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Cowboy Bebop At His Computer
Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy - Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

How wrong? Let me count the ways...

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Journalism is the first rough draft of history.” Or possibly it was Thomas Edison who said that. I’m pretty sure somebody said it, because you often hear journalists quote it in an effort to explain how come they get everything wrong.

The caption on this news article is just wrong. You can be pretty sure the article is also going to suck. This kind of screw-up can be understandable, or at least comprehensible, when someone Did Not Do The Research. Let's face it — sometimes, it's not easy to do, or the points are so minor. And come on, it's fiction — it isn't as if people are going to take everything written as truth.

But what about the news? Newspapers, a News Broadcast, national news...? You would think they have a responsibility to do at least some research, to make sure they aren't stating factual untruths.

You would think.

Sometimes, it seems, the entire process of fact-checking gets left out of the newsmaking process — specially when it comes to Those Damn Youngsters' Pop Culture.

Of course, sometimes, the news media doesn't seem to care as much about the truth. See New Media Are Evil. If you find yourself constantly annoyed by this kind of thing, you probably believe Old Media Are Evil.

With anime, it doesn't help when the title literally has little or no meaning.

This may result from the media trusting a trailer. (One would think they'd have learned better by now.)

Compare Complaining About Shows You Dont Watch, and Gannon Banned, when it's the fans (usually trolls) that get the names wrong. I Am Not Shazam is a key Trope involved. Can sometimes reach Critical Research Failure proportions.

Also compare Dan Browned, the version for fictional works.
Examples:

Anime
  • The picture above shows the archetypal example, from whence the trope gets its name. For the unfamiliar: The character is female, named Ed, and a supporting character at best; and no one else on the show Cowboy Bebop is named "Cowboy Bebop", either (see I Am Not Shazam). In the show, a "Cowboy" is a slang term for a bounty hunter while the main ship the cast rides in is called the "Bebop". Also, for some reason, they capitalized the second "B" in bebop.
    • At least she's at a computer.
  • This troper remembers the internet being swamped in the early 2000's with ads for porn featuring "Dragon Ball fucking Sailor Moon".
  • This editor has particularily fond memories of one gossip magazine during the 2003 Finnish accusations of pedophilic content in the recently arrived Dragon Ball manga (the usual story and accuracy). It opened by calling the comic Dragon Balls and went from there.
  • On the subject of "DBZ", this troper has held onto an article clipped out of TV Guide years ago that reported on the popularity of the anime at the time. While not negative in tone, the writer openly admits his bafflement, titling the article "Fusion Confusion" and claiming "It's harder to understand than computer schematics." He also credits Goku with protecting us from "the ferocious Saiyan", a statement that's not too wrong, per se. He then adds that he only understands as much from reading some fan sites. He lists Goku's sons as "Gohan and Gotan", and closes by saying that he watches the show for its "fantastic" animation. Well, there's far worse media coverage examples in this list, but this one is amusing as well as heartwarming in a "He's trying his best" sort of way. It also demonstrates the principle of the Generational Gap, where "grown-ups" just can't get "kid's stuff", something we see time and again in this list.
  • The official site of ADV Films' release of AIR once touted the series as being "from the creators of The Melancholy of Hurai Suzumiya". AIR only shared an animation studio with Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. They later corrected the spelling, but not the "creators" comment.
    • On the topic of AIR, Anime News Network recently ran a review of the movie adaptation... which, among other things, touted it as being "racier than the series" (how?) and referred to Yukito as Yuuichi.
      • Massively confusing the issue for even trope editors is the live-action ripoff porn with the deliberately mispelled name, Suzumiya Hahiru no Yuutsu. You can find cleaned up versions on You Tube.
  • A newspaper article on Yu-Gi-Oh confusingly stated that Joey had made the common mistake of using powerful cards. This was the only information on the character. In actuality, the problem was that Joey used powerful monsters and nothing to support them.
    • A review for the movie said it was 11 years old. The 11-year old movie never got to America, and this one Pyramid of Light) is completely different.
  • In late 2007 several kids were suspended from school for bringing Death Notes to school with them, news reports of the incidents didn't tell the viewer about the existence of the anime. One instead cited an unofficial website as the source (see here). (Exactly how they thought a Death Note was going to work in the real world is a mystery.)
  • In March of 2008 a ten year old boy died from being buried alive in his sandbox. The news claimed this happened by him and his friends imitating "Nurutu", which the news described as a television show where samurai use sand as a tool and to kill each other.
    • This troper has heard it refered to as "Nurutu Sand Ninjas".
  • This troper remembers reading a French article about manga a dozen years ago and seeing a picture of Krillin/Kuririn from Dragon Ball Z with a legend along the lines of "When little Trunks goes mad, there's going to be hell to pay!". It was a serious magazine at that...
  • An infamous article by The Sun from Canada◊ features gems such as "Hentae" and that all hentai is essentially lolicon-BDSM-rape.
  • This editor recalls a review of the manga One Piece that kept referring to the protagonist - Monkey D. Luffy - as "Monkey", despite the fact that absolutely everyone in the series calls him Luffy. The rest of the review only reinforced the impression that the reviewer had not read past the first page or two.
  • How many casual viewers of Trigun think that the show is named after the main character?
  • TV Guide once described Tenchi Muyo in Love as "Police partners hunt an escaped convict," which is technically accurate, but didn't even bother mentioning that they're Space Police, or that there's time travel, alien princes, or any other elements that are fundamental to the plot.
  • An interesting example here. If link is broken (or you don't speak Swedish at all), it tells about American television series Yu-Gi-Oh GX, in which Yugis grandfather is kidnapped by Pegausus...

Video Games
  • Any publication that has Pokemon being called "Pokey-man". Such as the official Time Magazine archives. Similarly, anything that refers to "Pokemons". (Pokemon is both singular and plural, like sheep, deer, or samurai.) Anyway, it is actually written "Pokémon", but most can be forgiven for not knowing how to do the accent over the e.
    • This guy recalls reading an article (and watching an interview) where a panicky watchdog-type proves, proves that "Pokey-man" is a tool of Satan by offering up an excerpt that reads "you can catch a Mew by cheating with a Gameshark." Proof that Pokémon is corrupting our children by teaching them to cheat, or evidence that the woman in question is a magnificent dumbass who doesn't realize that a Gameshark is a third-party cheating device wholly separate from Nintendo? You decide.
      • This guy would also like to add that the above example especially pissed him off because it forced him to defend Pokémon. Damn you, "Pokey-man" lady. Damn you.
  • The word "Chao" from the Sonic The Hedgehog series works this way too, so it's annoying when people try to make it plural by adding an "s" on the end, making it a totally different word.
    • Not to mention that the same series actually has a character named Chaos (who is also directly related to the chao), which can cause even more confusion.
      • Same "series"? More like "Both had debut in Sonic Adventure".
  • This editor remembers picking up a review of The Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap in a reputable British newspaper, and reading that Link must rescue a petrified Princess... Peach.
  • This editor remembers a review of the Double Dragon movie that, when talking about the source material, gave a rather unfair description... of Mortal Kombat.
  • This other editor remembers a newspaper article about how "Sega's mascot Mario" was more recognisable than Mickey Mouse.
  • Yet another editor contributes. This time, the magazine in question was trying to establish a link between the shootings at Columbine and video games. They used an interview with a survivor's family, while the survivor was playing the video game Diablo... which was described as "just shooting" and was punctuated by the survivor's character being blown up. Those who are familiar with this game should catch the problems...
  • British teenage science magazine Flipside ran a small article on Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, listing a handful of returning characters as being 'Solid Snake, Roy Campbell, and Quinton Flynn'. The latter is the name of the voice actor for one of the characters — of course, mixing up the name of the voice actor and the character would be forgiveable if not for the fact that the character he lends his voice to is called "Raiden". You'd think someone would notice it wasn't exactly a common name...
  • Several fans for some reason refer to Sonic Adventure 2 Battle as "Sonic Adventure Battle 2". Of course, there was no "Sonic Adventure Battle 1", and SA2B is actually a remake of Sonic Adventure 2 for Dreamcast. The "Battle" refers to the slight improvements made to the two-player mode of the game.
    • This troper suffers from it, and knows the correct term, but it always comes out as "Sonic Adventure Battle 2"! Needless to say, this troper has a tendency to beat their own head in for that!
  • The BBC once did a report on Halo 3, and used footage from Killzone 2.
  • A PC Gamer review of the Half Life 2 mod MINERVA: Metastasis reported that it was created by a "team." Another review by PC Zone stated that "even Valve [the creators of the Half Life series] should doff their caps and might want to take notes." Adam Foster, who singlehandedly created Minerva, actively sought out Valve's help in creating the last chapter, and got feedback on how to improve what he'd done so far (he'd been going to a modders' conference, which had gotten cancelled).
  • The official German Playstation Magazine reported that Final Fantasy IX was a continuation with a new character named Skylar Goodsworth. Turns out they were tricked by a fanfiction on what was then a rather obscure site, which not only lacked any form of professionalism, but had a url equal to beepworld.
    • Ah, the German OPM. At least one of their articles (supposedly original content) was actually copied wholesale from the UK iteration, except peoples' quotes were randomly improved; a line about a fighting game handling like zombies suddenly revolved around drunk dinosaurs, for instance. (The UK one wasn't much better; thanks to their tips page, this troper wasted hours on trying to get extra characters that just weren't there in Bushido Blade.)
  • An early preview of FFIX stated that it was to be a remake of the first game in the series. A writer clearly unfamiliar with Roman numerals claimed that Square had started development on "Final Fantasy 1 X".
  • A while back, the offical Nintendo Official Magazine in the UK described one of the Final Fantasy games as being in the top 150 of games. No problem? Well, they say it's Final Fantasy III and it's getting a DS remake, but the picture beside it is unmistakeably Kefka. The magazine apparently got Japan's Final Fantasy III (which actually got a DS remake) and the West's Final Fantasy III (which was Final Fantasy VI) confused.
    • To be fair, there are a lot of gamers that are still confused about this mess. They're just not going on the record.
  • Following Manhunt 2 being banned in the UK, an article ran in a local newspaper accompanied by a screenshot from Resident Evil 4.
  • The Fox News Mass Effect fiasco. Turns out that Cooper Lawrence, their invited speaker and a self-help author, hadn't even seen the game, and based her entire rant about the game's numerous, hardcore sex scenes and obsession with objectifying women on somebody in the studio saying it was "like pornography". Seriously, that comment was her entire exposure to the game. She finally apologised after watching someone play the game for two and a half hours, and after hundreds of scathing reviews of her latest book were posted on Amazon by gamers who had, of course, never read it.
    • The real gag: Almost all of the reviews not in response to her Mass Effect claims were just as bad as the satire reviews, calling the writing bad, the sexy-pose picture of Ms. Lawrence on the cover a basic undermining of her own poorly-presented points, and everything in general bullshit. I guess sometimes you really don't need to have any experience to judge something...
    • Compounded by the fact that most people, after hearing these scandalicious claims, were highly disappointed by the short, very PG-13 scenes in question.
    • The Fox News Mass Effect fiasco also came on the heels of an article by conservative columnist Kevin McCullough that described the game's "virtual orgasmic rape." Uh... yeah. You go with that.
    • The best part of all this: Jack Thompson said there was nothing to it. Jack friggin' Thompson.
  • The Brazilian evangelist Josué Yrion plays this profusely every time he says "nintendo" instead of "videogame", and even lampshades it by saying "Segas, Super Nintendos, Playstations, whatever!".
  • Read the Netflix summary for either Yu Yu Hakusho movie. If you don't have Netflix, it's pretty much what you'd expect.
  • Popular Science once had a short article on upcoming first person shooter games that showed a screenshot that was said to be from Doom 3. The problem? Not only was the screenshot from Quake 3 Arena, but Doom 3 hadn't even been announced yet nor was in development at the time.
  • A particularly egregious example that I recall was in a Guardian article about the then-upcoming Wii and PS 3 systems. The article stated that one of the launch games for the Wii would be, "something called Zelda Hands-On, a sword-fighting game".
  • This troper also remembers an advertisement for the game MDK 2 in which Kurt Hectic is identified as a mercenary. While it's true that Doc Hawkins hired him to do a job, that job originally had to do with scrubbing floors.
  • The "Bild" (a German newspaper responsible for such gems as "Hitler's secret UFO plans" etc.) wrote an article about a "extremely violent Video Game called Counter-Strike" which is played with a joystick... .
  • A Polish computer magazine described Rayman Raving Rabbids as a game where you "control a cute hare◊".
  • A fantastic example was created by English newspaper The Daily Mail, who wrote an article about CG images of Washington DC destroyed, claiming they were made by terrorists as a "terrifying vision". The reality? The images were promo shots for Fallout 3.
  • A videogame advert was banned for containing the sexually suggestive tagline: "Get your worm out for the birds." The game being advertised, according to the newscasters, was the curiously-named Earthworm Joe.
  • In the 42nd issue of the Wonka Vision magazine, there was an article about SBCG4AP. They referred to the tenth anniversary toon as "the first toon featured on homestarrunner.com when it launched in 2000."

Film
  • A ridiculously inaccurate negative review for X2: X-Men United by Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post quickly became clear that he did not see the movie. At one point, he said that Rogue had the power to reverse time, even going so far as to call her "the Mistress of Rewind."
    • Maybe someone had stolen his VCR remote and was messing with him from the next room?
    • Another review, this one appearing in the New Times Los Angeles, blasted the first X-Men movie for departing from the comic's signature yellow-and-blue costumes, and for giving Magneto, the "master of all evil", a sympathetic Holocaust-survivor backstory. Which shows that he did actually read the comic... in the '60s, and not once since.
    • A review of X2 in the Irish Times complained that a character who had been killed in the first film was somehow alive in the second... except he wasn't: Mystique the shapeshifter had taken his place. This was not only pointed out explicitly in the first film (for those viewers too sleepy to notice the characteristic flash of yellow eyes) but was a pivotal plot point in the second, which makes you wonder if the reviewer actually bothered to watch the film...
  • A talking head on CNBC reported that the just released Pirates Of The Caribbean 2 movie had broken the opening box office record held by the movie "Aquaman". However, Aquaman was a fictional movie within the universe of the Entourage show, and has never actually been made, to say nothing of breaking any box office records.
    • On the Entourage note, this editor recalls a music news soundbite on his local radio station talking about how Vincent Chase, star of Aquaman, had been chosen to play Joey Ramone in a Ramones biopic. He still doesn't know whether they were kidding or not.
  • One article about the fifth Harry Potter movie showed a picture of Harry and Cho about to kiss, but the caption read that he was puckering up for Hermione Granger. The canon shippers were not amused.
    • An amazing number of film critics, including Roger Ebert, described the ending of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as involving a duel with a dragon, whereas the creature Harry fought was actually a basilisk. This may be rather nitpicky, but the fact that the creature was a snake was a bit of a plot point.
  • The local Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St.Paul, MN) paper's movie review of The Transformers movie repeatedly referred to the title bots' human buddy as "Spike". Now that would have made sense as that was his name in the comic and the cartoon, but not in the movie.
  • A review for the Lord Of The Rings films decried the fact that Arwen gets such a small role (whereas in the books, she has all of one line, near the end of Return of the King), and another which assumed that Eowyn's killing of the Witch King was an expansion of her role in the books (whereas there is very little difference apart from her lines).
  • A review of Chasing Amy by Roger Ebert switched the male Heterosexual Life Partners' personalities and quotes (but not roles in the movie) around, rendering poor Ebert confused and disappointed.
  • During the long, long summer of '77, one TV-news reporter referred to Chewbacca as "Choobie", and another refer to the Millennium Falcon as "Darth Vader's ship".
    • This sort of thing still happens all the time in journalism and regular conversation. People, especially people on television, love to call the main villain "Dark Vader", and use the title in the singular, as in, "Here are a group of star war fans."
      • This is spoofed on Arrested Development, wherein Lucille Bluth tells her adopted Korean son, "Here's some money. Go see a Star War."
  • An NPR reporter once talked about the "Lord of the Narnia" series, apparently mixing two franchises.
  • The Boston Globe reviewer of Donnie Darko seems to have taken a bathroom break during half of the film and walked out fifteen minutes before the ending. No other explanation would suffice. However admits to not paying attention to the part where Frank explains to Donnie that he (Frank) comes from outer space. Because the reviewer seemed sure that scene appeared in the movie.
  • The whole kerfuffle that erupted over the film The Last Temptation of Christ was because people were informed about scenes of Jesus settling down, getting married, and having sex. What they weren't informed about was that said scenes were a hallucination caused by the Devil in order to try and convince Jesus not to fulfill his destiny, walk away and have a normal life, a temptation Jesus rejected. You know, as sort of described in the name of the film. Nobody listened, however, and due to staunchly Catholic Media Watchdogs, the film wasn't premiered in Mexico until 2005!
  • When Star Wars Episode I hit the cinemas, an Austrian magazine attempted to introduce uninitiated readers to the film's universe. There was mention of the fan outcry about the small green Jedi Master named Ewok being too cute, and confused the Neimodian Trade Federation mooks with Sith Lords.
  • This troper remembers a newspaper synopsis of The Lord Of The Rings which read "Frodo and friends go on a quest to find a magic ring." Some quest that would have been.
  • This Chilean editor remembers a negative review of the Rocky And Bullwinkle movie that called Rocky (who is a flying squirrel) "a beaver". Rocko feels his pain.
  • This article from EW.com was written by someone who, commenting on the upcoming Prince Of Persia movie, was apparently completely unaware that the series had new installments in the last 20 years. As many of the commentators on the page point out, 30 seconds on Google would have cleared things up.
  • In the UK series of Gladiators, a character refers to Spartan saying 'he doesn't have 299 friends to back him up now!'. About a second later, the commentator says '300 Greeks fought for Rome, but there's only one Spartan!'. Walls hurt.
  • For a time, Hulu described the scene from Back To The Future Part II where Doc whisks Marty and Jennifer off to 2015 as "Doc surprises Marty and Lorraine with an urgent request to come into the future to save their kids." Marty and Lorraine‘s kids? Ick!
  • This Troper's wife worked at a theatre and informed him that his most hated critic watches all movies at double-speed, directly leading to her insistance that in The 13th Warrior, the Viking language was learned in "one magical night"
  • This Troper has seen numerous reviews of The Dark Knight which state that the Joker's scars were given to him by an abusive father, completely ignoring the fact that the story of his scars changes every time he tells it and he's likely just making it up to screw with people.
  • One critic bashed Disney's Pocahontas for having a male lead named John Smith, "a made-up name if I ever heard one." John Smith was a real person, and the movie was (loosely) based on his writings.
  • The Quentin Tarantine release of Hard Core Logo describes this move as "A hilarious rockumentary in the laugh-packed tradition of This is Spinal Tap. . . As magnetic lead singer Joe Dick holds the whole tour together through sheer force of will, all the tensions and pitfalls of the rock nd roll lifestyle come bursting hilariously to the surface! Featuring a memorable appearance by punk rock legend Joey Ramone. . . settle in and enjoy this offbeat comedy as it REALLY cranks up the laughs!" HCL has its funny moments, but it is decidedly NOT a hilarious comedy. And Joey Ramone is in it for maybe five minutes at the beginning, and is quickly forgotten. One of the most egregious examples of the writer having never seen the movie that this troper has ever seen.

Literature
  • The book Futurespeak: A Fan's Guide to the Language of SF apparently contains numerous examples where the author Did Not Do The Research. One of the most notable (if only for SF critic John Clute's alleged claim it had "more mistakes than words") defines "Slan" as superhumans from a series beginning with Galactic Lensman, a 1925 novel by A.E. Van Vogt. (There was never a book called Galactic Lensman; the Lensman series started in 1937, with Galactic Patrol; the Slans aren't even from the Lensman series; van Vogt's name has a lowercase "v" on the "van"; van Vogt didn't write the Lensman series, E.E. "Doc" Smith did; the book in which van Vogt created the Slans was called Slan, and was published in 1948; and the entry is phrased as though "Slan" were the plural, which it isn't).
    • Before this troper learned that the Internet was a much better source of research, he used to peruse a book erroneously titled The Anime Encyclopedia. Treated it almost like a bible. Slowly, though, he began to realize that the majority of its entries not only fell under this trope, they leaped under its wheels like crazed Kali worshippers beneath a juggernaut. But then, what can one expect of a book with ties to a magazine called "Protoculture Addicts"?
      • "Protoculture Addicts" is in fact an Artifact Title. They even took a poll once to change the title and the result was to not do so.
  • This editor remembers a popular history book describing Conan The Barbarian as being the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Um...no, although Tolkien once mentioned he 'rather liked' the Conan stories.
  • Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman were interviewed for the book Good Omens by a New York radio presenter who hadn't quite figured out that the book was fictional.
  • The Tolkien Sarcasm Page is a deliberately erroneous, tongue-in-cheek summary of Lord Of The Rings. Apparently a major newspaper took it seriously.
  • The Ottawa Citizen: in its story about Askjeeves.com, it claimed that the website took its name from a butler in some P.G. Wodehouse books. Trivial Pursuit made the same mistake. Jeeves was not a butler. He was a valet. Perhaps they were thinking of Beach.
    • Trivial Pursuit also thinks Lord Peter Wimsey's valet is called Butler. Sorry. It's Bunter.
  • Many websites professing that Harry Potter teaches witchcraft have cited the line from the first book "there is no good and evil; there is only power and those too weak to seek it" as "proof". This takes the line completely out of context, as it was said by the villain of the book. A Christian media-review site that cites that line among the many reasons to avoid the films - not ignoring the fact that a villain said it, but saying it doesn't matter who said it.
    • Other Christian alarmists have cited an interview where JK Rowling proclaims her allegiance to Satan as proof of the series' evil. The source of this damning testimony? The Onion.
      • This troper has a fond memory of someone sending Reader's Digest an angry letter after they had JK Rowling on the cover. They then sent another one that complained about their first letter being truncated when published, in which they revealed their source for their outrage was The Onion. Reader's Digest did the print equivalent of patting them on the head and saying, "There, there..."
    • Prior to the release of the first film, Warner Bros. produced several board games based on the series, including a trivia game written by people who clearly had only read the first book as well as just the title of the second one. Consequently, they apparently decided that the "Chamber of Secrets" referred to the chambers Harry, Ron and Hermione passed through in order to get the stone. Uh... no.
    • This troper fondly remembers a series of articles published by a major newspaper prior to the release of the fourth book, where the journalist announced "sensational changes" at Hogwarts, such as the arrival of the new potions professor, a certain Lucius Malfoy.
      • I think I've read that fanfic...
    • One website quotes Professor Snape's line from the first book, "I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death", and says it's an intentional example of "drug use, and drug glorification". The scene where Hermione figures out which bottles are poison and which will get them safely to their destination is a "drug message", we're told: "To reach your goals in life like Harry Potter, you need to know how to make drugs and take drugs in just the right way or else you are a 'dunderhead' and will never succeed."
  • Dave Barry points this out brilliantly in his book “Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)”
    We see this all the time. Journalists, rushing to get a story out under deadline pressure, will report,­ based on preliminary ­information,­ that a ship sank, and 127 people, many of them elderly, perished. Then, upon further investigation, it turns out that nobody, in fact, perished, although one elderly person was slightly injured by a set of dentures hurled by another el­derly person in an effort to get the first elderly person to stop talking so loud. Then it turns out that this happened at a nursing home, as opposed to a ship, although the elderly people were watching a video of Titanic at the time, and although there were only four of them, as opposed to 127, the nursing home is located on Route 124, which is only three less than 127, which is not that much of an error when you consider the deadline pressure that journalists operate under.
  • This troper has seen a webpage about the Spin Off board game for A Series Of Unfortunate Events which claims that the characters include "Ruby Gloom and Emily the Strange", both completely unrelated goth girls.
    • There was also a bit of Borders promotional material which mentioned the Baudelaires encountering "Chabo the Wolf Baby" in the ninth book. "Chabo" is in fact the disguise adopted by Sunny.
  • A review was circulated on several sites of the Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Cla(i)re, formerly a Big Name Fan in the Harry Potter fandom. It claimed that she took the title of her books from a Harry/Draco Fan Fic she had once written, and quoted a few paragraphs. In fact they came from another of her stories, and the fanfic originally titled Mortal Instruments was a tale of Brother Sister Incest between Ron and Ginny.
    • However, she had committed plagiarism in her fanfics previously, so this person had at least done some research...
  • This troper remembers a Game Informer preview of the then-upcoming Genji for Playstation 2 describing it as based on the Tale of Genji. Given that said work was a romance, it would have led to a very different game than the actual result... which was based on The Tale of the Heike.
  • This Troper has lost track of the amount of inaccuracies inside and outside of news media he's seen referring to the original novel of Dracula, ranging from claiming that the Count can be destroyed by sunlight to references to him being destroyed via stake through the heart. Clearly, most people have just seen one of the movies and called it good.
  • Lois Lowry's novel The Giver has a disturbing scene in which the hero learns exactly what it means, in this pretty-dystopian future, for an elderly person to be "Released" or for a defective or undersized newborn to be "sent Elsewhere": he watches a video of his father crooning in affectionate babytalk as he gives such a baby a lethal injection, finally sending it down a chute to the incinerator with a cheerful, "Bye-bye, little guy." Some manage to interpret these scenes as intending to convey that euthanasia of the old or defective is a good thing; somehow they contrive to miss that the hero is utterly devastated by this realization, and that the reader is intended to be equally distressed.
  • A few The Runelords books contain a review excerpt on the cover of the book itself stating that fans of The Wheel Of Time or The Sword Of Truth will love The Runelords. The problem is, The Sword Of Truth and The Runelords both take very strong and unequivocal stances on issues of morality, but from diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum. The Sword Of Truth has been accused of "shameless Ayn Rand-worship," (when the critics choose to be charitable; it's been called a lot worse than that, but you get the point,) while The Runelords takes a very deep look at the traditional Christian ideas of morality and their practical applications in a high fantasy setting.) Anyone who can read both series and agree with both of them simply does not understand one or both of them.
    • Still, that doesn't mean folks can't enjoy either or both series without agreeing with them.
    • A similar comment appears on the cover of this troper's copy of The Well of Ascension, stating that fans of Terry Goodkind or Terry Brooks will like the Mistborn series. Mistborn's philosophical slant is almost identical to that of The Runelords, though it's not quite as preachy about it, and is wholly incompatible with the views set forth in The Sword Of Truth as the Only True Way to run a civilization.
  • GamePro was (is?) a veritable factory of this. This was especially blatant in their coverage of RPGs, which they largely viewed as beneath them and thus didn't bother to do much research when they were involved. This attitude seeped into their reviews, either disparaging the title because it's an RPG or (in the case of reviews for "politically important" games such as Final Fantasy VII) heaping a ton of cynicism into their writing.
  • One review of Lunar: Eternal Blue that heavily criticized the game while blatantly appearing to only be drawing from the beginning of it inspired Working Designs to publicly call them out and pull their advertising from the magazine. The magazine later admitted that they only played ~25% of the game.

Music
  • "The Band is just fantastic, that's really what I think, oh by the way, which one's Pink?" — Pink Floyd, satirically (and lyrically) demonstrating this trope in the song "Have A Cigar".
  • The Ottawa Citizen described U2 as "a Brit band". Apparently, the editor of that paper forgot that since 1920, Ireland is no longer part of the British Empire.
    • A reccuring problem with Irish musicians (and indeed other celebrities). This editor has seen MTV refer to Westlife as British (you would think they at least should know better).
  • This editor has spoken with people about Jethro Tull - sometimes, they'll say, "Oh, yes, I really like his music." For those not in the know, Jethro Tull is the band's name; it's led by singer and flautist Ian Anderson.
  • Beware the sinister cult of emo.
    • This troper was taking this with her usual mix of sympathy and sarcasm until she read the line referring to self-harm as an "initiation ritual" into the cult of emo. She gives her sincere condolences to this girl's family, but this entire article is an insult to the deceased girl's memory, for trivialising very real depression that led to suicide. It's digusting.
    • This troper's particular favorite line: Saying that the "black parade" is a mysterious afterlife that emo people believe they go to when they die, instead of being the name of an album by My Chemical Romance.
  • A song by The Arrogant Worms, "Forgive Us, We're Canadian" was written when they got a reveiw complaining about "too much Canadian content" in a political show.

Live Action TV
  • A paper treated the two-hour pilot of Star Trek Deep Space Nine as the ninth Star Trek movie. Therefore, it was described like that: "Star Trek 9: Deep Space". There's also a matter of many papers thinking that "Star Trek" is the name of the "titular" ship(s)...
  • Several morning news shows took a segment of The Colbert Report where Stephen Colbert asked Democratic Congressional candidate Robert Wexler (running unopposed in his district) campaign-killing questions ("Fill in the blank: I enjoy cocaine because...") seriously, comparing it to an earlier segment where Colbert exposed a candidate who decried the separation of church and state and yet couldn't name all of the Ten Commandments and asking, "Why do politicians keep going on The Colbert Report when it makes them look foolish?" Needless to say, Colbert took them down a notch.
    • Colbert struck again when commenting on the story of a British Airways passenger who was booted from his flight because his Transformers t-shirt was considered "a terrorist threat" (because the robot was armed). Colbert IDed the character as Megatron, and spent the entire segment espousing the threat a robot that turns into a gun poses (complete with original cartoon footage). The Transformer in question was the movie version of Optimus Prime (who was correctly IDed in virtually every other story on the incident). Although this may be a case of Did Not Do *All* The Research, since the BA official in question is quoted as calling it "Megatron".
    • More likely it was just Rule Of Funny — a gunbot is easier to incite fake terrorist panic over than a truckbot.
  • Back in 2005, just after the new series of Doctor Who began, this troper remembers reading an article talking about the Doctor and Rose battling against the evil Moxx of Balroom and the dastardly Face of Boe. As of yet, neither of these aliens has been suggested to be remotely evil and in the case of the Face of Boe, it's quite obvious that he's a good guy.
    • Thankfully the frequent appearance of Kaled mutants in new series seems to have stopped people calling the Daleks robots.

Western Animation
  • When Boston was gripped by terrorist Lite Brites, the desperation-born sweat from reporters trying to figure out just what the hell Aqua Teen Hunger Force is was almost enough to smudge the pages. Most of them came up with variations on "show about anthropomorphic food detective superheroes".
    • Even TV Guide's description of the show is "food items fight crime". You try explaining it.
    • Really, all they had to do here was ask a college student what was up. Too bad there aren't many college students in Boston.

Comic Books

Professional Wrestling
  • The book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Professional Wrestling is filled with this type of error, leading many Smart Marks to claim it's "by complete idiots, for complete idiots". As just one example, the real name of wrestler The Rock (actual real name: Dwayne Johnson) is given as Rocky Melvin. Surprisingly, longtime wrestler and wrestling manager "Captain Lou" Albano is one of the co-authors; however, as anybody who's met Lou in person or seen him on TV will attest, the Captain is a real-life Cloudcuckoolander, so it's not all that shocking that he can screw things up this badly.
  • The documentary (which means that they should've had all the time in the world to do the research, which makes it even funnier) Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets reveals some secrets that every knowledgeable wrestling fan already knew, and some they didn't... because no pro wrestling federation has ever used them. Two words: Stunt Granny.
  • Following the Chris Benoit murders in 2007, the Today Show did a report on wrestlers who died young. One of the reports said that Owen Hart died from a heart attack. For the uninitiated, Owen actually fell to his death while preparing for an entrance that would see him rappelling from the rafters into the ring at a pay-per-view event. It's only by the sheer coincidence that the WWE was airing a backstage interview at that moment that the moment of death wasn't broadcast on nationwide television. You'd think that might stick out enough for them to get the cause of death right, but apparently not. On that same broadcast, they broadcasted Owen's face on the British Bulldog's profile.
    • Also, Nancy Grace mentioned something about Benoit "being demoted from the Four Horsemen to Raw". The Horsemen, of course, being a team that died when WCW went defunct in 2001, and Raw being the WWE's top brand. To prove I Am Not Making This Up, here's the quote:
      Nancy Grace: "Mr. Hart, question. Regarding [Chris Benoit's] career, I know that he had gone from the elite, one of the Four Horsemen, down to Raw. And that's a little bit of a demotion. How badly do you think he took that?"

Multiple or Other
  • Unsurprisingly, this is what most members of the Furry Fandom accuse media moguls like MTV and Vanity Fair, along with CSI, of doing about the hyped-up sexuality of the fandom, making such outrageous claims about mass public orgies and aggressive furry rapists that most furs wonder if the article writers didn't simply rent out a few tapes of "Faces of Death" instead of actually, y'know, doing the research. Sadly, this is justified in that most of the articles actually do have parts of it either dolled-up or entirely fabricated just to sell the stories. However, there are a few subversions: the "infamous" CSI episode did have a member of the fandom as a consultant (and would've reportedly been much, much worse for the furry public image otherwise), and this Hartford Advocate article had its writer sneak into a real furry convention, see nothing that she expected to see, and reported honestly on what she did see (hint: it wasn't rampant sex).
    • The vocal minority of Furries who are all for yiffing certainly doesn't help matters for the mainstream fans who aren't like that.
    • The CSI fandom calmly responded to this kerfluffle by pointing out that CSI treats everybody like that.
      • On the other other hand, it wasn't just the sexuality part of the fandom that CSI got wrong, but also depictions of "fursuits", animal costumes worn by a small minority of furs. Failed in scope of the phenomenon, depiction of the suits (latex-lined fursuits which would in real life, suffocate you), and Fridge Logic in the episode itself (if a fursuit was built for sex, how does the suit prevent the victim's blood from spilling out?)
  • There's actually a handbook for people who want to do this, its called How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. It's surprisingly informative.
    • I haven't read it, but it seemed more like a dadaist parody of a self-help book than anything I might take advice from.
    • I haven't read it, either. Wouldn't that spoil the whole concept?
    • I've read some of it. So far, it's about how there's shades of reading. Like, I've never watched an episode of Beavis And Butthead, but thanks to this wiki, I know more about it than some guy who caught one episode on MTV back in the 90s and forgot about it.
  • The Something Awful column "Truth Media" is a parody of this, deliberately making error filled reviews hoping to attract flame wars and posting everything on the site.
  • In the early days of the Internet, many mainstream journalists wrote screeds against websites like Bonsai Kitten and Penguin Warehouse, believing them to be real. Here's a great example.
  • This Russian rather-lurker-than-troper remembers an interesting bit of trivia she found in a local newspaper 5 or 6 years ago. Apparently, cosplay is a Japanese fashion style defined by padded shoulders and tight sleeves...
  • This troper remembers seeing a number of news stories on Vladimir Putin's first web chat with the general public. Keep in mind that "the general public" includes "the Internet." Seeing the mainstream media have to find ways to describe questions about Humongous Mecha and Cthulhu was quite something.
  • If people who Did Not Do The Research are writing about Dungeons And Dragons, 99 times out of 100 a reference will be made to a "dungeon master" as though it were something that existed in the game world instead of a fancy name for a referee.
    • And then there's Jack Chick, and his infamous "Dark Dungeons," which among other things shows Dn D to be played pretty much entirely by teenage girls (certainly, while Dn D playing girls are out there, the average group is still predominantly male), makes it seem as if when a character dies, the player is kicked out of the game, and that you can learn real magic by playing.
  • Three words: Internet. Hate. Machines.
  • The general rule seems to be that if you know something about a subject, the media gets it horribly wrong. As soon as this editor started studying linguistics, he started realizing that the people who write and talk about language, especially in the media, don't have any idea what they're talking about. At best, they remember elementary grammar from school, leading to bizarre diatribes about imaginary grammatical categories or gross misunderstandings of how language works. This editor is terrified to think that the experience could be repeated indefinitely, replacing linguistics with any given subject.
    • Two words: Science reporting. Seriously, reading anything even remotely science related in the media usually comes with unsupported claims, if not outright wrong about the research being done.
  • Whenever the mainstream media report on MMA there is a very high possibility of them getting the details completely wrong.
    • For example, the sport is often referred to as "ultimate fighting," based on the original Ultimate Fighting Championship. This is despite the fact that the UFC was supposed to be the ultimate championship of fighting, not the championship of ultimate fighting.
    • It's also very common to refer to MMA as "human cockfighting." When that term was originally coined, it was in reference to MMA's illegitimacy not its supposed brutality. Since MMA is now a legitimate, sanctioned sport in many areas, the term no longer applies. It's also commonly referred to as "cage fighting" despite many major organisations using a boxing-style ring.
    • Many reports are apparently ignorant of MMA's ruleset, often claiming that MMA matches are no-holds-barred and generally emphasising the violence rather than the numerous restrictions and safety measures.
  • A picture relating to the "Pool's Closed" internet meme is posted outside a swimming pool. An elderly black woman beleives it to be a racist threat. Hilarity Ensues. What makes this one even more of a Wall Banger is that the black man in the picture was the avatar used by the Habbo Hotel raiders that the meme was referring to.
  • This editor remembers an NPR broadcast a few years back about the history of many Christmas traditions. Riding around in the truck with my father, a Methodist minister, we were both shocked and amazed to hear their description of the Yule log having originated with child sacrifice, and that 'Yule Log' developed from a Norse phrase meaning 'Child Log.' Hearing my father mouthing "Nooooo! No, no, no, no, no! Ooh, they got it so wrong!" is now something I can't help but remember every time someone posits any offensive, ungrounded 'fact' about Christian custom or belief.
    • Come to think of it, The Bible is probably by leagues the single most common victim of this trope.
  • This troper just heard an Olympic Games commentator refer to London mayor Boris Johnson as dead Russian ex-President Boris Yeltsin a couple of times, without correction. He fixed it pretty quickly the next time he talked about him...

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