So, uh, I learned something interesting about Metroid Prime today. Don't quote me on the specifics, though.
In the original, at least, when Samus approaches certain enemies with electrical charges, there's static that fills the screen.
But they didn't have much space on the gamecube for gratuitous textures, so instead of using images, they just dumped a bunch of source code from memory into it, and it made convincing static.