In all of gaming lore, there is no tale as whimsical as that of Nuclear Gandhi, the story that tells of how a programming quirk turned the famously non-violent Indian leader into an aggressive warmonger with a penchant for nukes. While there have been attempts to debunk the story over the years, Sid Meier has finally come out and said that Nuclear Gandhi is, in fact, a figment of our collective imaginations.
The original story, for those who are unfamiliar, claims that in the original Civilization, Gandhi was given the lowest possible aggression rating, as befits a figure of his reputation. However the bug occurred when a player adopted democracy, which would reduce aggression automatically by two. With Gandhi already at an aggression rating of one and the program unable to handle negative numbers, it would cycle back around to give the Indian leader an aggression rating of 255, the highest in the game. From there, Gandhi would become a fearsome monster as soon as he had possession of nukes.
In subsequent games, the story claims, the programmers gave Gandhi a higher aggression as an easter egg, calling back to the original story. The only problem is–none of it is true.
