If there is no link on the text or picture, that can be perfectly fine. But having a dysfunctional link is not good or useful for website visitors.
A case from www.mcdonalds.ru: There are eight large
pictures on this webpage, and each one has a hyperlink, which visitors
quickly recognize by the
pointing hand cursor 
.
Figure 1: Dysfunctional links
on all of the eight pictures. 
But no matter which of the eight main pictures visitors click on, they land at the top of the same page, where they already are.
That is a needless, unfulfilled expectation for visitors. If links on the pictures lead nowhere, there should be no links on those pictures at all.
A case from www.cocacola.com: When visitors press “Australia,” they expect the Coca Cola Australia website will load, but it doesn’t.
Figure 2: Dysfunctional text
link.
The reason for this is because the address www.cocacola.com.au, placed in the “Australia” word link, has a syntactically small yet semantically big error: a hyphen character (-) is missing between coca and cola. The functional address is www.coca-cola.com.au.
Two cases from Apple: When visitors press “macOS” on UK's iMac page the link functions normally, and as expected the Mac OS page is loaded. When visitors do the same on many other Apple's local pages, no Mac OS page is loaded. They get a “Can not find the page you are looking for.”
Figure 3: Dysfunctional “macOS” text
link on Norway's iMac webpage.
This happens on local pages for Norway, Austria, The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Portugal, Brazil, Hungary, Luxembourg, Mexico etc.
Also, when visitors want to get the store’s driving directions and a map, sometimes they are not displayed on Android OS devices.
Figure 4: Multiple attempts to
get the store's map location and driving directions which sometimes are
inaccessible to users with Android OS.
A case from www.volkswagen.ch: The mobile version of Swiss VW website has a dysfunctional link in the main menu called Unsere Autos (our cars). This link should lead to the page of their pretty important model Polo, but visitors get "the page unfortunately doesn't exist."
Figure 5: Repetitive selecting
“Polo” from the main menu gives no results on a mobile phone at Volkswagen
Switzerland.
A case from www.mercedes-benz.com: The links to the new A-Class and new C-Class are not working in the main navigation as well as in the carousel. Instead, visitors get only the first page displayed, where they already are.
Figure 6: Broken links for
the "A" and "C-class"
on the Mercedes-Benz
international website.
Decent brands should create decent impression. If you want to make sure such scenarios don’t happen on your website contact Percaption. We can keep an eye on multiple perception levels of your website.