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Examples:

  • Adventure Time: Many fans have come to the conclusion that Finn the Human's female counterpart imagined by the Ice King, Fionna the Human, is the same age as Finn just because she is his Distaff Counterpart, when there is substantial evidence that Fionna is intended to be much older. Most notably is how the Ice King stated his desire to make his fan character a real person so that he could marry her and how he temporarily stopped pursuing Princess Bubblegum when she was de-aged to 13 years old in "Mortal Recoil", which made it explicitly clear that the Ice King drew the line at courting underage girls. This isn't even getting into the evidence that sex isn't the only difference the Fionna and Cake versions of the characters have (e.g. Prince Gumball being a baker rather than a scientist like Princess Bubblegum, Flame Prince and Turtle Prince being implied to be attracted to one another in "Five Short Tables" when their female counterparts were only shown to be interested in men, etc.).
  • Allen Gregory is frequently claimed to have been cancelled after a mere seven episodes because of its poor reception, which is not true. The reality is that Fox had essentially doomed it from the start, originally planning to use it as a summer replacement for Family Guy with full intention to cancel it afterward.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • The show is often claimed to use Thin-Line Animation, usually by detractors of the style who refer to it as the "CalArts style." While it's true that the main characters, the Watterson family, are drawn with the usual trappings of that design philosophy (rounded shapes, Sphere Eyes, and vaguely bean-like heads), saying that a show famous for its use of Medium Blending has an art style is, at best, selling it short. Also, the show is produced in the United Kingdom, so most of the artists probably didn't attend the California Institute of the Arts (many of the United States-produced programs that receive this critique also don't boast graduates from that art school, for that matter).
    • Gumball is often believed to be much meaner than he is in canon. While it is true that he's not a traditional hero, has a rap sheet a mile long and would probably be considered a villain in most other shows, he also frequently goes out of his way to help people even when he's at a clear risk of personal injury or death, something those who call him a "kid-friendly Eric Cartman" would consider out of character.
  • Angela Anaconda:
    • This is the show where, Once an Episode, Angela fantasizes about doing all sorts of crazy over-the-top type of things to her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Nanette Manoir... not quite. While it's usually Nanette Manoir, Angela's Imagine Spot will target almost everyone who wrongs her, up to and including herself if she's feeling particularly guilty.
    • As mentioned by a YouTuber named Billiam in this video, it was Fox Kids who requested the Angela Anaconda sequence and placed it as part of Digimon: The Movie. The creators of the show had nothing to do with that decision at all.
    • The fact it was owned by DHX Media is thought of as being one of the reasons why the KaBlam! episodes that showed its sequences were not given a legit release. While KaBlam! is indeed mired in ownership issues regarding other segments, Viacom still owns the original Angela shorts due to them being created specifically for the show rather than licensed. The episodes played during syndicated reruns on Nickelodeon with no issue whatsoever, even concurrently with its run on Fox Kids and Fox Family.
  • Arthur:
    • A common criticism is that Mr. and Mrs. Read never punish D.W. for her behavior, but there are actually several episodes where she is punished for her actions, such as "Go to Your Room, D.W." and "D.W.'s Baby".
    • People remember "Grandpa Dave's Memory Album" as "the episode where Grandpa Dave got Alzheimer's". In reality, while he is getting a brain condition that affects his memory, the specific ailment is left ambiguous.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Fire Nation is commonly mistaken for a straight-up Fantasy Counterpart Culture Japan. They're a Cultural Chop Suey of China, Japan, and Korea, with elements of Thai influences. A lot of this confusion comes from many fans comparing their actions to Imperial Japan.
    • Several fans believe that Ozai challenged Zuko, his own son, to an Agni Kai, and then scarred and banished him when he refused to fight back, because he criticized a Fire Navy officer's plan to sacrifice soldiers to win a battle. In reality, Ozai's thoughts on the plan is never stated, and Zuko's Agni Kai was explicitly stated to be the result of him speaking out of turn at all.
    • Legend of Korra: One of most frequent criticisms of Book 2 is that it introduces God and Satan analogues in Raava and Vaatu. However, while Vaatu’s personality does fit Satanic Archetype, their roles and functions are completely different from traditional depictions of God and Satan. Most notably, they are equal in power and it is specifically stated that neither of them can be destroyed because they form a cosmic balance. Raava is never even hinted to be the creator of Avatar world, with her notably referring to Lion Turtle as “Ancient One”. If anything, they have more in common with Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu; however, unlike them, there is no indication that their conflict will ever end. Part of the issue is that many pop-cultural depictions of the Devil depict him as equivalent in power to God, and even a good many Christians, perhaps inspired by those depictions, routinely interpret them as such.
    • There is a common belief that the final pairing between Korra and Asami was censored by Nickelodeon, but there isn't actually any evidence to back this belief up. In the creator's blog post describing the process of including the gay couple, they admitted that they literally didn't ask if it could be included until the finale was almost done being made, and that Nickelodeon was actually supportive of the ship. Furthermore, some fans have speculated that Korra and Asami were going to kiss in the finale before it was cut, but in that same blog post, the creators stated that the final shot of them holding hands was planned a year before the episode was even made, meaning they weren't really censored in any way and didn't make much of an effort to include the ship, only confirming it after the series had ended.
  • Beavis And Butthead: It's common when referring to the show to claim that their misadventures are interspersed with Beavis and Butt-head watching heavy metal music videos and riffing, hating almost all of them. Others "remember" that Beavis and Butt-head watch a lot of videos but like only the heavy metal videos and hate everything else. Neither of these is accurate. They dimwitted duo do in fact watch a wide variety of music videos, ranging from everything from Michael Bolton to Morbid Angel, and while many of them across all genres are submitted to merciless riffing (especially Michael Bolton), their reaction to videos is actually pretty varied, with about a third being brutally riffed, a third receiving a neutral reaction that would lead to some tangent unrelated to the video and another third receiving a positive review. And it isn't just the heavy metal videos, some of the most positive reviews are to punk videos by The Ramones and The Butthole Surfers, and they also enjoy Radiohead (even the ballad "Fake Plastic Trees"), and give other positive reviews to some atypical ones too, such as a Bananarama video and one by the new wave group The Beloved (granted, that was mostly due to the nudity in it). They even liked a Bee Gees song enough to start dancing to it!
  • Beetlejuice: There are many people who think Beetlejuice in the animated series is just a reskin of the Genie from Disney's Aladdin in personality and powers. This grossly overlooks that Lydia is Beetlejuice's Morality Pet; BJ is more than happy to scam ghosts and mortals alike out of their money, is as crass as the censors will tolerate, has no problem randomly tormenting people with his traumatizing pranks, and is just plain greedy. This assumption also disregards that the Beetlejuice animated series actually predates Aladdin, having premiered three years prior to the film's release and ended its run less than a year before the film came out.
  • Bluey: "They confirmed Bluey to be a rainbow baby" is only partly true — while Joe Brumm did confirm that Chilli (Bluey's mother) had a miscarriage at some point, he didn't reveal when it happened. A rainbow baby is defined as the first baby born after a miscarriage or stillbirth, so Bluey would be one if the miscarriage was Chilli's first pregnancy, but if it happened between Bluey and Bingo, then Bingo would be the rainbow baby and Bluey would be a "sunshine baby" (the last baby born before a loss), whereas if it happened after both girls, then Bluey would have no special title and Bingo would be a sunshine baby.
  • In Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony, "Let's Go and Meet the Bronies" has John de Lancie refer to My Little Pony Tales as generation 2. Tales is actually an Alternate Continuity part of generation 1; the real generation 2 is the only generation without an Animated Adaptation. He also claims all the Tales characters fall into a "girly stereotype." While the series was obviously geared towards little girls, and the characters do things like flirt with boys and have tea parties, they have interests and ambitions that are not stereotypically feminine- Sweetheart aspires to be a doctor, Bright Eyes is a smart girl who wants to be an environmentalist, and Patch is a soccer-playing tomboy who wants to join the circus.
  • Caillou:
    • Many people who bring up "Caillou is Getting Older" claim that Gilbert the cat killed the bird. There's no proof of that in the episode — the bird was just found dead.
    • It’s widely believed that Caillou is a spoiled brat that never gets punished. While he does occasionally lapse into Bratty Half-Pint territory, he is by no means spoiled and many episodes are about him learning to deal with not getting his way. Which ties into the "never gets punished" thing, as that's also untrue — his more bratty moments regularly result in him getting punished in several episodes, such as getting rebuked by his parents or being told to Go to Your Room!.
    • No, PBS Kids did not cancel the show in 2021... because the show was actually cancelled in 2010. All they did was just end the reruns. The show was later sold to Cartoonito that year.
  • Classic Disney Shorts:
    • Steamboat Willie is often credited as the very first Mickey Mouse short. However, Mickey and Minnie appeared six months earlier in Plane Crazy, which was produced first, but Disney couldn't sell it. Steamboat Willie is the short that made a star out of Mickey because it was the first short to use sound properly, allowing him to stand out from other cartoons, which is why the short sold. On that note, it's not Pete's first appearance either; he was antagonizing Oswald and, before that, Alice.
      • It is also a very common mistake in animation history that this short was the first sound cartoon, when those existed as early as 1924 (and Paul Terry had taken a shot at the sound cartoon called Dinnertime just a month before Willie was released). Steamboat Willie simply made the sound cartoon popular.
      • Pertaining to the plotline, Mickey isn't actually the Steamboat's helmsman. During the iconic opener, the ship's rudder is locked and Mickey is actually goofing off by being up at the wheel in the first place. His real job is to swab the deck. Pete is the ship's actual helmsman.
      • When the film entered the public domain in 2024, many mistakenly believed that Mickey Mouse's modern self was also now in the public domain. This is not the case. Only his 1928 version of the character is in the public domain (see Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. for more details). His full name "Mickey Mouse" is still trademarked (which may or may not cause legal trouble if used not as a trademark, see Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. for more details), and any later designs of the character are still protected under copyright.
    • Speaking of Mickey Mouse, many people think that he was only created by Walt Disney. Actually, he was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.
    • On the topic of Oswald, it's often believed that after the rights to the character were taken away from Disney by Charles Mintz, Ub Iwerks was the only animator to stick with Walt and Roy after all of the others defected to Universal. In reality he was joined by two other animators (Les Clark and Johnny Cannon, both of whom would become very important figures in the history of the studio) as well as by six ink and paint workers (one of whom was Walt Disney's wife Lillian). Funnily enough, the "Iwerks was the only animator who stayed" take was an attempt at correcting an earlier piece of "Common Knowledge", which is that no animators stayed with Walt and Roy after they left Universal, which was writ until about the late 1990s or so.
    • Another anecdote toted around Oswald is that Walt Disney was completely blindsided when he lost the Rabbit, as he had been under the impression that the character belonged to him. In truth, Walt knew upfront that he was only a contract worker and that the rights to Oswald were held by Universal. His big shock about the situation came from finding out that most of his staff had gone behind his back and signed a new contract with Mintz and Universal, meaning that he'd lose them if he stopped making Oswald cartoons.
    • Donna Duck is not Daisy Duck. She is a precursor to her. But even some historians get them mixed up.
    • Similarly to Donna, Kat Nipp is a completely separate character from Peg-Leg Pete. They're both large cats who don't exactly get along with Mickey, but in Kat Nipp's appearances he's usually the one being antagonized (in contrast with Pete).
  • Clone High had a disrespectful portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi (or rather, Gandhi's clone, voiced by Michael McDonald). It's common knowledge that he's portrayed as a popular catchphrase-spouting "party animal". He wishes — that is how he describes himself in the first episode, but the entire joke is that he's the exact opposite: Gandhi is never invited to parties, can't get a date to prom, and his catchphrases and mannerisms always fall flat (in-universe, at least).
  • The DC Animated Universe has its share of this:
    • "Girl's Night Out", the episode featuring Batgirl and Supergirl against Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Livewire, is commonly thought to be a Superman: The Animated Series episode, but in reality, it's officially a Batman: The Animated Series episode, according to both the episode list on the official website and the fact that it's on the B:TAS Volume 4 DVD set rather than Volume 3 of S:TAS (which included the last third of the series, including Supergirl's debut). The confusion is understandable, however, given that the other three crossover episodes between the two shows were all S:TAS episodes.
    • Another BTAS one is that Mary Kay Bergman's death in 1999 is the reason why Tara Strong replaced her as Batgirl for The New Batman Adventures, except The New Batman Adventures started airing in 1997, two years before Bergman's death and Bergman’s only stint as Batgirl in Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (intended for a release earlier that same year as a tie-in for Batman & Robin, but was delayed after that film was critically panned) came out in 1998, meaning the recast had nothing to do with Bergman's death as the recast predated it. The misconception may arise from the fact that Bergman was also the original voice actress for Timmy Turner from The Fairly OddParents! and Strong replaced her in that role after her death.
    • A borderline example is the fact that the DCAU Supergirl is not actually Kara Zor-El. She's Kara In-Ze. The main difference is that she's not Superman's biological cousin and that she's from a different planet. This was done to get around the veto against Supergirl, but even many DCAU fans refer to her as Kara Zor-El. Generally, she was created to be about as close to Zor-El as they could possibly make her without tripping over Supergirl's Exiled from Continuity status at the time. This extends to her clone Galatea, who isn't explicitly a reimagined version of Power Girl, but is very obviously intended as such (as in, she looks exactly like Power Girl does in the comics minus her cape and name).
    • There are quite a few people who know that in Superman: The Animated Series, Lex Luthor was portrayed as a black man only to get Race-Lifted into a white guy in Justice League, presumably to avoid being accused of racism. In reality, Luthor was always intended to be white, just like he is in the comics; the reason he looks so Ambiguously Brown is because his design was heavily modeled on Telly Savalas, who was Greek-American and fairly tanned. Unfortunately, the skin tone combined with other elements of his design (like fuller lips and a baritone voice) to cause a lot of people to think he was black and just roll with it since it had no impact on the plot or his character. Thus when the creators lightened his skin up a little in Justice League to try and rectify the confusion, those who had gotten used to "black" Luthor cried They Changed It, Now It Sucks!.
    • It is commonly to see those that claim Teen Titans is a part of the DCAU, as while it was Denser and Wackier, it was just similar enough in tone and art style to DCAU shows like the concurrently-airing Justice League that a lot of viewers naturally assumed it was supposed to be in the same continuity. Especially after the shows had a mutual Shout-Out (both shows had the same voice actors for Wally West and Speedy, the latter of which also has the same costume in both), and an episode of Static Shock (a series that itself began as standalone before later being inserted into the DCAU) having Batman say that Robin joined the Titans when asked about his whereabouts. However, Teen Titans has always been in its own continuity separate from the DCAU, though that does not stop some from including it anyways in an odd inversion of Fanon Discontinuity.
  • Dora the Explorer: Everyone "knows" that Dora is Mexican - but Dora isn't anything. Officially, she is "pan-Latina," which means that she is Latina, but doesn't have a specific nationality. This was done to make her more relatable to all Latino viewers. People just assumed she was Mexican because of preconceived biases and stereotypes.
  • Several Doug fans seem to remember the classic episode "Doug's Sister Act" for having one of the most memorable Smash Adams moments in the whole show, where Doug dives on top of a lasagna after convincing Judy's boyfriend that there's a bomb in it ("A bomb in the lasagna?! GREAT SCOTT!"). While Doug does dress up as his Tuxedo and Martini alter-ego in that episode, it's not Smash Adams: he actually calls himself "Agent 000 of MI5". Bizarrely, Agent 000 seems to dress, speak and act almost exactly like Smash, making the confusion understandable.note 
  • It's Common Knowledge that Family Guy popularized a completely forgotten surf rock song from the fifties called "Surfin' Bird" and single-handedly revived it from its slumber. In truth, the song had appeared in pop culture before, being featured in films like Full Metal Jacket. While that film's second half may not be as instantly memorable as the boot camp section, it's still one of the most famous war films by one of the most famous directors in the world. As such, it may have introduced a new generation to the song, but it's not exactly the deepest deep cut. Also, the song isn't from the 1950s; while Peter finds the vinyl record playing in a Fifties-themed diner, the song is actually from the 1960s. This is even in the episode itself, as a worker there realizing the error is why Peter is able to take the record home, which kicks off the plot.
  • Filly Funtasia: Everyone "knows" the show is based on the German toyline Filly. Except the brand is actually based in Hong Kong, the German company Simba often said to have created it simply distributed it until 2014.
  • The Flintstones:
    • The cars were powered entirely by the driver running... except for the fact that in a lot of shots, no feet are visible below the cars. The feet were just used to get it started. And also as the brakes, usually.
    • Parodies of the Flintstones often depict them using a dinosaur or other creature as a tool of some sort and said dinosaur shrugging and saying "It's a living". This rarely is said in the real show. In fact, there are a few cases of the dinosaurs saying the opposite i.e being used as tools all the time is wearing out their bodies.
  • Frosty the Snowman: It's often said that June Foray originally voiced Karen for the special's premiere in 1969 before her lines were redubbed by a child actress for subsequent airings. While Foray did indeed record the part, the decision to replace her was actually made before the first airing, though her dialogue still appeared on the show's official soundtrack album.
  • Many people believe that in the U.S. Acres segment of Garfield and Friends, the episode "Wanted: Wade" had Wade rip a tag off of Orson's pillow. He actually ripped the tag off the bottom of Orson's couch, and there weren't any pillows on it in the first place! The confusion comes from a recurring mistake in the episode that occurs right after he rips the tag, including the song sequence, where the characters (including Wade himself) say it's a pillow he ripped it off of. Due to this, many people (including fans of the show themselves who have watched the episode and even the official Garfield website) say this is true.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero:
    • The franchise is practically synonymous with Never Say "Die" and Bloodless Carnage... which is a little weird because G.I. Joe has historically had quite a lot of deaths and Family-Unfriendly Violence in it. The comics in particular have a pervasive Anyone Can Die tone to them. The original cartoon is the only series that’s ever really engaged in this, and even that show had plenty of Mooks die (explicitly or implicitly), plus the DiC Entertainment series two-part episode "The Greatest Evil" explicitly ends with the villain Headman dying of a drug overdose.
    • A strangely large number of people think that Destro is black in the cartoon and that later entries gave him a Race Lift. In truth, the character has always canonically been a white Scotsman and the cartoon is no different. This idea may have been caused by the fact that Destro was originally voiced by a black actor (Arthur Burghardt) who was Not Even Bothering with the Accent.
  • Gravity Falls: Many American fans believe that the Disney+ versions of the show censored the symbol on Grunkle Stan's early Season 1 fez. The edit was already done for the TV airings of the show in some European countries like Italy. The streaming service is just the first time the edited version was seen outside those territories.
  • Hazbin Hotel:
    • For some time after the pilot was posted, people assumed that Alastor was based upon a Wendigo. He isn't, but his mannerisms line up so heavily with the pop-culture depiction of wendigos that people assumed otherwise.
    • It’s common for more casual fans and people on the Internet to mistakenly claim that Charlie is the daughter of Satan. Her father is actually the Fallen Angel Lucifer, with Satan being a separate character, as per older traditions, a natural-born demon who personifies and rule over Hell’s Ring of Wrath rather than Lucifer’s Pride. The mistake is somewhat understandable because how often the two are combined in media, plus in-depth information about Hell’s hierarchy coming from either supplementary materials or independent sister show whose elements can’t be referenced because of legal issues.
  • Hey Arnold!:
    • The series is largely assumed to take place in either New York City or a fictional counterpart to it. While Hillwood has some NYC elements, it's mostly based on Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Hillwood is also canonically in Washington state, not New York state.
    • Arnold does not wear a skirt or kilt. This misconception still is strong twenty years later, to the point where even Rhonda in the cartoon itself mentioned it. He is wearing a long plaid shirt under his sweater.
  • The Huckleberry Hound Show: No, Huck's voice is not based on Andy Griffith. While both have rural North Carolina accents, Daws Butler actually based Huck's voice on a neighbor he used to know in Albemarle. This misconception stems from the fact that Hanna-Barbera tended to base their characters' voices on celebrities.
  • The Jetsons: Many think that you never see the ground in the show, resulting in several theories about what may be on it — from a post-apocalyptic wasteland to The Flintstones.note  Except, we do see the ground a couple of times, with some of the characters seen living there including a hobo and a bird that decided not to fly because of the Flying Car congestion. This may have been due to Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law running with this theory, as the episode says the Jetsons live in the sky due to Global Warming causing the Earth to be nothing but water.
  • Many people think that titular lead of Kim Possible has a secret identity and that she doesn't mix her civilian life with her hero life. The 2019 television film supposedly "changing" this aspect of the show was one of the main complaints towards it. However, watching any given episode quickly showcases that Kim is a world-renowned celebrity in the original series as well. Everyone knows who she is, and much of the humor came from the fact that literally no one in her personal life cared about her and Ron's extracurricular activity of saving the world.
  • Contrary to popular belief, King of the Hill never aired on Fox Kids. However, there were several cross-promotions for it on the Fox Kids block.
  • Littlest Pet Shop (2012): Everyone "knows" that Littlest Pet Shop is exactly the same as Friendship is Magic but with pets. Right? Wrong. They are both based on Hasbro toys and produced by DHX Media (resulting in them sharing many of the same Canadian voice actors), but that's where the similarities pretty much end; Littlest Pet Shop is a relatively more grounded slice-of-life series following both human and animal characters in an average North American city, compared to Friendship is Magic taking place in a fantasy world and many episodes having an adventure focus (although there were more slice of life episodes early on). On a side note, many consider Zoe Trent a dog version of Twilight Sparkle due to the characters sharing a color scheme, but her personality is a lot more like Rarity's. Zoe is also voiced by Nicole Oliver so her voice sounds more like Princess Celestia.
  • Looney Tunes:
    • Wile E. Coyote is often seen as the poster-child for Complexity Addiction; it's a stock joke that he could have caught the Roadrunner if only he'd tried a simple approach instead of building intricate contraptions. Actually, his plans to catch the Roadrunner started off with very simple approaches like "chase it down", "shoot it", or "tie a rope around it and strangle it", and it was only after these approaches failed again and again that he started resorting to more intricate plans.
      • It is also "common knowledge" that Chuck Jones had "rules" that applied to the shorts, the most commonly cited one being "the Roadrunner can never directly harm Wile E. Coyote". While Jones did mention these rules in his autobiography Chuck Amuck, Michael Maltese (who wrote most of the Roadrunner cartoons) stated in 1971 that he had never heard of those rules and his colleague Friz Freleng also claimed Jones had no such rules. Not to mention, there are numerous incidents where the Road Runner deliberately hurls Wile E. into harms way by sneaking up on him and BEEP BEEPing him to startle him.
    • Also, few people know that Bugs Bunny does not, in fact, always win. He routinely loses to Cecil Turtle, has been beaten by Elmer and Daffy a few times and is once beaten by a gremlin.
      • Another thing: Bugs does not say, "What's up, doc?" in every cartoon he appears in.
    • It's "common knowledge" among non-Looney Tunes fans that Porky Pig's catchphrase is "That's all, folks!" In truth, he has never said this in ANY of his cartoons. It was only in the Looney Tunes outros from 1937 through 1946 that we heard him say this, and that was just to tell the audience that the cartoon was over. In fact, previous Looney Tunes stars like Buddy and Beans Cat used that exact same line to close out their cartoons. This was mostly due to using Loophole Abuse, as Porky was mandated at the time to be in all cartoons under the Looney Tunes labelnote  due to being the biggest star at the time, with the directors working around this mandate by having him in the outros only.
    • Baby Looney Tunes never actually aired on Kids' WB!, much to the belief of many fans, including This Very Wiki and The Other Wiki. It aired in local syndication, and in many markets, on the WB affiliates leading into Kids' WB! proper, and in some areas, with Kids' WB! branding and bumpers.
  • The Loud House:
    • Many claim that Lincoln is always the one who suffers when there is some confusion inside the house. In fact, on many bad occasions, all family members suffer. But since most of the episodes, especially early on, are told from Lincoln's perspective, the general tendency is to feel more sorry for him.
    • The idea that Lincoln's sisters gang up on him for being the only boy. While they have ganged up on him several times, it was to do with generic Sibling Rivalry such as wanting the best seat in the car, not because he was a boy.
    • A lot of people think that the Loud sisters are never punished for their misdeeds, but there are some episodes where they are, such as "Sister Act" when both twins lie to get out of going to the doctor (Lola) and the dentist (Lana), but end up getting a cold and a cavity respectively.
    • A lot of people think Luan dresses up like a mime when she's sad. In reality, the only time a sad Luan was dressed up as a mime was in "Ties That Bind" and while those things did share a cause, she wasn't dressed as a mime because she was sad. She was sad because she thought her parents were going to kick her out for being "too loud", and she dressed up as a mime to make it clear she was going to keep quiet.
    • Many think that in "No Such Luck", Lincoln is always obliged to go with his sisters to their events, but none of them go with him to do the things he likes. In fact, Lincoln never once says that the sisters refuse his activities. He only complains that he would like to spend more time alone. Occasionally, the sisters in the cartoon appear doing activities with him, such as playing video games, watching "ARGGH!" and going to the amusement park. In "Kings Of The Con", all the sisters go with him to the Comic Book Convention.
    • Although it was not cool Lynn coerce Lincoln to go to her softball game in "No Such Luck", there is no reason to believe that she was literally willing to open his head with a baseball club. She was just warning him that she could do anything bad with him if he wasn't. It is reasonable to suppose that she also gets the gesture to hit the club in her palm in front of the smaller sisters, only in order to intimidate them.
    • While it was certainly mean, and uncharacteristically so, for Lincoln's family to make him wear a squirrel costume to supposedly keep away his bad luck in "No Such Luck", there's no real evidence that it was dangerously hot when he wore the squirrel suit to the beach besides the general idea that "it's usually hot when people go to the beach".
    • Some people think that Luna (because she took him to a rock concert in "For Bros About to Rock"), Lynn (because they're closest in age), or Lucy (because he defended her in "Sleuth or Consequences") is the sibling Lincoln loves the most or has the best relationship with. In actuality, the evidence seems to be that he loves his sisters equally: when asked who his closest sister was in his vlog, he says that Lucy is — but only because she's closest in distance, suggesting that he doesn't really have a closest sister.
    • Luna is sometimes stated to have been interested in classical music before getting into rock, perhaps because she owns a violin. Actually, while she has been somewhat interested in music in general since she was a baby (seen in "Not a Loud"), there was no indication that she was specifically into classical music, and in fact, "For Bros About to Rock" reveals that she had no strong interests in any particular genre until getting into rock.
    • Many think that the Loud Family's rule is "never meddle in the sisters' business and always meddle in Lincoln's business", especially because of the episode "Brawl In The Family", where the sisters demand that Lincoln not meddle in their conflicts, even though he is constantly harmed by their fights (and they, obviously, harm themselves too). However, the infamous Sister Fight Protocol is only used in this episode and never again, suggesting that it was just a failed test by the sisters that was soon discarded (in an opposite example, in "Garage Banned", Luna and Luan demand that Lincoln takes a side in their conflict). In fact, Lincoln is always called to the sisters' meetings in Lori and Leni's room, so they really trust that he can solve their problems. It's also bad that they meddle in his love life, like in "Heavy Meddle", but they also do the same with Lucy in "Back In Black", that is, they always “pursue” each other as a united family, instead of act as “hunters” for Lincoln.
    • Many divide the Loud sisters into GirlyGirls (Lori, Leni, Lucy, Lola and Lily) and Tomboys (Luna, Luan, Lynn Jr., Lana and Lisa), but it's not that simple. Lana and Lola have no problem exchanging their personalities in "Sister Act". Lola shares her love of cars with Lana (just like Lori and Leni in "Driving Miss Hazy"). Lana replaced Lola in a contest in "Toads And Tiaras" and for a moment she even wished to be like the other girls in the contest, in addition to being willing to become Lola permanently in "Read Aloud". Lucy has fun having food fights with Lana in "No Guts, No Glori" (and in the middle of Friday the 13th, when she could think of something darker to do!), and proves to be a good surfer in "Sand Hassles", as well as showing herself to be a tough detective in "Sleuth or Consequences" (albeit for the wrong reasons...). Leni is also shown as a detective in two shorts. Luan plays Juliet in the school play in "Stage Plight". Lisa wears a dress to the opera in "For Bros About to Rock". In their "Girly Girl" side, all the sisters watch "Dream Boat" in TV, all fall in love with Hugh in "Study Muffin" and all reveal to be chocoholics in "Girl Guru". Finally, in their "Tom Boy" side, they all have fun to see Lincoln taking off his pants and underwear (not at the same time!) in "Party Down" (even Lori gives in and gets doused with Lisa's chocolate fountain).
  • My Dad the Rock Star: Many people think Gene Simmons actually voiced Rock Zilla in addition to creating the show. He was actually voiced by Lawrence Bayne.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • The popular ship of background ponies Lyra and Bonbon (which eventually became Ascended Fanon) originated in a brief shot of the two of them sitting on a bench together, with Lyra sitting straight like a human (which would lead to the non-ascended fanon of her being obsessed with humans and/or hands) and Bonbon lying down like a regular horse... except the pony who is lying down isn't Bonbon but the much less famous background pony Shoeshine. The Lyra/Bonbon ship originated because the two of them were frequently together during crowd shots in other instances.
    • Despite what common fan depictions will show, Nightmare Moon was not banished to live on the moon, the opening narration by Princess Celestia/Twilight specifically states she was banished in the moon. She would not have been running around on the surface, but rather the moon itself functioned as a Crystal Prison or Soul Jar (as indicated by the mare's silhouette that appeared on the moon when Nightmare Moon was sent there and disappears when she escapes). Adding further confusion is the official My Little Pony IDW comics actually do depict Nightmare Moon banished to the surface of the moon (and running her own whole kingdom of nightmare creatures at that), but as the comics' canon has no true bearing on the show's canon, this depiction is moot.
    • Speaking of, some believe that it is Celestia herself that has the power to send ponies to the moon, turn them into stone, or transform into alicorns. But it's the Elements of Harmony that do all these things, and they've been depicted throughout the series as having a mind of their own.
    • It's common to hear Princess Cadance referred to as "The Princess Of Love", keeping in line with how all the other princesses have titles related to their duties, and how Twilight Sparkle earned the title "The Princess Of Friendship" when she became an alicorn. However, Cadance is never referred to as such in the series, but merely described as someone who "spreads love wherever she goes" and shown to be capable of magically quelling arguments between lovers. She's never actually shown having this as a duty like the other princesses, instead being in charge of ruling over the Crystal Empire and having the title "The Crystal Princess" alongside "The Crystal Prince" Shining Armor.
    • Equestria being a utopia, and sometimes the magical land of Equestria is even depicted as actual heaven, which is usually extended to all ponies being good, friendly and just better than humans, and some sort of friendship/harmony ideology existing in Equestria. This image was created by the first two seasons when the show was much like a fairy tale, but even then, there are multiple in-universe imperfections are clearly visible — big cities are much like real life and largely lack the cozy communities of smaller towns, Upper Class Twits, Fantastic Racism, a lot of bullies, and even organized crime (complete with a mobster sporting Cement Shoes for a cutie mark) are all commonly seen, and monsters are quite common — the main characters live next to a large wild forest filled with dangerous creatures and major villains appear fairly often. Furthermore, the idea of morally ideal ponies is clearly incorrect as early as the first season, where pony antagonists or simple jerks are already abundant with entire plots of several episodes (like "Putting Your Hoof Down" and "Fame And Misfortune") as well as Trixie's Start of Darkness being the direct result of Ponyville residents being complete assholes; the friendship-based ideology only begins to take form over season 5 or even 8 with the Cutie Map and the Friendship School.
    • The entire planet is often depicted as Equestria alone, but it's actually more diverse. This misconception is due to the first two seasons having little worldbuilding and focusing almost solely on ponies, while Equestria's princesses ruling over the celestial bodies also gave an impression that they handled matters on a global scale. Later episodes would make it clear that ponies are just one sapient species amongst many and Equestria is a single country.
    • The concept of Equestria possessing a noble class is almost universal in the fandom, but almost wholly unsupported by the show. What canon does have are a loose royal family held together by blood relation, adoption and marriage (Celestia, Luna, Blueblood, Cadence, Twilight and Shining Armor), all of whom are titled "Princess" or "Prince", and a large number of assorted idle rich, businessfolk, old money and celebrities largely similar to the upper class of modern western society, which other characters are shown to be able to enter through financial success, fame or bluffing. Actual, titled, hereditary nobles rarely appear over the show's nine seasons and movie. There was the Duke and Duchess of Maretonia, but that's implied to be a separate country to Equestria, or at least a client state. Blueblood was also going to be a Duke originally, but Executive Meddling had them make him a Prince as they thought children wouldn't know what a Duke is.
    • Twilight being Spike's mother figure. In canon, this varied Depending on the Writer, as there was no actual consensus on the matter for most of the show's run, leading to them being depicted as everything from mother-and-son, to siblings, to just friends. It wasn't until Spike's voice actress requested a definitive answer that the final season would canonize them as brother and sister.
    • People often refer to the Cutie Mark Crusaders as young children, even kindergarteners. While certainly younger than the main cast, Season 4 in particular has them undergo a significant increase in maturity, has their caretakers start trusting them enough to let them hang around by themselves, and gives a flashback to Sweetie Belle's fifth birthday which all make it clear that the CMC are closer to being teenagers than toddlers. Later seasons have them get their cutie marks, further establishing that receiving one is analogous to puberty/coming-of-age, and "Forever Filly" is about coming to grips with how interests may shift as you grow older and changes that occur as one begins exiting childhood.
    • The series premiers claims that friendship cannot be learned in class or books. That wasn't actually stated. Twilight's not learning friendship was portrayed as her not caring to do because she was laser-focused on studying and research far more than actually talking to others. The season five episode "Amending Fences" even reveals that before the start of the series, Twilight did have a friend group that she explicitly bonded with via academics, but had deteriorated due to her developing the standoffish attitude seen in the pilot.
    • Overlapping somewhat with Misaimed Fandom, the idea that — due to most other species being fantasy counterparts of non-European cultures (e.g. zebras being ancient Africa, the buffalo Native Americans)- ponies are meant to be a stand-in for only Caucasian cultures. As early as the first season, the series featured Sapphire Shores, a pony voiced by a black woman using African-American Vernacular English. Future seasons would showcase both supporting and background ponies representative of other races and cultures as well: the human version of Flash Sentry in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls has East Asian features; in season four's "Filli Vanilli" Zippoorwhill and her Dad have vaguely Latino accents and celebrate something called a cuteceañera (although so does Diamond Tiara's family); delegates from Mesopotamian-styled Maretonia appear in season four's "Equestria Games"; season six's "Spice up your Life" features a a father-and-daughter pair, who are heavily Indian coded and specifically mention that they moved to Canterlot from a distant part of Equestria; and season seven introduced Pillars of Equestria members Mistmane and Somnabula (whose homelands are based on the Far East and Ancient Egypt, respectively). Whilst it's true much of the architecture and geography of Equestria is inspired by European and American locations, the idea that all Ponies are meant to be white is incorrect.
    • While Pinkie Pie's hair does sometimes go straight when she's sad, the idea that she starts going by her full name Pinkamena when this happens is pure fanon.
  • The Owl House:
    • Amity tried to get Luz dissected while she was acting as Willow's abomination, something King even jokes about in "Eclipse Lake". Thing is, Luz's dissection was Principal Bump's idea, with Amity just being supportive of the idea.
    • Most assume that the opening montage in "Thanks To Them" is a collection of scrapped episodes that would have been made had Disney given the crew a full third season. However, the creative team were alerted that they were Only Barely Renewed after the production of Season 2A, and Dana is on record for saying there were no structured plans for a full-length third season prior to that news. In fact, she's been clear that major narrative elements such as The Collector was a plot change that resulted from the truncated third season, and early storyboards for "Clouds on the Horizon" (the penultimate episode of the second season) show Amity still having the portal key, implying that the season and the show's new conclusion was still being figured out even at that stage. The montage was just a collection of short ideas and were never fleshed out beyond what was seen.
  • Pinky and the Brain: Everyone "knows" that the Brain's plans for world domination are always ruined by Pinky's idiocy. While this is sometimes the case, more often it is Brain himself who makes the error that ruins the plan, or else there's some unforeseen problem that neither of them could have avoided. This is lampshaded in one episode where Brain does some calculations showing Pinky to always be at fault for the failures, so he increases Pinky's intellect. However, once the improved Pinky takes a look at the equations, he points out a few errors, and the corrected calculations show a different culprit...
  • The Powerpuff Girls:
    • Lauren Faust did not create the 1998 series (or Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, for that matter). Both were the creations of her husband Craig McCracken. For Powerpuff, she was a writer and storyboard artist. As for Foster's she was the one of the head writers and held the role of supervising producer for a few seasons, though she is also credited as co-developer alongside her husband and art director Mike Moon.
    • It's a fairly common piece of trivia that the show's theme song samples the Amen break. Except this is not true; the drum break used is actually a different often-sampled drum break taken from James Brown's "The Funky Drummer".
    • The Powerpuff Girls' signature big eyes and lack of feet and hands is usually seen as being the art style of the Powerpuff Girls. While this is true to an extent, what is often missed in these assumptions is that the unique design quirks of the girls are limited to them (and direct counterparts such as the Rowdyruff Boys and the Powerpunk Girls) and it is not the general aesthetic of the human characters, as the other human characters all have very fifties inspired designs with small eyes and stylized, but accurate proportions. The show even brings this up and outright states that In-Universe, their designs are abnormal and that it's a result of their artificial upbringing. This aspect of the art style is even lost on Cartoon Network sometimes. They have a few social media posts featuring characters like Jake from Adventure Time drawn in different art styles, with the PPG art style always having the huge eyes and fingerless hands, even though dogs in PPG are not drawn like that.
    • It's widely believed that the villain Him's name, often being spelled in all-uppercase, is in fact an acronym for "His Infernal Majesty," but this has never been explicitly confirmed as anything more than fanon. Craig McCracken even stated that the acronym wasn't the intention, but he likes it anyway.
    • Bubbles' special power is her sonic screams. Except it's not. Her special power is her ability to speak many different languages (including animal languages like squirrel). Whilst Bubbles has used sonic scream more often then the other girls, it is an ability they all share. Not helping things is that nearly all video games (except Relish Rampage, where she is given a stronger eye beam called "vaporize") give sonic screams as Bubbles's unique power equivalent to Blossom's ice breath. note 
    • The Powerpuff Girls (2016): One of the writers, Jake Goldman, created a self-insert character named Jared Shapiro in order to ship himself with Blossom. While this is an understandable conclusion, due to the character resembling and being voiced by Goldman, said writer didn't create the character. Jared originated as an in-joke amongst the show's artists, and the character was kept due to Goldman finding the caricature to be Actually Pretty Funny.
    • "See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey" was a Banned Episode in the United States because of heavy, potentially epileptic, strobe-light effects and/or it had strong Communist undertones... except neither of those are true. The real reason why that episode was banned from US airwaves (and Netflix and Max, by extension) was because the network took notice how some of the wreckage in the background was shaped like a giant metal cross and that one of the extras looked like Jesus Christ. These details completely went past Craig McCracken, who was just as surprised as everyone else when Cartoon Network banned the episode over that.
  • The Real Ghostbusters: One common criticism about Seasons 3-7 was that Winston no longer had any days in the limelight and was "just the driver". This is not true; there have been a few later episodes focusing on him, like "Elementary, My Dear Winston" and "The Brooklyn Triangle". One executive suggested they make his role "the driver" due to not knowing what it really was while the others had defined roles (Egon as The Smart Guy, Ray as the Plucky Comic Relief, and Peter as the spokesman) but was turned down due to the suggestion being seen as racist.
  • Recess: Miss Finster isn't T.J. and the gang's teacher. She's the playground monitor. Their teacher is the much friendlier Hippie Teacher Miss Grotke. Miss Finster eventually becomes their teacher in Recess: Taking the Fifth Grade, however.
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show: The infamous scene where Ren saws a log attached to Stimpy's butt frequently shows up in lists of inappropriate moments from children's cartoons. Except the scene never appeared in the original series; it's from the short-lived sequel series Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", which (as the title suggests) was for adults only. The original show famously got away with a lot of things, but the log-sawing scene wasn't one of them.
  • Rugrats:
    • "Melinda died of cancer" — while she did die of either a serious illness or an injury that slowly killed her, as she was hospitalised for long enough to keep a diary before her death, it's never said what specifically did her in.
    • "Chas is a scaredy-cat because his wife died" — this is unlikely, since one scene in a flashback shows him as a child being scared of a rug, with Stu remarking, "That's Chas all right!", indicating that he's been a scaredy-cat long before he'd even married Melinda.
    • The "All Growed Up" two-parter was a Poorly Disguised Pilot to keep the series relevant? Wrong! The special was a standalone just designed to celebrate the show's ten year anniversary, and a spin-off was only greenlit after strong ratings and fan requests.
    • The Sequel Series All Grown Up! compared to Rugrats is a bland Slice of Life with no adventures and Imagine Spots, and overemphasis on tween issues? The series is full of Imagine Spots, with Tommy and Dil in particular having many elaborate ones, and there are in fact several specials that are based around adventures - "Interview with a Campfire" and "RV Having Fun Yet?" most notably. The series also has gags involving aliens existing, Angelica's Cynthia doll being sentient and a talking mouse.
  • Scooby-Doo:
    • While the main gang is known as "Mystery, Inc." or "Mysteries Incorporated", this was never used in the franchise itself with any regularity until Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010). Prior to this, the only mentions are a promotion for a Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! comic book in Gold Key Comics back in November 1969 noting that they gang is called Mystery Inc, and Velma referring to the group as such in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998).
    • Those cheesy pop songs used for every chase sequence? Only the second season of the original series utilizes them, and only for seven episodes at that. The practice wouldn't be picked up again for another twenty years until A Pup Named Scooby-Doo used it as an Affectionate Parody, and then another ten years after that when the direct-to-video film series took it and just ran with it.
    • While one episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! does feature an amusement park owner called "Mr. Jenkins", no one ever calls him "Old Man Jenkins", he isn't the culprit behind that episode's mystery, and the mystery doesn't actually involve a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. The episode's Monster of the Week is a humanoid robot named "Charlie" (originally built by Jenkins), which turns out to have been reprogrammed by Jenkins' sister to become hostile.
    • The ghost or Monster of the Week always turns out to be someone in a mask. This is absolutely not true; even before deliberately Darker and Edgier subversions like Zombie Island, many Scooby productions featured real monsters, whether as part of a throwaway Real After All (or Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane) gag or as a core plot element (a lot of the Scrappy-era productions were notorious for this, most significantly the TV movies The Boo Brothers, The Ghoul School, and The Reluctant Werewolf).
    • Fred wears an ascot. What he actually wears, despite recent iterations of the show calling it an ascot, is actually what's known as a neckerchief.
    • Some people think the characters are based on the Five College Consortium in Massachusetts. They're not — the show was partly based on a radio show called I Love a Mystery, while the characters were pretty much created from whole cloth.
    • Never has the removal of masks been referred to as "unmasking" in-series, despite the fact that it'd be a clever pun.
    • Contrary to popular belief, Scooby doesn't say "Ruh-roh!" when he's afraid. That's Astro, the dog from The Jetsons. Both characters were voiced by Don Messick, so the confusion might be from people conflating the two voices.
    • "Scrappy is weak and the joke is that he doesn't know it." Scrappy actually is capable of insane feats of super strength, frequently carrying a passed-out Scooby or Shaggy (or both), and at one point acting as a living carjack for when they needed to fix the Mystery Machine. The joke actually was that he's the only one ever willing to directly confront the villain of the week, and that any contribution he makes is often overlooked for whatever reason. Two episodes actually lampoon this by having Scrappy easily catch the crook early in the episode, but having it not stick through some way or another, and his contribution left ignored. The first time was in "The Scarab Lives" where Scrappy ran after the Scarab (a fit, grown man disguising himself as a super hero) and drag him by the leg back to the gang, only for him to perform an instant costume change, causing the gang to think he'd just caught a random guy.note  The second time he caught a snake demon in full costume, but Shaggy and Scooby were too scared to think straight and dragged him away, causing him to let go of the monster. He later did catch the monster using an impromptu slingshot, but his was again completely ignored by everybody.
    • It's common knowledge, to the point of Memetic Mutation, that Fred doesn't have a Character Catchphrase. While he doesn't have anything short and punchy like Velma's "Jinkies!" or Shaggy's "Zoinks!", he does have several phrases he often uses, chief among them "Looks like we've got another mystery on our hands, gang" and "Let's split up and search for clues".
  • The Simpsons:
    • It's often claimed of early seasons that Bart was the main character of the show, and only became more central as time went on, before the show reined in use of him and focused on its ensemble cast. In actuality, while Bart headlines quite a few episodes of the first season, it's only about five to six out of thirteennote , and he shares significant screentime in those episode with other members of the family (especially Homer). And far from being a Breakout Character, the second season saw Bart's screentime decline overall, with him being the definite main character in six out of twenty-three episodes. note  This is still one more than the five episodes Homer gets as the definite main character note , but not by much. Speaking of, even in the series premiere, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," it's Homer who is more or less the protagonist. The misconception of Bart as the protagonist comes from the fact that he was by far the most popular and heavily-merchandised character at the time, so Fox loved to play him up in advertising (often for episodes where he turned out to be barely involved) or rerun episodes where he had a major role. They even went so far as to move "Bart Gets An F" to be the season premiere, because it's a Bart-focused episode, and built up the "Cosby/Bart Rivalry" for publicity. The idea of him being used less in later seasons is moreso the "Bartmania" fad running its course, and people watching the show to find that Bart isn't actually as heavily featured as advertisements of the time led on.
    • Most people believe that Bart's original shirt color was blue in The Tracey Ullman Show and early merchandise before being changed to orange in the main series. However, this is not entirely true, as the first short to feature Bart in his regular outfit was "Watching Television", which depicted him wearing a green shirt. In fact, throughout the duration of the Tracey Ullman shorts, the color of Bart's shirt was usually inconsistent and changed depending on the short. And even then, his trademark orange shirt was still the one most prominently featured.
    • Ask people what Sideshow Bob episodes are about, and they'll usually say "Bob trying to murder Bart." Of the various Bob episodes in the first eight seasons, only one ("Cape Feare") had Bob's primary scheme being to kill Bart; in all the others, it's at most a side scheme, and several have him not caring about Bart at all. If anything, they almost made a point to avoid him repeating schemes. After "Cape Feare", the first episode where Bob's primary motive is trying to murder Bart is "Funeral for a Fiend", which happens in the nineteenth season. By later seasons, that motive actually does become the focus of several of his episodes, usually while trying to lampshade that Bob has schemed to kill Bart countless times.
    • Smithers is usually portrayed as Mr. Burns' toadie, so much so that writers started writing gay jokes about it - except that the opposite is actually true. Smithers was the butt of gay jokes before he started being portrayed as a spineless boot-licker. Early episodes don't show Mr. Burns as a completely (and, it's been shown, literally) soulless Corrupt Corporate Executive, so he didn't really need a suck-up.
      • Speaking of whom, several people are under the impression that Mr. Burns raised Smithers as a child, and that Smithers' attraction to Burns is therefore Oedipal in nature. This is flagrantly untrue. While Smithers' father did work for Mr. Burns and died when Smithers was a baby, as seen in "The Blunder Years", the only interaction we see between Mr. Burns and baby Smithers is one scene where Mr. Burns holds him after Smithers Sr. hands him to Burns before making the Heroic Sacrifice that claimed his life. Nowhere in that episode does Mr. Burns state he would raise Smithers as his own, and Smithers has certainly never indicated that in any episode; all evidence points towards him having been raised solely by his mother, whom he values deeply.
    • Even many Simpsons fans describe The Itchy & Scratchy Show, a parody of cat and mouse cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Herman and Katnip, as a psychotic cat and mouse trying to kill one another, or even that the series mimics the typical structure of the cat being the aggressor and the mouse defending himself. Though Early-Installment Weirdness (particularly their appearances in the Tracey Ullman era) implied this to be the case, the series quickly settled on the gag being that Scratchy is never the aggressor and rarely even fights back, with Itchy seemingly murdering him for kicks.
    • The whole concept of Poochie in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" as a character is often misunderstood that people like to compare him to a character that is deemed "not liked". If anything, Poochie has a very specific description with how he was conceived and shown in the episode. He was a result of a network scrambling for a way to revitalize a dying show with only one joke in it, using shoddy attempts to connect with an audience. Note that he wasn't even the result of test audiences, because the kids explicitly don't know what they want. He only appeared twice in Itchy and Scratchy; first for a bombastic introduction, and then to get killed off after he proved unpopular. Despite various conditions asked by Homer regarding Poochie, none of those actually happened as the character didn't appear in another Itchy and Scratchy short. This is to contrast Poochie analogies that implied those things happened.
    • Everyone "knows" that Fat Tony is the head of the Springfield Mafia. Not so. While he is a high-ranking member, he still answers to the family's actual boss, Don Vittorio DiMaggio. This is an understandable misconception, however, since DiMaggio rarely appears in person, so most episodes involving the Mafia have Tony play the role of leader.
    • Contrary to popular belief, the second time Homer fell down Springfield Gorge after falling out of the ambulance was never shown the first time the episode "Bart The Daredevil" aired, nor was it the writers' intention to do so. That footage was created exclusively for "So It's Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show".
    • The show being an extreme Long Runner with an Audience-Alienating Era of over two decades and most of its Broken Base having only seen a fraction of its 750 (and counting) episodes makes it almost too easy to spread rumors about events in recent seasons.
      • Bizarro Episode "Lisa the Boy Scout," ostensibly a Clip Show of Simpsons footage deemed too bad to air, seems made to play into this tendency, with clips of Family Relationship Switcheroo reveals, "confirmations" of common Epileptic Trees, and other nonsensical, shark-jumping events begging to be circulated out-of-context. To bring it home, co-showrunner Matt Selman "live-tweeted" the episode in-character as an irate viewer describing the episode's non-canon sketches as if they were real events with bearing on the show. Plenty of Twitter users took the bait, with the result that you're hard-pressed to find a discussion of Modern Simpsons where someone doesn't chip in the information that the show recently revealed Bart's nerdy classmate Martin Prince to be an adult undercover cop posing as a ten-year-old.
      • Thanks to a screenshot from the episode "Double, Double, Boy in Trouble" that made the rounds on Twitter, a lot of casual viewers believe that Milhouse becomes a transgender Love Interest to Bart in one or more Flash Forward episodes. In fact, the characters shown in the screenshot aren't Bart and Milhouse at all, but part of a brief gag in which an adult Identical Stranger to Bart unsettles the real Bart by showing him a picture of his Milhouse-like wife.
    • The reason Maude Flanders was Killed Off for Real in "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" wasn't because of the pay dispute with her voice actress Maggie Roswell as is often claimed, because she (along with Roswell's other characters) had been voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven after Roswell left. None of the other characters Roswell voiced were killed off and she later returned to the roles after she and the producers came to an agreement. Then-showrunner Mike Scully explained that this was actually done to open up new storylines for Ned.
    • It's often claimed that, following the release of The Problem With Apu and the subsequent controversy it generated around the character being an ethnic stereotype, Apu was subject to Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and never seen again. In actuality, Apu and his family continued to make background appearances in episodes produced years after the controversy, he just doesn't have any speaking lines.
    • It's been claimed Lisa is the Author Avatar for Matt Groening. In fact, Groening's had little creative input on the show ever since he started working on Futurama. The only time he actually wrote for her was the Tracey Ullman shorts, when she was Bart's Distaff Counterpart.
    • A common refraie among fans is that the Simpsons acts as an Unintentional Period Piece of a better time for the American economy, when "one blue collar job right out of high school could let you afford a family of five and a big house." Inaccuracy of that to real-world economic statistics aside, this tends to ignore three crucial points about the titular family's living situation.
      • Homer is not a "blue collar worker" (literally; he wears a white shirt and tie to work). He's a nuclear safety inspector, a position that pays quite well in the real world and would ordinarily require a good degree of higher education. That Homer is blatantly unqualified for the job and only got it through blind luck and the incompetence of his superiors is pointed out repeatedly. "Homer's Enemy" even has his coworkers note that they have master's degrees in nuclear physics for their positions, and other episodes have revolved around Homer going to college to become qualified for it (albeit abridged because of Negative Continuity).
      • The family were only able to afford a house because A: they live in Springfield, a small town considered a horrible place to live by the rest of the country at large (so property prices are probably very low; helps that it's fairly rural), and B. Grandpa Simpson sold his own house so they could make the down payment. Homer didn't buy it himself. He promptly stuck his dad in a retirement home. In spite of these two massive mitigating factors, the family's financial situation is still often depicted as pretty poor.
      • That the Simpsons live implausibly well is the entire joke (explicitly pointed out in "Homer's Enemy"). Conceived of in the 1980s, The Simpsons was always intended as a parody of sitcoms over the last thirty years depicting families as improbably well-mannered, content, and financially well-off, an overly whitewashed image of American life that had little resemblance to how most people actually lived. Transplanting some of those same circumstances to a household run by Homer Simpson was supposed to underline how absurd they were, even with the justifications above (which play on the realistic consequences for further comedy). Watching The Simpsons to get a good feel for working class American life in the 1980s and 1990s is like watching a parody of Friends and concluding that it accurately represented a time in the early 2000s United States where a single (bad) waitress could afford a massive Manhattan apartment.
  • The Smurfs:
    • Many believe that Smurfette is just a useless girl whose only role in the village is to steal hearts and be an eternal Damsel in Distress. Although in the 1981 cartoon, she does need to be rescued quite often and rarely takes the lead in the action, she nevertheless does regularly appear doing hard work alongside the male Smurfs, such as breaking rocks and building military weapons, and often proves to be more courageous than Brainy. She even saved Jokey from Azrael's clutches in "Don Smurfo".
    • Many hastily claim that Grouchy Smurf hates everything and everyone around him. In fact, he's just a grumpy guy with no trace of hatred towards anyone. You can clearly see this in his special fathership with Baby Smurf, in the remorse he feels for making Jokey disappear in “The Kaplowey Scroll” and, mainly, for Hefty being infected by Gargamel and carrying out really hateful acts in “Hefty's Heart”. Even Smurfette admits in "The Smurf Fire Brigade" that Grouchy only says "I Hate" out of habit.
  • South Park:
    • While Kenny's face is covered by his parka and his voice is muffled, many people assume we never see him without it on the show. It's actually happened a few times: for example, these shots from "DikinBaus Hot Dogs", "Sarcastaball", "A Nightmare on FaceTime", and and "Margaritaville".
    • Kenny dies in every episode, right? Not since the fifth season, which briefly killed Kenny for real to put that gag to rest, before slowly bringing it back about twice a season at most.
    • Given how many parodies and fanarts use the show's child model to represent adult characters or self-inserts, it seems many outsiders assume the show uses the exact same short, noseless model for every character, not just fourth graders. Adult characters have always been drawn taller with more distinguishing features, and as the show underwent Art Evolution, they only became more distinct. Not to mention Non Standard Character Designs have always been a part of the show even for child characters, such as the flappy-headed Canadians.
    • Many fans often claim that Trey Parker and Matt Stone used to do the voices of the child characters naturally and only in later years began to speak in a more normal register while electronically pitching up the voices (and for those really not in the know, they assume that the voices have always been done naturally). This is false, the child characters voices were always pitched-up recordings, as explained here. The only voice actor on the show who did those childlike voices completely naturally was Mary Kay Bergman, who voiced most of the female characters from the pilot until her suicide in 1999. Cartman in particular is often said by fans to have been done naturally by Trey Parker in the first few seasons, but Cartman's voice was always pitched-up like the rest (This scene of Parker doing Cartman's voice in Film/{{BAS Eketball}} is often pointed to as "proof" that Trey did it naturally, but the audio quality is different from Trey's real voice moments earlier and the lip-syncing is slightly off, so this was clearly dubbed in later]]). Cartman's rasp disappeared because it hurt Trey's vocal cords too much so he deliberately changed the inflection.
  • It's frequently said that Fox Kids prevented the writers of Spider-Man: The Animated Series from having Spider-Man punch his enemies. While the show did undergo a lot of censorship, some very silly, the show's producer John Semper wrote multiple times that not having Spider-Man punch was a deliberate decision by the creative staff to make the fights more varied and creative.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • Due to the fact that Mr. Krabs's daughter Pearl is a whale, most people make the obvious assumption that she's adopted — but canon suggests that she is his biological daughter. An official trivia book written by an episode writer also mentions that Pearl just takes after her mother.
    • Many people think the song "Sweet Victory" from "Band Geeks" was written for the show. That's not true, as the song comes from APM's stock music library, just like most of the background music on the show.
    • One of the most persisting misunderstandings in the fandom is that SpongeBob doesn't get paid, but instead has to pay for the privilege of working at the Krusty Krab. This is due to an early episode (Big Pink Loser) where he mentions that he had to pay Mr. Krabs when he started working there - contrary to Patrick who gets paid from his first workday. SpongeBob is shown getting paid in plenty of other episodes, though the exact amount varies. The most likely circumstance is that he initially had to pay Mr. Krabs, but started to actually get paid once he had enough seniority or had proved himself as a good enough worker. And since the series runs on Negative Continuity, it was likely nothing more than a one note joke and not something that actually happened.
    • Due to excessive rumors on the internet, some believe that there was a lost Pilot episode for the show aired between 1996 or 1997 titled "SpongeBoy Ahoy!" note  and aired on Nickelodeon. However, the real pilot episode for SpongeBob is nearly identical to "Help Wanted" aside from having a different theme song, and while the episode was produced in 1997, the episode was never officially shown to the public until the series premiere in 1999. This misconception circulated after unofficial videos on YouTube surfaced teasing the lost pilot episode for the show, despite all the videos merely taking already existing footage from Help Wanted, some early promos from 1999, and clips from the show's Italian dub intro, and editing them with a Deliberate VHS Quality.
    • It's often said that the late Stephen Hillenburg didn't want any spin-offs of the show to occur. When the spin-off Kamp Koral was announced, many saw it as disrespecting Hillenburg's wishes, with some even accusing Nickelodeon of waiting for Hillenburg to die to capitalize on his creations. This likely isn't helped by the fact that Paul Tibbit, a friend of Hillenberg, had made the claim that he did not want the spinoff to be created. In reality, he actually said that he saw no spin-offs occurring in the future, which was more him making an observation than a request. Vincent Waller, a writer and director for the show, commenting on the claim, noted that Hillenburg once said that he didn't have an interest in making a movie, yet they later went on to make three movies (the first two of which were made and released in Hillenburg's lifetime).
    • It's very widely claimed that SpongeBob's original proposed name of SpongeBoy was dropped due to a mop existing with the same name. However, after some research, it was discovered that no such mop brand ever existed; while the name was changed due to a pre-existing product, the SpongeBoy product in question was actually the name of a pencil. This misconception originated from the character's voice actor Tom Kenny recalling the re-naming of the character during an interview, but not knowing the exact details, stating that the original SpongeBoy was "like a mop or something", which was then proliferated further through a feedback loop of "fun facts" books about the show and subsequent interviews with Kenny.
    • Lots of people are convinced that there's a scene in which SpongeBob calls Patrick a genius, and Patrick replies "yeah, I get called that a lot". SpongeBob confusedly asks "what? a genius?", and Patrick replies "no, Patrick". This scene is often mentioned on Internet message boards whenever the funniest quotes of the show are discussed. However, there has never been one such scene in the show. It seems to be a mix-up between the few scenes where Patrick comically misunderstands the word "genius" and a dialogue in the season 6 episode "Porous Pockets" where Patrick states that being called Patrick is his specialty (when SpongeBob believes that having good ideas is Patrick's specialty).
    • People refer to the infamous Primitive Sponge from "SB-129" as "SpongeGar" from "Ugh", but the two cave-sponges are actually different characters. The back cover for the season 11 DVD says that SpongeGar returns in "Cave-Dwelling Sponge"; it's actually yet another prehistoric sponge, with ambiguous relations to SpongeBob, named Spongy Spongy.
    • A number of sources, including descriptions for the episode "Texas", refer to Sandy Cheeks as Sandy Squirrel. Even worse is that the show itself later made the same mistake, with SpongeBob referring to her as such in "SpongeBob's Last Stand", and the second movie's end credits featuring a song called "Sandy Squirrel". This is an understandable mistake, since many characters have surnames pertaining to their species, but it's a mistake nevertheless.
    • Sometimes, Painty the Pirate is called Patchy the Pirate. These two are actually different characters; Painty is the pirate in the painting shown in the theme song (hence his name), while Patchy is the live-action pirate who's shown doing stuff during the interstitial breaks of special episodes.
    • One of the most persistent misconceptions is that despite the Negative Continuity, the first movie is considered the chronological end of the series, no matter how many new episodes and movies are produced. Vincent Waller eventually debunked this when asked about it on his Twitter, stating that Stephen Hillenburg never said this was the case. This is also the most common explanation given as to why elements from the movie were rarely (if ever) referenced in the series proper; in actuality, there was a firewall between Paramount and Nickelodeon that prevented the crew from using things like the Goofy Goober restaurant until around Season 10.
    • When The Patrick Star Show came out, it was assumed that Patrick's new sister, a squid named Squidina, was Happily Adopted and not a biological member of the family. No official sources, such as the show's pitch bible, state that this is the case. They merely say that the family thinks Squidina is a different-looking sea star. The show has actually hinted against Squidina being adopted a few times: in "The Patterfly Effect", when Patrick goes back in time and makes Bunny part-race car, in the present day, Squidina is her regular self but with wheels. "Which Witch is Which?" also shows that Squidina's grandmother is a squid as well.
    • SpongeBob and Patrick are sometimes claimed to be a gay couple, by both the LGBT Fanbase and Anti-LGBT Moral Guardians. While there is a lot of Ho Yay in the series, both SpongeBob and Patrick have been shown to be attracted to (or at least had Ship Tease with) several female characters.
    • In the episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", many take the scene of Mr. Krabs eating the Krabby Patty and saying "So that's what I taste like" out of context as proof that Krabby Patties are made out of crab meat. However, if you watch the scene in context, the point was that the patty was old and dried out like Mr. Krabs was, since, as the episode's title implies, it's about him having a mid-life crisis. He wasn't commenting on the sandwich's actual ingredients, but on its age.
  • Despite a plethora of memes suggesting so, Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures is not set shortly before Order 66. It actually takes place during the High Republic, around two centuries before Order 66 was enacted.
  • Steven Universe:
    • People often mock Steven as a pacifist who easily forgives and befriends all the antagonists, most infamously the Diamonds. Firstly, Steven isn't outright averse to fighting; he just seeks out other solutions when the fighting fails. He isn't able to successfully reform every antagonist, as seen with Eyeball, Aquamarine, Emerald, and Jasper. He's also very capable of holding a grudge, as he's quite angry about Kevin's lecherous behavior and Marty's exploitative business practices; even in the case of the Diamonds, he's shown to be uncomfortable around them and keep his distance even after they begin to work towards improving Gem society. One of the biggest plot lines has Steven begin to dislike a character he had previously seen favorably, specifically his mother Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond. Steven Universe: Future makes it abundantly clear that Steven doesn't forgive other characters so easily; he just keeps the peace to prevent any further issues, even if he personally still resents them.
    • Steven is not a reincarnation of Rose Quartz or Pink Diamond. One of the main themes of the show is that it was unfair for Steven to be expected to fill his mother's shoes, to carry her personal baggage, and to atone for her past mistakes. Disproving the idea that Steven is a reincarnation of his mother is the entire point behind the climatic scene in the series finale where Steven's gem reforms into a pink version of himself instead of Rose Quartz or Pink Diamond after White Diamond tears the gem out of his belly, with Steven himself being deeply relieved by the confirmation.
    • The Burning Room is not Garnet's room in the Crystal Temple. This is proven by Steven being able to access it when Ruby and Sapphire are unfused in "Made of Honor", and (as stated by Sardonyx) a fusion's room only exists when they do. This misconception most likely stems from Garnet being the only one to open the door to it onscreen, and Garnet's actual room never being seen in the show.
    • Looking through fanworks involving her, it's not hard to believe Mystery Girl's name is Sheena; "Sheena" is actually a name her designer unofficially called her that the fandom picked up. Her actual name was never revealed.
    • Lion and Lars are not immortal. They age incredibly slowly to the point they verge on being The Ageless, but they, like the Gems, can still get hurt and die.
    • There doesn't seem to be any evidence that some foreign language dubs made Ruby a male character to erase the lesbian romance between her and Sapphire. As far as anyone can tell, it seems that this started as just speculation of how a localization trying to tone down the show's homosexual content could do it, which then got talked up so much that people started to just assume it had actually happened, especially after Ruby wearing the dress at her and Sapphire's wedding was suspected to be specifically designed to prevent it. What actually happened in countries that had issues with any LGBT content was that the relevant episodes had scenes edited or skipped to bypass it, if the show wasn't just pulled from airing in general.
    • Fusion is a metaphor for sex, debunked repeatedly by the Crewniverse; fusion is a metaphor for relationships of all kinds, be it familial, platonic, romantic, etc. The misconception is due to the first few Fusion Dances the audience sees being sexually provocative or romantic in nature, with this being extrapolated into representing fusion as a whole instead of just being representative of those characters' personalities and their relationships with each other.
    • The Diamonds are related (i.e. Blue and Yellow and Pink being sisters, with White as their mother). The show has repeatedly debunked Gems as having any sort of blood relations, though the show does treat them as an allegorical family.
    • Rose Quartz orchestrating both sides of the Gem War. "Now We're Only Falling Apart" established that Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond took Pink's colony back and reduced her to a puppet monarch when she refused to help them hollow out the Earth by installing more Kindergartens. The moment Pink became Rose Quartz, she lost all her Diamond privileges and therefore would have to make do with whatever gems she could convince to join her. If anything, Homeworld Gems on Earth would have to take orders from the Great Diamond Authority, meaning that Rose Quartz manipulating both sides to fight against each other would be impossible to pull off and runs completely counter to her goal of scaring the Diamonds away from Earth. And that's before you realize that Rose gets nothing out of manipulating her subjects to shatter each other or allowing the Diamonds to later corrupt them unless she were well and truly evil.
    • The Diamonds have committed multiple genocides which had wiped out intelligent life on other planets before they attempted to hollow out the Earth. This is not true; while other planets are shown to have had organic flora and fauna, Earth is the first planet Homeworld encountered that had a sapient, humanoid species, which is why Pink Diamond considered the Earth so special to begin with. In addition, the show never explains if the Diamonds conquered planets as part of their individual colonies, or if the Diamonds shared some of them as part of the Great Diamond Authority; further still, we never actually see the Diamonds commit genocide on screen and anything related to their colonization of planets is only ever implied.
    • The Diamonds being space Nazis, one which often overlaps with "Steven forgave the Diamonds". While it's true that the Diamonds did plunder various planets for the purpose of setting up more Kindergartens, it was done so they could replace the Gems they shattered and corrupted with new ones, not because they believed that Gems should rule the universe. In the show itself, the Diamonds aren't very proactive, being content to leave the Earth alone in favour of running their empire on Homeworld or grieving over Pink Diamond's death. If anything, their modus operandi is far closer to colonialism than actual Nazism, though it didn't make them any less evil or excuse their actions.
    • The closing credits song "Love Like You" is frequently cited as being from the perspective of Rose Quartz. While parallels can definitely be drawn between the song and Rose's story, the Crewniverse has stated that the song is not intended to be from the perspective of any character.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
    • Krang from the 1987 show is not a Utrom. It's true his appearance was inspired by the Utroms, but he is himself a disembodied brain from another dimension. The Utroms are brain like creatures from another planet. This misconception likely isn't helped by later adaptations just making him an Utrom outright.
    • Many fans of the 1987 show recall that Turtles hate anchovies on their pizza. While several storybooks based on the cartoon have brought this up and Michelangelo did specifically say he wanted no anchovies in the first film when he phoned a delivery, the cartoon itself never said they hated them. Quite the opposite in fact; several episodes have mentioned that they did eat pizzas with anchovies.
  • Teen Titans Go!:
    • Many people believe that the episode "Wally T" was another episode that made fun of people who hated the show. Actually, this is not the case: Wally T was based on a teenager named William Walter Thompson who grew up with the original show and had a rare disease called Barakat's syndrome and got to star on the show thanks to the Make A Wish Foundation.
    • Like the "Sweet Victory" example above, fans believe that "The Night Begins To Shine" was an original composition for the series when it was actually a stock music track in the audio library used by Warner Brothers. And it wasn't going to be included in the first place: the song was only included because the episode it first appeared in ran 10 seconds shorter than usual.
  • Thomas & Friends:
    • In truth, "Gordon Goes Foreign" was intended to be adapted in Season 2, not Season 3.
    • The mainstream media and people outside the fandom believe that Henry was sealed in the brick tunnel forever. While "The Sad Story of Henry" does have a Downer Ending, he is freed from the tunnel in the very next episode, "Edward, Gordon, and Henry".
    • The classic series was not animated in stop-motion. Or at least not entirely. The locomotives were filmed in real-time on a set (Albeit at a higher framerate so they moved faster) and stop-motion was used extremely rarely and only for the humans and animals.
    • The reason "Mountain Engines" was never adapted was not because it was "too dark". It was a combination of the Awdry's fallout, difficulties with merchandising due to the angled coaches, and production difficulties (Culdee Fell would require engines to either have their rear faces removed or redone, and the hilly terrain could make filming difficult).
    • You'll occasionally find reviews on Amazon for DVDs of either the classic series or the HiT era complaining that customers were expecting CGI, and got quote-unquote "narrated still images" instead. Ignoring the fact that they're obviously not just still images, a majority of the show was made using physical sets, not CGI. The show switched to CGI in the late 2000s, and that only lasted a little over a decade before the show was cancelled.
    • No, Edward didn't have a model for Thomas and the Magic Railroad in the works that wasn't finished in time. He was never in any version of the script, and there supposedly wasn't an opportunity to utilize him, and he therefore couldn't have had a model being made.
      • Likewise, the main reason why PT Boomer was removed was not because he was too scary for a children's film villain, but it was because the test audience didn't like the non-Sodor scenes in general.
  • Tom and Jerry:
    • A lot of people believe that the final episode of Tom and Jerry ends with the pair committing suicide together. While there is a cartoon where that is the implied ending, it's not the last one (the last one of the original Hanna-Barbera run was Tot Watchers, which was released almost two years after Blue Cat Blues).
    • Also, it's "Common Knowledge" that Tom and Jerry never speak, with fans even using this as a reason to criticize their Suddenly Speaking nature in Tom and Jerry: The Movie. While most of the cartoons have the duo silent, a fair number of the episodes have dialogue from one or even both of them, including Tom's infamous "DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!" and particularly the episode "The Lonesome Mouse", in which both characters have quite a lot of dialogue. Likewise, "Blue Cat Blues", the double suicide episode mentioned above, features Jerry narrating the entire story, albeit mostly via inner monologue.
    • The basic premise of classic Tom & Jerry shorts is that Tom wants to eat Jerry. Actually, in most Tom and Jerry shorts, their relationship is more one of sparring partners — always one-upping another, getting immediate revenge, and fighting over a common goal. Only a few cartoons depict Tom as having any interest in eating Jerry (mostly ones directed by Chuck Jones).
    • No, the name of the Proto-Jerry from Puss Gets the Boot is not Jinx. The only source claiming it so was an apocryphal claim made by Bill Hanna in his biography (which was disputed by Joe Barbera, who claimed the mouse originally didn't have a name). According to MGM's own original press release for the cartoon, the actual name of the mouse in the short was Pee-Wee.
    • Also, contrary to popular belief, the black maid's name is not Mammy Two Shoes; absolutely no evidence exists, whether in production art or interviews that the character was ever given a real name in the original theatrical cartoons (she was given the name Dinah in some 1940s Tom and Jerry comics, but no in the theatrical cartoons themselves). The name in fact derives from an almost identical character from the Classic Disney Shorts. That said, "Mammy Two Shoes" still continues to be a popular nickname for the character, to the point where even Wikipedia uses it. This did lean a little into Ascended Fanon in Tom and Jerry Tales, whose Race Lift counterpart was officially dubbed Ms. Two Shoes.
    • Many people assumed that Tom's portly and ill-tempered owner in the Gene Deitch-directed shorts was meant to be Clint Clobber, a character Deitch had created earlier for Terrytoons. Deitch himself confirmed they were two different characters, although they look alike enough that you might be forgiven for mixing them up. The main difference between the characters is that Clint Clobber was often portrayed as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, while Tom's owner in these shorts very much isn't.
  • Despite what anyone tells you, X-Men: Evolution did not move the location of the Academy from New York to California, despite how much that may appear to be the case at first glance. It just took place in a very California-like New York, which admittedly is really odd because it's animated. It doesn't help that the writers also seem to get confused themselves, as one episode has Rogue state that it never snows in upstate New York, which is far from the truth.

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