History Main / AccidentallyAccurate

This can be hard to tell from ShownTheirWork, and can often only be seen in context with the rest of the work--ShownTheirWork would prove to have all research shown, AccidentallyAccurate is hit and miss.

* ''FanFic/MyImmortal'': Many {{Dramatic Reading}}s scoff at the line which says that it was snowing and raining at the same time. This is known as "sleet" in Commonwealth Nations and the United States, and it very much happens in the real world. If you believe one of the people who confessed to writing it as a TrollFic, the author thought it was impossible and put it in as a joke. It has also "rained" slush, which also works.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'': In ''Sorry, Wrong Era'', Jimmy needs a diamond to use as a catylist for a BambooTechnology time travel remote, since he's stuck in prehistoric times with Sheen and Carl. Finding a diamond proves easy; the problem is that it's about the size of a hill, which obviously makes it too big to use. So how does he get a small enough diamond of of that? By baiting a tyrannosaurus rex into charging into it head-first, of course. This isn't as unrealistic a solution as it seems on the face of it. Diamond is the hardest natural substance on earth, sure, but one thing most people don't know is that it's also brittle enough to shatter. Most of the "science" on the show is of the jokey ItRunsOnNonsensoleum kind, so the writers probably didn't know this either.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfJimmyNeutronBoyGenius'': It's CommonKnowledge that diamond is overall the hardest natural substance on Earth. What only a relatively small handful of people know, however, is that for all that durability, diamond is astonishingly brittle. It is, in fact, not only possible, but surprisingly easy to take a hammer and chisel to a large chunk of the stone for the purposes of breaking off smaller fragments suitable for either jewelery or industrial purposes. So when Jimmy baited a T-Rex into slamming headlong into an enormous stone to get a smaller one suitable for his jury-rigged time travel remote, in the episode ''Sorry, Wrong Era''? Not only is that possible, but completely and utterly plausible; the show uses unabashedly wrong and fictional science just because it coasts along on both RuleOfCool and RuleOfFunny, so chances are good that the writers behind the show didn't do their homework this time either.

* Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's home planet in ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars: A New Hope]], famously have two suns. The first planet orbiting two stars in our galaxy were discovered more than 30 years later.

[[folder: Comic Books]]
* In one strip of ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' Jon buys a "battery operated battery charger". It turns out such a concept is far from useless and is ''totally real''. Such devices exist as a means to give portable electronics such as cell phones, laptops, and even car batteries juice in the event of an emergency.
[[/folder]]

If research not available at the time of the writing proves them right, that's a case of ScienceMarchesOn meeting this trope; if the work turns out prophetic, that's DatedHistory meeting this trope. If the theory would never have been accepted by researchers working in whatever field (e.g. Professor [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abian Alexander Abian]]'s theory that we should blow up the moon to stop Typhus), it's just the writers fertilizing some EpilepticTrees. If the writer was just showing off an obscure fact that they know, that's ShownTheirWork. Compare: RightForTheWrongReasons. For the same principle applied to tactics, see StrategySchmategy. Compare: AccidentalTruth, in which an in-story lie by a character turns out to be true after all, and TheCuckoolanderWasRight, for In-Universe examples of something similar.

* An InUniverse version shows up in ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra''. CorruptCorporateExecutive Varrick puts out a ridiculously obvious and over the top set of propaganda films against [[TheEvilPrince the Northern Water Tribe Chieftain Unalaq]] designed to turn public support against him and towards [[LaResistance the rebels fighting against him]]. Varrick does this purely because Unalaq's edicts are bad for his own business, and his films transform TheFundamentalist, self-righteous, HolierThanThou Unalaq into an OmnicidalManiac MadScientist planning to use a DoomsdayDevice to destroy the world. This turns out to be ''far closer'' to Unalaq's [[TheAntichrist real personality and goals]] than either fans of the show or people in that world would have guessed at the time, not that Varrick knew about that or would have cared.

* ''FanFic/MyImmortal'':
** Many {{Dramatic Reading}}s scoff at the line which says that it was snowing and raining at the same time. This is known as "sleet" in Commonwealth Nations and the United States, and it very much happens in the real world. If you believe one of the people who confessed to writing it as a TrollFic, the author thought it was impossible and put it in as a joke. It has also "rained" slush, which also works.
** The author also inadvertently predicted a major twist at the end of ''[[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows Deathly Hallows]]'':
-->"nd den hairy wil have 2 [[spoiler:kommit suicide so voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111]]"

* ''VideoGame/NarutoShippudenUltimateNinjaStorm2'' has an Easter egg which in which Naruto and Hinata are declared "secret lovers", despite not being too much canon support for it in the [[Manga/{{Naruto}} original manga]] at the time. [[spoiler:Turned out that Naruto and Hinata [[OfficialCouple ended up married]] and with two children in the canon story]].

* In 1900, the Russian archaeologist Friedrich Zibold discovered the remains of a mysterious domed structure in the Byzantine Crimean site of Theodosia. After studying the ruins and some terracotta pipes found nearby, he proposed that the structure was an air well designed to condensate moisture from the air into water, and built a replica to test it. This replica was successful and became the precursor of modern air wells. However, it was discovered later that the ancient structure was actually a tomb, the pipes were not related to it and Zibold had used the wrong materials for his replica. But by sheer coincidence, these materials were the necessary to make a working air well, and had Zibold used the real ones in the tomb, his experiment would have been a failure. In other words, Zibold inadvertently invented a new technology as a result of a failed attempt to replicate a LostTechnology that didn't actually exist in the first place.

* Creator/JonathanSwift included a mention of Mars having two moons in ''Literature/GulliversTravels'', more than a century before they were discovered. One Soviet spacecraft designer even suggested Swift had found Martian records on Earth that revealed this, although naturally more plausible explanations exist.

* The Greek philosopher Leucippus created the atomic theory, as an argument against another philosopher, Parmenides. While Parmenidies argued against the idea that a state of nothingness could exist, Leucippus argued that there were in fact voids and that everything that was not a void was made of small units of matter that assembled to create larger ones. Aristotle scoffed at the argument, stating that in a complete absence of matter, motion would no longer encounter friction and allow for infinite speeds, which he saw as ridiculous. Well, turns out that what Aristotle used to try to discredit the theory is pretty close to what actually occurs to objects in motion in space.
* Finnish naturalist Immanuel Ilmoni hypothesized in the early 18th century that diseases were actually living beings, not unlike animals. While he was ridiculed, the germ theory of diseases was confirmed less than hundred years later.

* As to Phobos and Deimos (the two moons of Mars): in 1727, Jonathan Swift mentioned in the third part of ''Literature/GulliversTravels'' that the scientists of Laputa had discovered two satellites of Mars, at distances that were much smaller than those of any known moons at the time, and with rotation speeds that also were out of kilter with any known moons. When Asaph Hall discovered the moons in 1877 these numbers were so close to the real ones, that he named them Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror).
* In 1900, the Russian archaeologist Friedrich Zibold discovered the remains of a mysterious domed structure in the Byzantine Crimean site of Theodosia. After studying the ruins and some terracotta pipes found nearby, he proposed that the structure was an air well designed to condensate moisture from the air into water, and built a replica to test it. This replica was successful and became the precursor of modern air wells. However, it was discovered later that the ancient structure was actually a tomb, the pipes were not related to it and Zibold had used the wrong materials for his replica. But by sheer coincidence, these materials were the necessary to make a working air well, and had Zibold used the real ones in the tomb, his experiment would have been a failure. In other words, Zibold inadvertenly invented a new technology as a result of a failed attempt to replicate a LostTechnology that didn't actually exist in the first place.

* In Weapons of Self Destruction, Creator/RobinWilliams joked about the next pope after Benedict would be from Latin America "or Brazil" (which ''is'' part of Latin America). Come 2013, Pope Francis is elected and hails from Argentina.

* The play ''Theatre/{{Brand}}'' by Creator/HenrikIbsen made an eerie prophecy concerning the concequences of British pollution reaching Norway, leading to dying forests and lakes. The play was written in 1866, while this problem became apparent in the 1980s. The accuracy of this passage is quite chilling:

-->On the land in noisome fume ;

-->On the city of God s doom.

** In the commentary for "The Crepes of Wrath", the writers note that the bit about adding antifreeze to wine was a parody of an incident where some wine was found contaminated with antifreeze, but that, obviously, the contamination wasn't deliberate. Except that the contamination was discovered when a winery started listing antifreeze as a business expense, and it was very deliberately added to make the wine sweeter [[note]]This is definitely dangerous, though not as dangerous as it sounds. Ethylene glycol is indeed poisonous, but when mixed with sufficient quantities of ethanol, it passes harmlessly into urine. It's still more expensive than sugar or corn syrup, though..[[/note]].

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "The Cyber House Rules" features the line, "This jigsaw of a pacifier factory makes me want to have children with you even more." Originally the line was "This jigsaw of a barn makes me want to have children with you even more." By coincidence, the Swedish word for children is ''barn'', a cognate of the archaic English "bairn" when means "children". "Bairn" is etymologically related to "born". Maybe the joke was cut because it was esoteric, even for a show that often has jokes about science and math that no one would get unless they were college or grad school-educated.

* Averted : a newspaper crossword-puzzle editor was once briefly arrested for using the words "Overlord," "Utah," "Omaha," "Mulberry" and "Neptune" in a number of puzzles in the weeks leading up to D-Day[[note]]"Mulberry" was the codename for the portable harbors that the Allies brought over until the port cities of Cherbourg and Le Havre could be taken and repaired enough to allow supply ships to dock, while "Neptune" was the codename for the actual D-Day landings on the Norman coast that established the beach head -- "Overlord" was the umbrella name for the entire operation, which lasted from June 6 until August 25.[[/note]]. The same editor, Leonard Dawe, had previously been investigated for having put "Dieppe" as an answer -- on August 18, 1942, the day before the disastrous Allied raid on Dieppe was to launch. An investigation at the time could only conclude that it was a bizarre, and astonishing coincidence. Only in the 1980s did the answer come out -- the crossword-puzzle editor was a teacher, and he used his students to collect odd words. One of those students had hung around military camps and bases enough to overhear the unusual words being spoken, and promptly turned them over.

** The series made a joke in 1969 about the future news, setting California governor UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan (who had run in the 1968 Republican primaries) as president of the U.S. in 1988[[note]]his last full year in office, as it turned out[[/note]].
** Likewise, in 1969, they made a joke in their news of the future about the Berlin Wall coming down[[note]]Sure enough did in 1989[[/note]].

* Rachel on ''{{Series/Friends}}'' joins a bookclub where they discuss ''Literature/JaneEyre'' and she doesn't bother to read the book. When another character asks Rachel what her favourite part was, she immediately outs herself by saying: "The part with... the robot?" In actual fact, the titular character in Jane Eyre has this quite memorable line to Mr Rochester: "Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? And can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?"

** It was written before the discovery of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, yet not only did Huxley have the lower classes in the series exposed to alcohol as fetuses to make them stupid, but he also correctly identified the other symptoms as well.

* In December 1870, Creator/HenrikIbsen wrote a poetic letter from Dresden, making a point of not liking Prussian militarism in the newly united Germany. On the way, he prophezised that this German militarism might get out of hand and spell trouble for everybody. [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI He was damn straight!]]. Even more jarring is the mentioning of a certain General von Moltke (being known as the one taking the helm after the battle of Marne). In context, Ibsen referred to von Moltke the elder, ''also'' a general, who helped defeat the French in 1870. ''If he only knew''...

* [[http://www.sonicstadium.org/2012/10/snow-joke-this-is-a-sa2hd-review-by-the-suns-standards/ This]] article from Sonic The Hedgehog fansite The Sonic Stadium about [[http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fun/gaming/4586437/Sonic-Adventure-2-video-game-review.html/ this terrible review]] from the British tabloid newspaper The Sun decribing that it sounded something like what Fox News would write. In fact both The Sun and Fox News are owned [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch/ by the same guy.]]

* "A stopped watch is right twice a day." Even someone who is wrong all the time is bound to be right sometimes. Depending on the context, this can be implied to be either accidental or one is giving credit where it's due. The trope also holds on a more literal level, at least on a twelve-hour watch face.

* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'':
** Near the end of ''Falling Hare,'' as the plane is rapidly plummeting to the ground, Bugs makes loud, rapid screams of panic. That apparently originated as a studio in-joke, but real-life rabbits really ''do'' scream rapidly when they're distressed. And it's not so much "goofy shouting" as "blood-curdling shrieking."

* ''VideoGame/NarutoShippudenUltimateNinjaStorm2'' has an Easter egg which in which Naruto and Hinata are declared "secret lovers", despite not being too much canon support for it in the [[Franchise/{{Naruto}} original manga]] at the time. [[spoiler:Turned out that Naruto and Hinata [[OfficialCouple ended up married]] and with two children in the canon story]].

* Somewhat early on in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', John uses a Modus Control Deck to convert his [[InventoryManagementPuzzle Sylladex's Fetch Modus]] to a queuestack array by combining a queue, a stack, and an array. While Andrew Hussie was more than likely just making a pun based on Creator/JohnCusack, a queuestack is actually a real data structure, although it's more often referred to as a double-ended queue, or deque for short. And yes, you can in fact make an array of them, although there's not usually much reason to do so.

''Film/DemolitionMan'' is a mixed bag, depending on how much leeway you want to give for hyperbole. However, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment near the beginning of the movie shows Scott Peterson as the name of an inmate incarcerated in the same cryogenic prison as antagonist Simon Phoenix. The movie was released in 1993. Scott Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife in a highly-publicized trial in 2005. The judge in the case sentenced him to death, so putting him on ice is metaphorical in this instance.

* After the ''Series/ERing'' episode "The General" aired in 2006, depicting an American general kidnapped by Basque separatists in Spain, an user in a Spanish forum criticized [[DidNotDoTheResearch the lack of research]], pointing (among others) that none of the Basque separatists had Basque names, just [[SmallReferencePools common Spanish ones]]. "The leader of the ''Etarras'' is named Miguel Carrera. Not even Mikel Korrika." Four years later, an ETA leader named Miguel Carrera was arrested in France for the murder of a Gendarme.