularly useful - erm - use.  If a dragon (or a bear, or a particularly muscly Draugr) decided to descend upon you, your follower would immediately jump into battle and start tanking for you. That's extremely useful for squishy characters, like archers, thieves, or mages.

Their enthusiasm is laudable, but questionable. Why would anyone suddenly throw themselves at a dragon for any reason? And why wouldn't they first try to take cover from the dragon's firey breath like a normal person? Like me?

You'd think an assassin like the one pictured above would try the sneaky approach rather than a frontal assault, but I guess money makes everyone blind to danger. It certainly explains why there's a constant stream of assassins coming after you.

7 Giant Airlines - The Only Way To Fly

We all remember our first encounter with a giant. They seem all huge and imposing, but they're mostly harmless - provided you don't provoke them. Shoot them once with an inconsequential arrow, or singe their eyebrows with a fireball, and it's off to the moon with a single swipe of their club.

Unfortunately, the one-way trip usually resulted in every bone in my body becoming broken, but if one could have harnessed the enormous power of a giant they could create a public transportation system the likes of which had never been seen on Tamriel.

Or a crash helmet. I'd settle for a crash helmet.

6 Dragons Are All Nerds, If You Think About It

There's more than one way for a Dovahkiin to defeat a dragon. Swords and magic are certainly viable, but going after a dragon's self-confidence is the surest path to victory.

That said, I still prefer the whole fire and steel avenue to success.

Fun fact: Dragon language, or Dovah-Zul, is a real language. It basically has the same grammar as English but doesn't have apostrophes, making the syntax very direct and straightforward. For example, "Aal zu lost daar beer" translates to be, "May I have this beer." It's also based on cuneiform, the language of ancient Mesopotamia. Since when you gotta look old, you can't go wrong with ancient Mesopotamia.

5 Game Physics Is A Hard Thing To Program

Tell me if you've had this problem before: you're heading into a lovely Nord's home for a mid-afternoon snack, and you accidentally bump into their table as soon as you step through the door. This causes the plate, cutlery, and giant slab of smoked salmon to shoot off in every direction, not coming to a stop until you've left the building and re-entered.

Yes, the physics engine in Skyrim was a marvel of modern software engineering at the time, but it left a lot to be desired. Like friction, or gravity, or even common sense.

On the other hand, if Skyrim had a different physics engine we wouldn't have cabbage bowling, and that sounds like a crying shame. You gotta take the bad with the good sometimes.

4 An Appetite Not Even A Dragon Could Match

There was always something a little bit confusing about the way Skyrim handled food. It made sense that you would regain some health whenever you ate something - after all, food had been the representation for health pickups since the dawn of gaming - but the fact that you could pause the game at any point to chow down was a little bit weird.

That and the fact that whatever you ate had absolutely no bearing on your belt-line.

But perhaps strangest of all was the fact that, invariably, the first thing you'd do upon reaching your carry-weight cap was to eat all the food you had in your pack, and this somehow made you lose weight. Maybe the Dragonborn has some sort of hyper-digestion system.

3 Khajiit Cannot Lie

I love M'aiq. It's not the fact he's a cat, although I am admittedly a cat person, and it's not the fact that he's got a funny accent that you really can't describe as anything other than "Khajiit." It's the fact that he's got so much to say.

Of all the Skyrim characters, M'aiq has some of the most voice lines you can ever hear. The only problem is, even if you're lucky enough to find M'aiq, he'll still only go through 5 lines before he starts saying, "M'aiq is tired now. Go bother somebody else."

But there's a trick to get him to go through his entire catalog of responses: just stand next to him, but don't bring up any conversation options. He'll go through every one of his recorded lines if you just follow him around silently. I once adventured for hours just following M'aiq. Not sure if anything he said was true though.

2 Nothing Gets Past This Guy

The guards in Whiterun were truly the best of the best. If modern police were as good as these guys the crime rate would disappear overnight.

Just kidding - we'd all be either dead or penniless by now. Probably both.

But you can't fault the Whiterun constabulary for not recognizing a thief when they see one. They can certainly tell when you're skulking around and up to no good. And they recognize when you're wearing light armor that allows you to tip-toe through other people's homes without waking them. They just can't seem to understand when they or anyone around them has been robbed.

Not exactly what you want in the police force.

1 Not That Anyone Would Want To Eat What A Dragonborn Does

There was always the option of just throwing things in a potion to see what effects the various ingredients might have, but Alchemy was a bizarre skill in Skyrim in that it allowed you to nibble on whatever ingredient you found to get the first possible effect it could have. And some of those ingredients were super gross.

Giant's toes? Daedric hearts? Chorus eggs? Spider eggs? Too gross for my stomach. And yet you had to chow down to make any headway in Alchemy. It was as though the developers were all huge fans of Fear Factor and thought it'd be a great joke to make the Dovahkiin eat a giant's toe. Excuse me while I wretch onto my shoes.