Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Yes, Orthodox Jews In This ‘Spider-Man’ Video Game Really Do Disappear On Shabbat

Playstation 4’s “Spider-Man” video game is known for its meticulous, open-world recreation of New York City — right down to the pedestrians. And as a painstaking facsimile, the game’s locales come complete with Orthodox Jews wearing kippot and wide-brimmed hats.

But if you find yourself playing the game on Shabbat, you may notice that these characters disappear.

On June 26, a Reddit user on the r/Judaism thread shared that Orthodox non-playable characters (NPCs) are absent from the virtual streets on Saturdays.

In April, one of the game’s senior programmers, Elan Ruskin, confirmed the easter egg on Twitter.

Per Ruskin, these Shabbat disappearances appear to be a matter of halakhic precedent. When NPCs appear in the game, they’re laboring as video game background actors. It follows that Orthodox Jewish NPCs would follow a work prohibition on Shabbat.

While Spider-Man, whose own Jewish bona fides are debatable, can swing almost anywhere in the game’s New York recreation, the reach of the Orthodox NPCs’ eruv is unknown.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.