One of my worst WR pace enemies is a softlock I keep encountering far too often. It is located on the last level, in the room with all the bombs, and the magnet crane for unblocking the ladder down.

So often, I press down to go into the hanging bombs room, and Sketch will freeze in place halfway through his down-flip animation (It basically looks like he passed out on the floor, face down). The music will continue for a bit, and eventually freeze.

Is this common for any other runners here? Does anyone know the cause and/or how to avoid it?

I think this is what you're referring to: The description says it can be avoided by destroying the crane in the previous room, preventing possibly a sprite overload.

I believe mecharichter was doing this on the Genesis version and the game just happens to reset instead of freeze like the Steam version. It's common for different ports of genesis games to crash in slightly different manners.