Cowboy Bebop At His Computer - Television Tropes & Idioms

The picture above shows the archetypal example, whence the trope gets its name. For the unfamiliar: The character is female. She is named Ed. And she is a supporting character at best. Cowboy Bebop is the show's name, where "cowboy" is a slang term for bounty hunter, and Bebop is the name of the main characters' ship. Also, for some reason, they capitalized the second "B" in Bebop. At least she's at a computer.
- The especially nerdy, A.K.A. me, will also note that Ed's not wearing her usual net-surfing goggles, and the OS she uses on her computer is some weird fish simulation with smileys scattered about.
This troper remembers the internet being swamped in the early 2000s with ads for porn featuring "Dragon Ball fucking Sailor Moon".
- Still a lot of it, Or So I Heard.
- This troper has seen a few Ioffer auctions selling bootlegs with this as their tagline.
This editor has particularly 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.
- The most hilarious research failure was how the Moral Guardians commented how the neighbouring country of Sweden is free of such vile products...when their most sold comic that year was none other than Dragon Ball.
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.
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. Many of the news organizations didn't even seem to realize there was an anime, reporting the Notes as hit lists, portraying the children as either disturbed and possibly planning soon-to-be-real murders, or as kids who took a joke too far by keeping Death Journals. (To be fair, if those kids were writing down the names of people they dislike as if they were putting it in a Death Note, it's still a little creepy.)
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. It's also been called "Nurutu Sand Ninjas". This story in particular has several major mistakes.
1. Mispronouncing "Nerutu", despite featuring clips with the correct pronunciation "Nah-Ru-Toe"
  - The reporter's name is Akiko Fujita. You'd think a Japanese reporter would be able to pronounce it correctly, wouldn't you?
2. Despite avoiding calling it "Sand Ninjas", the reporter says that it is ABOUT Sand Ninjas.
3. Suggesting Gaara buries himself in sand, when showing him doing his Armor of Sand Jutsu. The only legitimate "sand burial" techniques are used against enemies.
4. Relying on You Tube clips to inform themselves about the show.
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!".
An infamous article by The Edmonton Journal from Canada◊ features gems such as "Hentae" and that all hentai is essentially lolicon-BDSM-rape.
- This troper would like to point out that the above example used to credit that screw-up to The Sun... when the clipping is from The Edmonton Journal. Guess we're not immune to this trope, either.
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.
- To be fair, a few of Zoro's enemies call him "Roronoa".
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.
TV program guides seem to suffer from this a lot. While describing Rurouni Kenshin (which was being aired on Animax), they said Kaoru was a guy, indirectly calling Kenshin gay, and mixing her up with the other Kaoru that was airing in the same channel.
- To be fair, Kaoru is a gender-neutral name, sort of like Alex in English.
- The Neon Genesis Evangelion character is Kaworu, but there are other male Kaorus out there, like in Ai Yori Aoshi.
  - "Kaworu" and "Kaoru" are actually the same name; the "wo" syllable in Japanese has turned into "o" over the centuries, and it is transliterated both the way it's written in Japanese (wo) and the way it's pronounced (o).
An interesting example here. If the link is broken (or you don't speak Swedish at all), it talks about the American television series Yu-Gi-Oh GX, in which Yugi's grandfather is kidnapped by Pegausus...
There has been an advertisement appearing on this very site, saying, "What female Naruto are you?◊" On top of that, it and the "What 'Avatar' Character Are You" ad were clearly drawn by someone who watched one episode of the show. After suffering severe head trauma. (Thankfully, they've been using images from the shows lately.)
A September 11th, 2008 MSNBC report on "sexy anime going mainstream". It said "Lolicom" is a combination of "Lolita" and "comic". And that "Otaku" is a word meaning "Techno-geek". And then there was this quote:
"But sexually-suggestive and explicit anime like "Gurren Lagann" and ''Legend Of The Overfiend..."
- This troper wonders if he just saw the fifth Parallel Works music video.
The summaries on the back of the English release of Gall Force. You would think they would have had to at least have watched the show to dub it, but apparently not.
This troper once read a review of the Digimon movie released in theatres. The reviewer apparently never actually saw the movie, as she claimed that "the original Digidestined children are abducted by Diaboromon, and a new group of kids must save them". The same malicious lie was perpetrated by the back of the VHS. Diaboromon never abducted anyone. He just stalked a twelve-year old boy and then tried to blow up the world. Then, when the new kids get involved, it isn't even to deal with Diaboromon. It's to deal with Antylamon/Cherubimon.
- Not to mention the fact that Antylamon/Cherubimon only abducted anyone in the Japanese version, that particular plot was completely cut out of the American version. Which may make this a case of someone doing too much research?
Read the Netflix summary for either Yu Yu Hakusho movie. If you don't have Netflix, it's pretty much what you'd expect.
- Netflix is pretty bad about this in general, especially when it comes to animated films and programs. Guess what show, popular amoung tropers, this description came from:
"The Teen Titans are a motley crew of five teenagers, each one gifted with a superpower to put to good use. Robin the Boy Wonder is the default leader of the troupe, which roams the planet to protect it from those who aim to harm it and its citizens. But on their days off, they still have to deal with the typical problems that plague teenagers, such as making good grades and forming friendships at school!"
- Really funny, since there was never a single episode that showed the characters outside of their secret identities or at school. The last episode does show Terra restarting her life by going to school and making friends, but she's not on the team anymore...
- Not to mention that they all have superpowers but Robin who is just a well trained human.
Even magazines dedicated to anime itself wind up making these mistakes:
- Protoculture Addicts is particularly guilty of this. When reporting on Gundam Wing, PA decided to completely ignore most "r" and "l" translation conventions and generally go with "it's always l," giving us characters like "Hello Yuy" and "Lelena Peacelaft."
- The early issues of Anime Insider. Particularly horrible errors include listing the character of Lacus Clyne from Gundam Seed as "Fllay Allster" (another character from the same show, who doesn't even share the same hair color). Their entire article on G-Gundam reached levels of CBAHC that must be seen to be believed. Things such as listing Schwartz Bruder as Domon's Master and the previous King of Hearts (Master Asia is both) and giving the Master Gundam the profile of the Dark/Devil Gundam.
  - One of the first AI issues captioned a picture of Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke by identifying him as "Mononoke".
  - Anime Insider's sister magazine Wizard once ran a review of The Slayers saying Lina Inverse travelled with the sorceress Naga *and* 'a girl named Gourry'.
An article on the Oregon Daily Emerald criticizing anime for destroying American society says that Pokémon, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh (which at first is spelled "Yugio", but after that, "sorry, Yu-Gi-Oh!") all began life as trading card games. In reality, while they all have had card games, none of them started out as that. Pokémon began life as a Nintendo game created by Game Freak (and the card game came to the U.S. just a few months after the video game was released there), Digimon was originally a virtual pet (hence "Digimon", or Digital Monsters), and Yu-Gi-Oh! started out as a manga written by Kazuki Takahashi.
- Well, what do you know they should've replaced all three of those things with a certain Danish card game.
While reviewing a Ranma 1/2 fighting game for the PC Engine, GamePro Magazine must have thought Ranma to be some sort of transforming superhero, having summarized the title character's background thus:
"[Ranma] fell into a well where a great female warrior had drowned. Now, when he gets wet, he gets wild! Bad guys learn not to spit when Ranma's around."
In Mexico, in the year 2000 an "investigative program" called "El Ojo del Huracán" (transmitted over TV Azteca) released once a documentary about Satanism, where it blamed the perversion of youth to Pokémon, and presented a lot of facts which made NO DAMN SENSE WHATSOEVER, like for example, Pikachu spelled backwards meant "More powerful than God" in Hebrew, Gyarados meant "Great Orgy", and Alakazam was a representation of Satan because its head formed five points; and also, mentioning the wrong names to several Pokémon. The sad part, a lot of people actually believed it and it began a nation-wide witch hunt against everything that was about Pokémon.
- Made much worse because the whole "investigative report" was made only to destroy the success that Pokémon was enjoying on a rivaling channel, and taking in account TV Azteca just had bought the rights for several Disney cartoons...
A caption on this names the green-haired girl from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni on the picture Rena (who is actually a different girl with orange hair). The girl in the picture is Mion.
This troper once read an article in a local youth oriented magazine about: Code Geese: Rerouch of the Reberrion. An anime where a high school student decides to become the king of England after receiving the power to control others by writing their name in a notebook. Setting out with his sister Kallen and best friend, the blind and crippled Nunary, Rerouch is opposed at every turn by his half-brother Clovis Suzaku. Filled with fun loving robot action, laugh along as Rerouch's schemes fail to bear any fruit in this wacky comedy by celebrated author Clamp. Apparently the journalist fancied himself as some internet savvy, voice of teen Geekdom!
The blurb before each episode of the Swedish dub of Sailor Moon went "Now it's time for the adventures of the girl Sailor Moon and her magical cat Luna!" While technically right, it still comes off like Luna is the most special thing about the show.
Naruto Forever: The Unofficial Guide repeatedly refers to Hinata Hyuga as "Hina" (possibly the result of her abbreviation in pairings like PortmanteauCoupleNames like "NaruHina"), only getting it correct in the character index, and even refer to "Hina" as him.
Recently, I've been seeing some ads on this site for a Bleach quiz that says "Can you roll with Rukia and the Soul Reapers?" Sure they got a name right, but shouldn't she be in the front of the ad instead of Ichigo? (Not to mention she's hardly visible in the given her height.) And while we're at it, why are Uryu, Chad, and Orihime there, if they're not Shinigami? They should have at least thrown in Renji, Kenpachi, etc. Even more bothersome, they're shown in their school outfits (except Ichigo).

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A British newspaper once featured a picture of Captain America, captioned as Captain Planet, apparently failing to spot the colossal A on his helmet and American flag shield.
An Australian newspaper condemned the depiction of women in comic books. They cited one of the earliest examples of poor treatment being Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen Stacy. So far, correct. Then they wrote about her terrible demise by being killed and stuffed in Spider-Man's fridge.
- And somewhere, Kyle Rayner, Alexandra DeWitt, Peter Parker, Mary-Jane Parker, and Gwen Stacy all threw up their hands and said "Wait, what?" So not only did they manage to confuse the fate of a woman that was dating a different character entirely, they managed to somehow confuse the company's universe they're working in? Wow, man.
The media brouhaha surrounding the fact that in-real-life beleaguered Prime Minster Gordon Brown appeared in the Marvel Comic Captain Britain and MI:13 had several paper's calling him SuperGordon and/or saying he "leads a counterattack" on the invading Skrulls, making him sound like Prime Minster Action. In the comic itself, he shows competence and resolve, but doesn't do much; he does give commands, but seems to be a little bit out of the loop when it comes to the world of magic and superheroics.
- Special Fail in the Daily Mail article linked to above- they refer to "an unseen character called Alistaire" yet the pictures they include alongside the article clearly depict the character in question!
Many American newspapers condemned the introduction of a figurine of Mary Jane Watson-Parker, Spider-Man's wife, doing laundry while bending over and wearing suggestive clothing. Some newspapers, not having seen photographs of the figurine, claimed that Mary Jane was naked and that the figurine was subverting family values. Even better, the creator later claimed that the figurine was supposed to show Mary Jane finding Peter's Spider-Man costume in the laundry, although it doesn't seem very likely that Peter Parker uses a tiny bucket as a laundry basket. (This troper thought it more amusing that the figurine, which was neither large nor particularly well-fashioned, was selling for $129.99, or about fifteen times the price of a comparable non-licensed product. There's a fanboy born every minute.)

Close Comic Books

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." The same review also repeatedly referred to "Dr. Jane Gray" (better known as Jean Grey, to the rest of us).
- 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.
  - Mad Magazine makes the same mistake in its spoof of X-2. There are times when it deliberately ignores or changes what happens in a movie for the sake of humor (the endings are usually substantially different from the film — and often completely different), but this seemed like an oversight on their part.
- This troper remembers a negative review of the first movie in People Magazine, which, among other things, said, "Since when do superheroes have such traumatic backstories?" Oh, since about 1939?
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 Entourage, 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.
- Robert Pattinson appeared properly in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but wasn't in the next film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, unless you count a two-second Flashback. Of course, reporters covering Twilight say he was in two Potter films (after all, that's how it shows up on IMDb) or even mention Phoenix exclusively, since it was more recent.
- When reviewing Phoenix on At The Movie, Richard Roeper bizarrely (and hilariously) pronounced "Voldemort" as "Voltemort".
The local Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St.Paul, MN) paper's movie review of the 2007 Transformers movie repeatedly referred to the Autobots' human buddy as "Spike". Spike was the equivalent human in the original comic and cartoon.
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).
- Was the complaint about Arwen's role compared to the books or in general (in the latter case, it would be more justified to complain about a major character's lover getting so little exposure)?
- This troper read at least one review of the Lord Of The Rings movies which put forth the opinion that the reason the filmmakers put so much painstaking effort into Gollum's portrayal was simply because CGI is a new toy and they wanted to show it off as much as possible.
- A writer for the London Sunday Times researched LoTR in preparation for an interview with Cate Blanchett. He chose his sources... poorly.
- 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, given that one of the first things that happens in the story is Frodo getting the ring from Bilbo.
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.
- He also mixed up the characters of Brodie and Banky in his review of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. However, as they are both played by Jason Lee, have similar names, appeared as snarky sidekicks in previous Kevin Smith films, and have a comparatively minor role in this one, it is probably understandable.
During the long, long summer of '77, one TV-news reporter referred to Chewbacca as "Choobie", and another referred to the Millennium Falcon as "Darth Vader's ship".
- This sort of thing still happens in journalism. People, especially 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."
- 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.
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, he 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.
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. This may be a case of Did Not Do ALL The Research, since the BA official in question is quoted as calling it "Megatron", though it may also have been Rule Of Funny — a gunbot is easier to incite fake terrorist panic over than a truckbot.
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!
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 insistence that, in The 13th Warrior, the Viking language was learned in "one magical night".
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 (very loosely) based on his writings.
The Quentin Tarantino release of Hard Core Logo describes the movie 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. Joey Ramone is in it for maybe five minutes at the beginning, and is quickly forgotten.
This article from the New York Times wrongfully calls the film Godzilla VS Biollante "Godzilla VS Bioranch". It's made even more annoying by the fact that the article even has a poster from the film that shows the actual title of the film.
- This is probably due to a mis-transliteration. The syllables that make up the monster's Japanese name are pronounced "Biorante".
David Edelstein, reviewing the Bewitched movie in Slate: "Using R.E.M.'s impassioned 'Everybody Hurts' — written by Michael Stipe after the suicide of Kurt Cobain — to underscore shots of Kidman and Ferrell feeling blue about their inability to pair off is an aesthetic crime." Take Th... uh, wait a minute, that song was recorded in 1992, while Cobain died in 1994. To his credit, Edelstein quickly issued a (very snotty) retraction. "I don't like having to change something after it's published." Dude, then don't make a mistake on an easily checkable fact.
- Not to mention that that's not even the right song. The song about Kurt Cobain was "Let Me In", a less well-known song off the album Monster. When Cobain died, Stipe had already been mourning friend River Phoenix. He had been reluctant to write about grief and retread the ground of previous album Automatic for the People. Cobain's death convinced him to get his feelings out. The song is unmistakable because it's such a departure from the rest of the album. Also unmistakable is Everybody Hurts, a comfort anthem with suicidal teenagers in mind. It's intentionally simple, as personal crises may not be the best time for complicated literary interpretation. This stands in stark contrast to the rest of R.E.M.'s entire body of work. Confusing these two songs is no small error from a fan's point of view.
One particularly scathing movie review for Silent Hill derided the film for being based on a video game series, but praised the movie's composer for at least writing a unique cinematic score instead of relying on the video game's "beeps and whistles". The music in the movie, of course, was taken directly from the games.
- This troper remembers seeing another negative review where the writer noted that the monsters look like they're from some video game...
  - Coming at this from another angle, a newspaper blurb on the game Silent Hill: Homecoming described it as being based on the movie.
  - Didn't Yahtzee trash it for being too close to The Movie instead of the earlier games?
- "I do have one question, however, who plays a video game like this? And what the heck is the object of the game."
Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony◊ Spark. This troper would pay good money to see a Tony cameo in Girl Genius.
A History's Mysteries episode on zombies has somebody say that the North American image of zombies was something like "Freddy from Friday the 13th..." Freddy's in A Nightmare On Elm Street. Jason Voorhees is in Friday the 13th. At least they could both be considered zombies, depending on who you ask.
A Mexican movie magazine did a report about San Diego Comic-Con, which, apart from treating the comic geeks attending it with various levels of contempt got a picture of two girls cosplaying with this caption "80's fever: Mario Bros princess, is still in fashion", the movie the girls in the picture were actually cosplaying... Enchanted. Which at the time had not even been out of theatres a year. Have I already mentioned this is a magazine about movies?
This troper has met people he otherwise thought were card-carrying geeks refer to the Immortals from Highlander as "highlanders". In case it needed explanation, "highlander" refers to the ethnic origin of the series protagonists (Connor MacLeod in the films; his clansman Duncan in the TV series). To this troper's recollection, almost all other Immortals seen in both media were not Scottish.
This Mexican troper remembers an article on a magazine about Quantum Of Solace. Said article stated that James Bond allied with the exiled General Medrano from Chile to destroy the Quantum Organization. Explaining what is wrong with this statement would be superfluous.
Australian newspaper The Age had a still from the movie Watchmen and credited it as being from the upcoming movie The Spirit.
Box summaries of movies are great for this (see also the Anime examples above). Allow this troper to quote to you from the back of the DVD of A Christmas Story: "(Ralphie) also endures all kinds of childhood calamaties from snowsuit paralysis to the yellow-eyed Scotty Farkus affair to the dreaded tongue-on-a-frozen-flagpole gambit." Ralphie's brother had the snowsuit paralysis (which was never called as such,) his friend Flick did the flagpole (which was not a gambit,) and the yellow-eyed bully was actually named Scut Farkus.
There's been an assumption on the part of some of the reviewing public that Coraline is a Tim Burton film, due to both the animation style and the fact that the trailers hype it as being by "the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas". The director, for both films, is in fact Henry Selick, and Burton has nothing to do with Coraline. Neil Gaiman, author of the original book, has expressed his annoyance with this, and it's been mocked in webcomics.
- Of course, the ads are probably doing this on purpose.
- Another blame for this is the In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It for Nightmare. (In other words, its full title is Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Mind you, Burton was only responsible for the concept of that movie as he was busy directing Batman Returns at the same time.)
Marcus Berkmann in the Daily Telegraph reviewed Batman And Robin without, apparently, bothering to see the movie, as he confidently informed readers that Mr. Freeze was motivated to avenge the death of his wife, whereas in the movie the fact that his wife is very much alive (albeit, y'know, frozen) at the beginning and end of the film is an important plot point.
Sam Wollaston, TV critic for The Guardian, reviewed a TV documentary titled The Human Spider, about a guy who climbed a big building dressed as, obviously, Spider-Man. His review, however, referred to the guy as being dressed as Batman. Because those costumes look so much alike...
During the very long summer of 2003, this editor could not find a single positive review of The Matrix Reloaded — and nearly all of the negative reviews were written by people who either didn't bother to watch the first film again, or hadn't seen the first film at all. Some of them didn't even seem to realize it was the second entry in a trilogy!
- In fact, The Metro even went so far as to call the main character Nero and claim the film was about his adventures in Another Dimension.
  - Another reviewer somehow confused the three main female characters in "Reloaded", stating that "Hero Neo must also enlist the aid of a virtual beauty named after Hades' wife, played by Carrie-Anne Moss, who captains a ship of her own." (Now we know that it's possible to be too high while watching this trilogy.)
An Indiana Daily Student review of Last Man Standing noted it was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo but said, "It may seem strange to remake a Kurosawa film as a Western." Not that strange. Oh, and speaking of ''Yojimbo''? So... Yeah.
A review of Dragonball: Evolution opened with the following informed lines.
Another Japanese manga bites the dust with its cinematic adaptation: in this case, the "Dragonball Evolution" series.
A "parent's review" (we're already in Wall Banger territory, but bear with it for now) of the Watchmen movie adaptation, instead of reviewing the actual film, listed every single instance of violence or sexual content without mentioning anything else, then concluded that the ultimate message of the story was that "humankind is inherently savage". What? Even more hilarious, another blurb stated the movie's premise as: "After the death of one of his colleagues, the masked vigilante Rorschach sets out on a mission to kill all superheros."
Kroger, an American grocery store, was once running a promotion for kids with the prize being a meeting with Corbin Bleau of High School Musical. The promotion referred to Corbin as a female.
A review of Fanboys by Robert Wilonsky shows that he neglected to watch the full film. At this point in time to save from possible spoilers here is the link to the review for those of you who have seen the movie [1]

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The book Futurespeak: A Fan's Guide to the Language of SF 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.
  - Pssst — alleged Krishna worshipers. The Kali devotees were allegedly off killing people. This trope's alive and well, even here.
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.
- The Writer's Almanac daily email celebrated J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday in 2006 with a lengthy and loving tribute ... in which they said that The Lord Of The Rings was "the story of Bilbo Baggins, a lowly hobbit who sets out on a quest to destroy a magic ring." As one commenter on Miss Snark put it, "For Bilbo, it was a short quest." (In fact, Tolkien at one point considered making Bilbo the protagonist of The Lord Of The Rings, but it would have contradicted too strongly the ending of The Hobbit, which said that Bilbo lived Happily Ever After.)
- The Tolkien Sarcasm Page is a deliberately erroneous, tongue-in-cheek summary of Lord Of The Rings. Apparently, a major newspaper took it seriously.
Terry Pratchett 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.
- Out of curiosity, was the presenter in any way concerned about the fact that the world was going to end in less than a week and that the Anti-Christ was missing?
  - "It's less than one week to the Apocalypse. Do you know where your anti-Christ is?"
The Metro, when doing a piece on a village populated mostly by fans of Terry Pratchett who had gotten their road renamed to Peach Pie Street and Treacle Mine Road, offered a "comprehensive guide to the diskworld". Yes, with a "k". It then went on to compare Ankh-Morpork to London, listing the disc's newspaper as "The Truth Newspaper". Because that was the title of the book in which the Ankh-Morpork Times was introduced, and somebody couldn't even be bothered to read the freaking blurb.
To continue with Terry Pratchett, several news people have reported on the similarity between the Discworld series and the Harry Potter series based on the presence of a wizarding school (Unseen University, which is clearly a college parody and not a magical boarding school like Hogwarts) and the presence of the Christmas-like holiday Hogswatch, which sounds a bit like Hogwarts. Pratchett's responses to these claims have been polite, well-thought out versions of "What? No."
- This response is about the same for claims that he is jealous of Rowling's fame and gobs of money. This is a bit like trying to put down Richard Feynman by saying he wasn't as brilliant as Einstein.
- He's also been accused of ripping off Harry Potter because Ponder Stibbons looks like him in illustrations (he was first illustrated in the Discworld Portfolio, which was released in 1996). This brought this troper's favorite response from Terry:
  "Ponder Stibbons was indeed first drawn in 1996. I, of course, used a time machine to 'get the idea' of Unseen University from Hogwarts; I don't know what Paul used in this case. Obviously he must have used something."
  - There is also the fact that The Colour of Magic was written about a decade before the first Harry Potter book was released.
  - Also, Hogwarts: 1997. Hogfather: 1996.
Similarly, Diane Duane's Young Wizards series has been accused of ripping off Harry Potter by people who don't realize that Diane was writing them twenty years before JK Rowling first put pen to paper.
Speaking of Harry Potter: 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 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.
  - Someone sent 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."
  - Which, to be fair, isn't far off the mark. Because to even reach SIMILAR goals to Harry Potter, you'd have to take something to make you think you're full of magic.
Speaking of alarmists, take a shot any time you read something (even on this very website) to the equivalent of, "The Golden Compass is an evil book where two kids kill God!" Um... no. What happens is a bit more complicated than we could adequately get into here, but suffice to say it does not involve two under-ten-year-olds walking up to the Judeo-Christian God and knifing Him in the back or anything. And anyway, the scenes that inspired the controversy happen in the third book.
- Why would you believe them anyway? They think the book is called The Golden Compass.
  - Because The Golden Compass is the title of the North American release?
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.
Dave Barry points this out brilliantly in his book Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) with the page quote and this one as well:
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 obviously done some research — making the errors all the odder.
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 would pay good money for a video game based on the Tale of Genji. What would it consist of, a series of linked minigames? Perform the best mock-duel with To no Chujo and get points for how badly it freaks out Naishi? Jostle with Lady Aoi for a good carriage-spot at the procession? Peep through the fence at little Murasaki without being discovered? A boss battle with Rokujo's ghost?
  - This troper would think that a game based on Genji Monogatari would most likely have to be some sort of convoluted dating sim.
  - There actually is a Japanese-only DS game based on the Tale of Genji. Not much is known about it, besides that it's supposed to be unspeakably awful.
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.
- This Troper recalls a discussion from a local BBS when the Coppola movie came out. One person, insisting that he was a Stoker fan who'd read the book more than once, demanded to know where Coppola got up putting that Texan in. "I don't remember any Texan! Where did he dig that guy up?" Your Obedient Serpent paged through his handy copy of Stoker's novel, and replied, "Gosh, you're right; he's not mentioned until the third page, and after the second-to-the-last paragraph, we never see him again."
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. How they miss the hero's obvious horror during The Reveal is beyond us.
Parodied in the Teenage Worrier series when Letty gives advice to the reader on books: "If discussing a book you haven't read, don't pretend you have. I droned on about the Rainbow Lorikeet when Hazel's dad mentioned The History of Mister Polly."
One reviewer, apparently too busy/lazy to read Magician by Raymond E. Feist summarised the book as something like "a typical fantasy novel where a boy saves the kingdom from an army of trolls". Mr Feist himself suspects he just looked at the cover of the book for his review since there are a total of 2 trolls in the book, and they don't even survive for an entire chapter.
- The blurbs for the Riftwar series (at least in some editions) are so badly done that this is almost understandable. The worst is for A Darkness at Sethanon, which mentions "the evil necromancer Macros the Black unleashing his undead hordes". Macros the Black is a good guy, is not a necromancer, only a few of the enemy are undead, etc...

Close Literature

To those who are not Toku fans but know Power Rangers, they will immediately point out that any non Super Sentai tokusatsu hero is a "Power Ranger".
- During the murder trial of Skylar Deleon, much was made in the news of him having been a "star" of Power Rangers, thus leading many to believe he actually played one of the Rangers. He was an extra. In one episode.
- Taken to ridiculous levels with Engine-Oh G12. A couple sites saw this clip, and this clip alone, and thought it was a Transformers-ripoff series named "Engine-Oh G12". It took a lot of fan correction to get them to finally change their coverage. Not to mention the amount of comments talking about a Power Rangers ripoff—one commenter says it wouldn't ever fly in America. [cough]
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)...
- Our TV guide had the habit of describing every episode of the original Star Trek as "The Enterprise is in danger while Kirk, Spock and McCoy are on an away mission." Granted, this isn't actually all that inaccurate for most of the episodes.
- A local news anchor giving a review of one of the Next Generation movies described the crew with the phrase "...and the alien Data", even giving the alternate, but inaccurate pronunciation of "Data".
  Dr. Pulaski: Thank you, Data (pronounced "Dah-Tuh")
  Data: Data. (pronounced "Day-Tuh")
  Dr. Pulaski: What's the difference?
  Data: One is my name. The other is not.
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.
- Wonderfully deconstructed in one episode that talks about a man's comments on the Large Hadron Collider and says that the scientists are "boldly going where no one has gone before", which is apparently a quote from Star Wars. Stephen Colbert protests that it's fairly obvious that it came from Star Trek, and that the quote is "where no man has gone". He then says that we need more nerds as scientists.
  - Err, the "where no man has gone before" is from the original show, while TNG uses "where no one has gone before". But hey, maybe Colbert denied the existence of TNG, like some do with Enterprise.
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. Both of these were actually friendly party guests.
- Thankfully the frequent appearance of Kaled mutants in new series seems to have stopped people calling the Daleks robots.
- Thanks to the movie adaptations starring Peter Cushing, there are still people out there who insist on referring to the Doctor as "Doctor Who".
  - I believe the original episodes had this in the credits, but it was changed, I believe, around the Tom Baker era.. Unfortunately the "modern" series credits him as "Doctor Who" too, and has reintroduced other things that were purposely abandoned before...
  - At David Tennant (#10)'s request, he's back to being credited as "The Doctor."
- Tabloid newspapers such as The Sun have regularly credited Russel T. Davies as the 'creator' of Doctor Who, which would be an incredible feat when one realises that the series premiered seven months after Davies was born.
- This Troper once saw a documentary about science fiction and when the subject of Doctor Who came up, it credited the creation of the series to Terry Nation. Nation created the Daleks, not the series.
  - This Troper has seen the BBC make that mistake. In Nation's obituary, no less.
- Picking up the false description of the Face of Boe as a villain, here is an actual article, for the 2007 series, describing the "evil Boe" as the Doctor's "arch-enemy." Not only was the character never a villain, but by this appearance, the character is a friend of the Doctor's and they've met amicably several times.
At the 64th Golden Globe Awards, Tim Allen announced that Alec Baldwin had won the "Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy" for his role in 3rd Rock. Pretty incredible, considering Baldwin never appeared on that show and it had been canceled for years. Either that, or Allen meant to say 30 Rock.
This troper owns a biography of Robin Williams by Andy Dougan. In the chapter about Mork's first appearance on Happy Days, Dougan describes the episode... or so he thinks. What he actually describes is the fake flashback created for the first Mork And Mindy episode to tie it to its parent series. Mind you, this was long before the actual episode could be seen by anyone by simply searching You Tube... but you'd think a biographer would do the research.
Hilariously subverted in an episode of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart talks about how reporters claim that Hillary Clinton has bones of steel. Jon then remarks that this is like comic book character, Wolverine. Suddenly, a nerd comes out of the studio and informs Jon that Wolverine's bones are made of adamantium, not steel.
- Hey, Wolverine's bones are just COATED in adamantium, not made of it! Obviously, or else Magneto's "strip out the metal" incident would've left him a shapeless blob! Do the research, Daily Show!
- Something similar happened on the MTV Movie Awards a few years back. Hugh Jackman and Famke Janssen were about to announce an award when a 'nerd' in the audience stands up to yell at them about turning the adult male character Banshee into a little girl in X2:X-Men United. Jackman and Janssen quickly reply that the character is obviously his daughter, Siryn, putting the nerd in his place.
  - Somewhat similar to Natalie Portman's SNL monologue.
- Jon Stewart got this done to him as well — Tucker Carlson was complaining about the host of the Daily Show, whom he referred to as "Jon Daily."
Fun Holiday Drinking Game: Take a shot for every time you get a sense of this during the running commentary for any televised parade. To wit:
"'Wally' is a Disney computer robot movie (wtf?!) sent to clean the Earth!"

Close Live Action TV

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).
- That depends on what you mean by British.
Beware the sinister cult of Emo! It refers to self-harm as an "initiation ritual" into the cult of Emo, and says 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 review complaining about "too much Canadian content" in a political show.
- Here's proof that even we're not immune. "Forgive Us, We're Canadian" was not by The Arrogant Worms. It is, in fact, by Local Anxiety — a small duo whose only song of note often gets credited to the much more well-known Worms. In fact, several lesser Canadian comedy bands suffer from this — so much so that The Arrogant Worms have a list of songs that "we do not sing, or have ever sung".
  - This same effect can be seen elsewhere, as many smaller parody artists have their work credited to the famous Weird Al Yankovic — even female artists.
When Snoop Doggy Dog was on trial for murder, this troper recalls a local newscast in which he was referred to as "Snoopy Doggy Dogg". Granted, the stage name was originally inspired by the Peanuts character, but...
- This (different) editor recalls a similar newscast which insisted he was "Snoopy Dogg Dogg".
- THIS editor recalls a broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade where Snoopy was identified as "Snoop Doggy Dogg". Figure that one out.
As if its actual musical credentials weren't already questionable, Rolling Stone created a bunch of confusion by claiming that Outkast's "Hey Ya" was in 11/4, an almost unheard-of time signature for a mainstream pop song. The more plausible interpretation (endorsed by The Other Wiki and other web sources) is that it's in 4/4 with occasional bars in 2/4.
This troper just read an article describing former Family Matters actress Telma Hopkins as "one half of Dawn". Dawn was a trio. Does Hopkins count as one and a half band members?
- If you interpret "Dawn" to refer to the not-Tony Orlando members... So Yeah.
During the controversy over Hasbro's plans to sell a series of Pussycat Dolls dolls, the watchdog group who started the campaign against them claimed in a press release that "Don't Cha" "alludes to group sex." Several media outlets picked up on this and made it sound like the song itself was about group sex. This all came as a surprise to people who'd actually heard the song. As near as anyone can figure, the supposed allusion is an extremely tortured interpretation of the line "I know she ain't gon' wanna share."
Kids In The Hall theme song creators "Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet" are often referred to as a "surf band". Hence, their song "We Are Not A Surf Band".
For high hilarity, check out the US media coverage of the rise of Beatlemania. When the first reports of The Beatles and their massive British success started trickling across the ocean, it was portrayed as some sort of quasi-religious cult centered around a bunch of untalented losers who sing "yeah yeah yeah" over and over. When they hit America, many people struggled to understand what made the music so different. It sounded like rock-and-roll, but everyone knew rock-and-roll was that 50s fad that ended when Elvis went into the Army.
The Ambassadors of Funk produced an album titled Super Mario Compact Disco, in which they sang rap-based tunes about the Mario games. Throughout the album, they mistakenly stated that Princess Daisy from Super Mario Land was Mario's love interest, and even worse, their song about Super Mario Land 2 claims that Wario has "got the Princess bound up as captive", despite the fact that Princess Peach wasn't even in that game.
People keep on writing Meat Loaf's name as one word, when it's actually two.
The artist that appears to suffer from this trope most consistently is Weird Al Yankovic. A huge amount of humourous music, especially music available for download on P 2 P services, is misattributed to him. This is something of a sore spot with the artist. He has gone on record saying that he doesn't mind people sharing his music; but strongly dislikes the misattribution, mainly due to the lyrical content. Although a frequent user of Double Entendre, he still makes an effort to keep his work family-friendly. Interestingly, the majority of the mislabled songs are the work of another, almost as well-known, parody musician, Bob Rivers and his Twisted Radio show. Rivers' work is decidedly less family-friendly than Weird Al's; and often includes profanity and sexual references.

Close Music

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 here's the quote:
  Nancy Grace: "Mr. [Bret] 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?"
  - This Troper remembers reading snippets of an interview with one of the heads of the CW Network shortly after the Benoit murders, in which she claimed that her network wouldn't be troubled by it because "Benoit was never featured on Smackdown". Apparently she never watched her own programming, as Benoit had been part of the Smackdown brand for two years before being drafted to the ECW brand, and for several years prior to a jump to Raw (when the CW Network was still UPN).
Former WWE play-by-play commentator Mike Adamle is a former commentator for this exact reason. His very first night on the job, he referred to Jeff Hardy as "Jeff Harvey", and, after he was assigned to WWE's ECW brand, made a habit out of referring to his partner, Tazz, as "The Tazz", among other gaffes that showed that he really didn't know a thing about WWE or wrestling in general. The latter, by the way, is still a running gag in WWE to this day, despite the fact that Adamle has been wished well in his future endeavors.
Muhammad Hassan was a controversial wrestler whose gimmick was that, despite being a born-and-raised American, being of Middle Eastern descent saw him face racism of all kinds on a nearly daily basis following the September 11th attacks. In 2005, as part of one of Muhammad Hassan's last appearances on WWE programming, he called forth a group of men dressed in ski masks to attack The Undertaker (a segment which had the misfortune of airing on the same day as an actual terrorist attack). In response to the backlash (besides the usual "It was only a 'terrorist attack' because I'm of Middle Eastern descent" defense), Hassan took things a step further and, in an in-ring promo, attacked a writer at the New York Times for an article in which was written "Undertaker attacked by Arabs in ski masks." Hassan said of the article: "They were in ski masks! How does he know they were Arab?" As Hassan effectively made that writer and the New York Times as a whole sound like a bunch of racist bastards, fans seemed to actually take his side...until he intimated that the article proved his point: ALL Americans hate Middle Easterners (which garnered Hassan a massive amount of heel heat). After that speech, UPN (the network that carried SmackDown! at the time) demanded that WWE take Hassan off TV. WWE did this, and following his final match (talked about below), he and his manager Daivari were sent down to developmental territories, where Hassan was eventually released. Many fans believed the Times influenced UPN's decision and really were (or still are) the racist bastards Hassan called them out to be.
- What makes things worse is that Hassan was massively over as a heel, and while his in-ring skill wasn't the greatest, he was improving over time; this actually led him to get a #1 Contender's Match for the World Heavyweight Championship against The Undertaker at The Great American Bash in 2005. Originally, he was scheduled to win that match and go up against Batista at SummerSlam, WWE's second biggest pay-per-view of the year. But when the pressure from UPN forced Hassan off of television, Hassan was booked to lose the match and never appeared on WWE programming ever again, which infuriated many fans who actually LIKED Hassan. (This Troper being one of those fans.)
- No one ever called MNM's abduction of Trish Stratus a terrorist angle, so it probably was because he was Arab.
Parodied frequently through Santino Marella, such as him calling Rowdy Roddy Piper "Rodney the Piper" and Jimmy Kimmel "Jimmeny." His biggest faux pas may be when he messes up all of Stone Cold Steve Austin's catchprases, like "open the can of the ass-whip," "stomping a mudpie" and "those are the bottom lines."

Close Professional Wrestling

Any publication that has Pokémon being called "Pokey-man". Such as the official Time Magazine archives. Similarly, anything that refers to "Pokémons". (Pokémon is both singular and plural, like sheep, deer, or samurai.)
- This troper recalls reading an article (and watching an interview) where a panicky watchdog-type 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 doesn't realize that a Gameshark is a third-party cheating device wholly separate from Nintendo? You decide.
- Years ago, when the Pokémon craze was in full swing, this troper's local newspaper did an article on it. In the accompanying graphics, Gengar was labeled "Charizard".
- Heck, this troper (who can't stand the Americanized version of the show) recalls that the show's dubbers themselves totally misnamed the Pokémon that appear in the 'Who's that Pokémon?' section of the first movie. Granted, it was Team Rocket naming the Pokémon...
  - According to the DVD commentary for the movie, they actually used that point to 'justify' their mistake, as well as it being "something for kids to spot".
- According to TV Guide and the Comcast information guides, the plot of Pokémon: The First Movie has Ash and friends battling Mewtwo and the scientist that created him — despite the fact that Mewtwo killed him within the first few minutes of the film.
- This troper remembers that, in the months leading up to the release of Red and Blue, he was reading an issue of Disney Adventures that gave an extremely vague description of a "fuzzy yellow creature named Pokémon."
  - Disney Adventures also made the mistake of labeling Tracey as Brock in a blurb for the second movie.
  - Even a magazine devoted to Pokémon ran an article on the second movie and somehow did not mention Tracey even once in the text.
- The Italian Mickey Mouse Magazine published a Pokémon article naming all the characters with French names.
- Additionally, early Pokémon toy commercials had a lot of errors. Pronouncing the franchise name as "Poh-kuh-mon", calling Vulpix "Ponyta" while adding emphasis on the "ta", talking about certain first-gen Pokémon as if they'd never been revealed before, etc.
- Countless publications in 1999 through 2000 seemed to think Marill was a new evolved form of Pikachu named "Pikablu".
  - This Troper recalls that as being more of an Urban Legend Of Zelda...
- During a Trainer's Choice quiz during the Hoenn season, they asked which Pokémon evolved into Seviper. The answer was Arbok. Arbok doesn't evolve at all, and breeding Seviper doesn't get an Ekans (which evolves into Arbok). Ironically, the dubbers who made the quiz had been working on the series for years, proving how little they actually know about the series.
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 game introduced a character named Chaos (who is also directly related to the chao), which can cause even more confusion.
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.
- You'll immediately know whether someone is a gamer or not if they refer to the green-hatted, sword-wielding protagonist as Zelda.
  - This troper once got that from his boss. Which wouldn't have been a big deal, except he was working for a certain high-profile RPG publisher at the time...
- Dear game journalists: Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask Link was the only Hero of Time. The other Links either have different titles or no in game title at all. And he's not an elf, dammit.
  - At least no one is calling Twilight Princess Link the Hero of Winds.
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 recognizable than Mickey Mouse. If he's so recognizable, how do they not know what company he's from?
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.
- In their defense, Quinton Flynn is just as abnormal and codename-sounding as Raiden.
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 remembers seeing gameplay footage on G4 which labeled the game as "Sonic Battle".
  - Which isn't helped by the fact that there actually is a game (for Game Boy Advance) called Sonic Battle.
- In Italy, it is common to see Sonic Heroes images in every Sonic-related article, even when talking about the 2006 Sonic game, Sonic Chronicles or Unleashed.
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 Final Fantasy IX 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.
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.
- 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.
  - Either he or another commentator, this troper can't remember, also said that the sex scenes and the bodies of the characters were fully customizable right down to breast size and sexual position. While the character sex (as in male or female) and body type can be customized, it's hardly to that extent.
- The best part of all this: Jack Thompson said there was nothing to it. Jack effin' Thompson.
The Brazilian evangelist Josue Yrion plays this profusely every time he says "nintendo" instead of "videogame", and even lampshades it by saying "Segas, Super Nintendos, Playstations, whatever!".
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 III Arena, but Doom 3 hadn't even been announced yet.
A particularly egregious example was in a Guardian article about the then-upcoming Wii and PS3 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.
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".
- A lot of Italian SBCG4AP reviews say that Homestar Runner is a Web Comic.
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.
- Recently, they printed a guide to unlocking the secret characters in Super Smash Bros Brawl. In it, they made several glaring errors, such as calling Sheik Samus, and printing what they apparently thought was a picture of Marth, except it was a picture of Geoffrey, a totally unrelated Fire Emblem character who not only does not exist in the same universe as Marth, but fights with a lance instead of a sword, and on horseback. Apparently, everybody with blue hair is the same person.
- Speaking of Brawl, the woman who sang the part of Ashley in the game's rendition of "Ashley's Theme" stated on her blog that she was chosen to do a song for the upcoming game, "Super Mario Bros. Smash".
- In a preview for the original Smash Bros., IGN referred to Captain Falcon as "Blue Falcon," mistaking the name of his F Zero vehicle for his name.
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.
Find the error in this press release for Nicktoons Nitro (somewhat related to the Nicktoons Unite series):
"Nicktoons Nitro is headlined by none-other-than SpongeBob SquarePants, the flagship cartoon character of the Nickelodeon Network of channels. Other playable Nicktoons Characters include Jimmy Neutron, Avatar, Danny Phantom, Invader Zim and Timmy Turner, plus a secret un-lockable character."
The largest gaming magazine of Finland, Pelit, translated the title of the main villain of World Of Warcraft's second expansion pack into "liskokuningas", the Lizard King. Someone tell them the game is about fighting evil, not psychedelic musicians.
- Also, the country's largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, had a little text about the release of Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3. Not only did they call it Command And Conquer 3, but the writer theorised that the game glorifies the war in Iraq. This is a game where USA, the USSR and Japan battle each other in a world war, for freak's sake.
This trope was used for comedic effect in This review of Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 for the Gamecube. For the record, this was written before Naruto made it to the US and the person was playing an import. So he decided to name the characters himself. Hilarity ensues.
A St. Louis judge reviewed footage from four videogames to determine whether they (and, by extension, all games) were protected under First Amendment rights. Among the games he evaluated: Mortal Combat and, hilariously, The Resident of Evil Creek.
A news report on video game violence in late 2000 pronounced the title Deus Ex as "Deuce Ecks" and said that it was controversial because it allows the player to become the killer. First of all, why choose Deus Ex of all games to epitomize video game violence? Secondly, the report acted like murdering civilians was the whole point and completely ignored the Wide Open Sandbox format of the game, including the moral choices the player can make with varying consequences.
The German report "Frontal 21" is quite famous for this. In "Videogemetzel im Kinderzimmer" (video slaughter in the nursery), "Gewalt ohne Grenzen" (violence without borders) and "Töten am Bildschirm" (killing at the screen), they said, between other things, that you can chop off the arms of grannies in Grand Theft Auto and described World Of Warcraft as a WW 2-type shooter. That games in Germany are heavely censored (for example: no blood and no chopped-off parts in GTA) did not stop them: They simply displayed the uncensored original versions which are not legal in Germany, at least not for anyone below the age of 18. This all gets worse if you realise that this was hosted on a paid-through-taxes publicly owned television station, ZDF, which has a governmental duty to educate. Well, at least on paper.
Nintendo Power has been known to misidentify the species of Krystal from Star Fox more than once. In one issue, they called her a cat (using this as a device to say she should've ditched Fox and hooked up with Panther by the end of Assault), and another claimed she was a ferret.
- The same magazine also erroneously claimed in a Soulcalibur II article that Yoshimitsu is a ghost.
- One of their writers also seems convinced that Sonic The Hedgehog's buddy Tails is a mutant squirrel, even after someone wrote in to tell him that he's a fox.
- Despite NP's love for Elite Beat Agents, they referred to the characters as dancing secret agents with afros. Only two of the agents actually have afros.
- Once, they had mislabelled the Pokémon Dialga and Palkia. By the time they realized this, it was too late.
- In a holiday buyers' guide, they wrote about Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow that "Dracula's back and he's haunting a castle again". Even if you don't know that Soma Cruz is Dracula's reincarnation, it's fairly common knowledge that Dracula was defeated for good in 1999 and that he's not the main antagonist this time.
- Pseudo-subversion: They claimed that Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days would have a Pinocchio world. Ultimately, there was nothing from Pinocchio at all, and the fans cried foul at them... until someone dug out proof of the world being Dummied Out. (They also claimed that Traverse Town would be visited in the game as well. There is a bit more truth to that claim: it appears briefly in a flashback rendered entirely with the game engine when you battle the Guard Armor in Olympus Coliseum.)
Practically every "official" strategy review for the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game got Bebop and Rocksteady's names mixed up.
- In addition, every time they gave a strategy review for the NES port of the TMNT arcade game, Nintendo Power seemed convinced that the two Stone Warrior bosses, Lt. Granitor and General Traag, were the same character, despite their obvious difference in design and color.
According to this Die Zeit article, Grand Theft Auto is a Racing Game. It also contains such shocking revelations as "many computer games are run on personal computers".
Another GTA example: the Quebec newspaper 24 Heures claims that GTA: Chinatown Wars is focused on "the Asian gang" (The Triad) from Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City... Even if they meant Liberty City Stories, CW is part of the Grand Theft Auto IV era, which is as unrelated as possible (plotwise, anyways) to the Grand Theft Auto III era (of which LCS is a part of; and for the record, the Triad did appear briefly in GTAIV.). They also managed to switch around the text caption for the Resident Evil 5 and Final Fantasy XIII screenshots on the same article as said goof.
- Thankfully, they also did do research before tackling the Resident Evil 5 racism debate. (In other words, they played through the game and concluded that "Chris kills black people, the game is RACIST!" is bollocks since it's taken out of context.)
Another Media Watchdog posted a complaint that the Wii is no longer "family friendly" thanks to the release of the super-violent game MadWorld, saying that they "hope Nintendo does not lose sight of their initial audience, and continues to offer quality, family friendly games," forgetting or not realizing that Nintendo will always continue to do the latter (that's what they primarily do anyways with few exceptions) — and so will the unmentioned Sega, the true publisher of the game. Another thing to mention would be that though Nintendo has always made games that the whole family could enjoy, only with the Wii and DS have they switched their focus away from the hardcore gamer. (However, when Nintendo countered the watchdogs by claiming that the Wii is for everyone, they also include hardcore gamers in said term; notable because no one besides Nintendo associates hardcore gamers with "the entire family" nowadays!) Of course, there are obviously a few more things that could be dissected from this statement, including all the super-violent Wii games before MadWorld.
Animal Crossing players (and just about everyone else), find yourself something big and solid for your head before watching the biggest, most spectaculary epic case of Critical Research Failure.
- For those not familiar with the game, the turtle character that is supposedly a potential child molester is Tortimer, an NPC. Yes, in Animal Crossing, the game itself tries to seduce your children into sending it pictures of themselves.
- In addition, interacting with other players over the internet is only possible by swapping friend codes with that particular player; this is not World Of Warcraft.
- Not that it matters in some jurisdictions — according to a spokesman for the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force,, just being an adult and owning Animal Crossing is apparently prima facie evidence of being a pedophile.
Fox News made a news report warning parents to look out for potential pedophilic activity on the Nintendo DS, but of course there's the daunting task of explaining how the DS actually works. Here's a video of the important bits edited into a (misinformative) Nintendo DS commercial.
- It should also be noted that the reporter in this video apparently thinks that twice 65 is 120. So Yeah.
PC Gamer in his review of the NOLF 2 expansion pack Contract J.A.C.K. mentioned the name of NOLF protagonist as Cate Walker. It later published an apology for the blunder.
- Also in an article about the then doomed to be cancelled Star Trek Online it intentionally mentioned a Rodian blood drawing the ire of Trekkies, but the magazine then sent prizes to the ones who pointed the mistake.
This article probably sums up the major problems pertaining to video games quite well.
The Limbaugh Letter, which would be called a parody of conservative views if it weren't published by conservatives, rails against Burnout Paradise for its hardline stance on global warming. Its what?
Alot of people make the mistake of referring to the blonde-haired, blue-jumpsuited mascot for the Fallout series of games as "Pip-Boy". The Pip-Boy is what you interface with the game through. That character is the in-game mascot of Valt-Tec's line of communal fallout shelters, and is called Vault Boy. The character version of "Pip-Boy" can be seen painted on the Pip-Boy interface. He has red hair, pointy ears, and a yellow and red jumpsuit.
This troper's high school newspaper ran a review of Baldur's Gate II with a photograph of a character portrait of the game that occupies less than a square inch on the screen, and referred to the game in the headline and caption as "Baldur".
A Polish illustrated encyclopedia (ISBN 8374351500, in case you're wondering), published in 2008 or 2009, claims that the most popular consoles today are "Sony Play Station [sic]" and "Nintendo".
In 2002, New York Times claimed that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a WW 2 shooter with a Nazi protagonist (it's not, the player is an American commando). In 2008, the United States Department of State, who had apparently read the idiotic statement without checking whether it was true, named the game a chief example of anti-semitism in video games.
This Troper can recall from memory a TV report on Kwari, an albeit dreadful MMO FPS in which you would actually earn real money for frags (at the cost of paying for ammunition via microtransactions) and other stuff. The said TV report used Crysis footage.
Prima's strategy guide for Donkey Kong Country 2 stated Klubba, the Kremling who guards the Lost World, to be a member of the Kong family.
Speaking of Prima, the guide for Kirby 64 described Zero-Two, the game's True Final Boss, as a harmless creature that appeared in one level's background. The entire endgame wasn't even in the guide.
This British newspaper article talks about Metal Gear Solid Rising starring Raiden, "the baddie from MGS 2". He may have been unpopular with the fanbase but that's surely taking it a little far...

Close Video Games

in this blog post, baby-name expert Laura Wittenberg explains how distracting names that reveal that authors Did Not Do The Research (i.e. a Work Com with an entire office full of men in their 30s who have names that are popular now but not so much in The Seventies) have become to her.

Close Web Original

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 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.
- Well, that was the original premise of the show. For about one episode.
- That's somewhat justified — the whole reason the first episode portrayed them as a crime fighting team was because the creators couldn't think of a way to explain what the show really was in any way that would get it green-lighted. This troper has seen every episode and can't think of how to describe it.
This troper remembers seeing a music video by The Jonas Brothers on YouTube where they did a cover of the song "Poor, Unfortunate Souls" from The Little Mermaid. In the music video, it shows the three brothers going to a pool where no one is swimming and a large "Rules" sign terminates in "No Running, No Jumping, NO FUN." The brothers proceed to jump into the pool and swim around, showing these "poor, unfortunate souls" how to have fun. This is cheesy enough on its own, but considering the fact that they are covering a song that the villain of the movie sang, trying to trick Ariel into giving up her voice so that she could further her own evil schemes, makes it just depressing that they made it seem like the song was about genuinely helping people.
Small potatoes given some of the other examples here, but Family Guy is sometimes called "The Family Guy".
- Agent Booth called it this on an episode of Bones, which was a little odd since it was the episode that featured a well-publicized Intercontinuity Crossover appearance by Stewie.
The Polish video game magazine Secret Service, issue April, 1998. In one article, the author claimed that Wacky Races is a crossover show where "Hanna-Barbera characters such as Yogi, Huckleberry and the Addams family" do racing. Either the author didn't see even one episode of the show, or (more likely) he has seen it, but mistook Blubber Bear for Yogi Bear and the Gruesome Twosome for the Addamses.
- Additionally, Jerry Beck, a renowned animation historian, claims in his book The Hanna Barbera Treasury that The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop "featured the Ant Hill Mob as her chief rival", when everybody knows that they were in fact her protectors on the show.
The Canadian TV provider Bell Express Vu used to describe the Venture Bros as, "Two teens live as though it is the 1960's even though they are 21st century teens!" The only good thing about this description is that the awkwardness of the sentence structure distracts you from the head-scratching description.
Once, Conan O'Brien made a reference to how "Avadar" Aang and his bison Appa (pronounced like Apple with an a on the end) had to break out of an iceberg to save the world. Then he compared it to Sarah Palin breaking out of Alaska.
- Another reviewer claimed: "He's supposedly the only one skilled in manipulating all of nature's basic elements. But he isn't. A rival shares his powers." ...what?
  - Note to reviewer: review the actual work in question, not the Mary Sue fanfiction of it.
- Newspaper articles on the upcoming movie adaptation of Avatar The Last Airbender, based on the popular "anime." Jesse McCartney says it was "explosively huge in Asia."
  - The movie will star the eeeeeeeevil Prince Zucko, no less. The news anchor in that same video describes the show's plot as involving "the epic battle between the Fire and Air Nations." Air "nation"?
Much of the print material based on Animaniacs (such as the comic books) used the show's name when directly referring to Yakko, Wakko and Dot, who were always called the Warners in the show. Even some Kids' WB! spots (such as the preview special Welcome Home, Animaniacs!) made this mistake.
- It was on Jeopardy!, too. The answer was "They live in the Warner Brothers water tower." The contestant responded "Who are Yakko, Wakko, and Dot?" He lost. They gave it back to him after the commercial, with Alex professing that he hadn't known that; he learns something new every day.
Much of the printed advertising for Histeria! (even its page on Kids' WB!'s official website) gave Loud Kiddington's name as Loud Kid, which he was never actually called on the show.
The original VHS cover of It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown stated that Charlie Brown was trying to buy a present for the little red-haired girl, when in the actual special, it was in fact for a completely different character named Peggy Jean. This was most likely caused by the fact that the special depicted Peggy Jean as a redhead rather than a brunette as she was in the strip.
In an animation encyclopedia's entry on The Raccoons, Cyril Sneer is called a "pink wolf." (A sidenote oddly then mentions that he "looks like an aardvark." Well duh!)
When The Land Before Time IX was first released, there was a very bizarre review on amazon.com, talking about the film's predeccesor, Time of Much Snow. There has never been a Land Before Time film by that name (although the previous movie, while using the title The Big Freeze, did feature a snowstorm as a major plot point, so it is possible that English was not this person's first language). Also, and even more strange, is when the reviewer talks about the reincarnation of Littlefoot's grandmother. Considering his grandmother never died, one must wonder what this person was smoking.
A recent Weekend magazine said that, in The Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror X, Maggie was the daughter of Kang and Kodos rather than Kang and Marge.
The book Disney Dossiers: Files of Characters From the Walt Disney Studios is full of glaring omissions and mistakes. For example, Aladdin's fact sheet says "Parents: None (orphan)", completely neglecting the fact that him finding out his father was alive was the main friggin' plot of Aladdin and the King of Thieves (which the book also claims came out a year earlier than it actually did). Kuzco's profile also seems to negate the existence of Malina by saying that Kuzco has no "significant other" (though that does sound like something Kuzco would say about himself). Also, for some reason, Donald Duck's filmography highlights includes the Duck Tales movie, which he wasn't in.
- It helps that the continuity of TV Kuzco with movie Kuzco is...arguable at best.
There's an alternative ending to the first Road Runner cartoon that the Latin American press is raving about, claiming that the ending was funded by a Japanese millionare who was tired of the Coyote always being the Butt Monkey. The actual footage leaves a lot to be desired. The framerate is obviously a drop from the real footage, the animation is basically a cut-and-paste of the Road Runner and Coyote's poses rearranged and assembled, and there's gratuitous use of O Fortuna. But the kicker has to be the Coyote holding up a sign with the name of the new ending's creator on it for absolutely no reason. How the news media have not picked up on these is inexplicable.
Translation of a Swedish TV-guide's blurb about Danny Phantom: "In the past Danny was a shy child who was hardly noticed. But suddenly one afternoon, when Danny unfortunately burned down his parents' lab, he became a super hero." Er, at least they got the name right?

Close Western Animation

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.
- Even the 80s animated series of the same name did this. (Or maybe not even, as this series is an epitome of Did Not Do The Research.)
- And then there's Jack Chick, and his infamous "Dark Dungeons," which, among other things, shows D&D to be played pretty much entirely by teenage girls (certainly, while D&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.
  - Maybe, if they learned real magic, more teenage girls would play.
  - Let's not go there. Charm Person spells. Players who spend a solid hour making "to hit on" rolls for Diplomacy. Doesn't take Int 18 to figure out that wouldn't end well, If You Know What I Mean.
- This was also averted (!) in (of all places) a Alltel commercial. The Alltel salesman is a cool Everydude, the competitors are Nerds. The Alltel Avatar, after giving the competitors a hard time for the whole 30 second spot, asks them sarcastically, "So, what level is your Dungeon Master?" To which they reply, "Dungeon Masters don't have levels."
  - Or alternately summon the wizard painted on their old van, who just happens to be an Alltel customer and turns one or all of the nerds into frogs.
This troper saw an annoucement posted in a school, which, among other after-school activities, listed playing "Worthamer".

Close Tabletop Games

Parodied in the comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug, in which a news anchor says, "And now that we have reported this story, we plan to research it as thoroughly as possible."
This troper recalls seeing numerous examples of people apparently thinking the main character of the comic strip Peanuts was named Peanuts, rather than Good Ol' Charlie Brown. This even showed up in a pop psychological text!

Close Newspaper Comics

In the 2009 edition of the calendar The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said, one contributor attributes the phrase YOUR HEAD A SPLODE to "the video game Homestar Runner" (as opposed to being from a game based on the online animated series), not to mention that this choice of words was deliberate and that the incident probably doesn't quite fit the calendar anyway.

Close Web Animation

VOYA magazine's otherwise-excellent review◊ of Gunnerkrigg Court features this tidbit: "Annie also encounters a dragon, which she manages to trap inside her stuffed-wolf doll before it can kill her." What's wrong: First of all, the creature Annie encountered, Reynardine, was a demon who had possessed a dragon
^{(Or rather, a Rogat Orjak. Though very dragonish, Orjaks are a separate species. But that point is entirely too nitpicky to hold against VOYA.)}
^*—which is why he was capable of being trapped in a wolf doll in the first place. And second, Reynardine's imprisonment in the wolf-doll was not Annie's doing; Rey jumped into the doll himself after Eglamore pulled Annie out of Rey's reach.
Is Oasis lying to Sluggy? As the article is attributed to the author, it has to be parody.

Close Webcomics

This is a common way to treat the Furry Fandom; see also Acceptable Targets.
- The "infamous" CSI episode did have a member of the fandom as a consultant, though apparently many of his suggestions were thrown out. The CSI fandom calmly responded to this kerfluffle by pointing out that CSI treats everybody like that. Of course, 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. It 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?)
- Exception: 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).
- On the subject of furries, there was a news article who followed this trope: They reported the name of the convention Anthrocon as "Arthrocon", effectively ruining the name's meaning since "Arthro" refers to joints (as in arthritis, inflammation of the joints).
There's actually a handbook for people who want to do this, 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.
- There's also How to Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Henry Hitchings.
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...
There were 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.
Whenever the mainstream media report on Mixed Martial Arts, 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 perhaps due to a misunderstanding of the name's connotations, assuming that the UFC is the championship of "ultimate fighting" rather than the ultimate championship of fighting. Mixed martial artists are also sometimes called "ultimate fighters" for similar reasons, even if they don't fight in the UFC. The UFC even puts on a reality show called The Ultimate Fighter. Overall, the UFC probably doesn't want to discourage their brand name being so strongly associated with the sport.
- It's 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" to associate it with dogfighting, inferring that the athletes are locked inside the arena and cannot escape from the fight. In truth, many MMA promotions take place in modified boxing rings. It doesn't help that some MMA promotions use the term, such as the WEC, to make themselves sound Bad Ass.
- Many reports are apparently ignorant of MMA's ruleset, often claiming that MMA matches are no-holds-barred and generally emphasizing the violence rather than the numerous restrictions and safety measures. In fact, even the first UFC event, which was billed as having "no rules" did in fact have several rules.
- Mainstream media loves to use the term "bloodsport" in reference to MMA to infer a heightened level of violence, in spite of the fact that boxing, kickboxing, and any traditional martial arts competition would also qualify as a bloodsport.
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.
- Speaking of the Bible, the idea that the Antichrist is "PROVEN TO BE BARACK OBAMA!!!11!1111!1111!1!!!!" is a cross between this and Poison Oak Epileptic Trees.
  - This troper has been told or heard about Joseph Stalin, John F. Kennedy, and, far more commonly than even Obama, Mikhail Gorbachev being the Antichrist. Gorbachev was an especially popular Enemy Of The Faithful because he had a big birthmark on his forehead.
  - The idea that the Antichrist is a character in the Bible is the result of this trope combined with something like Values Dissonance. Centuries of religious scholars struggling to find something new and fresh to say about Scripture, millenia after the stuff was written, is bound to produce some unusual theories.
An Olympic Games commentator referred 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...
This article◊ in a Swedish newspaper has become a sort of local meme among Swedish computer geeks. The caption can be translated as: "Andread Hedlund has looked over all thinkable software problems. He has now come to the conclusion that the hardware, the Mother Modem, the heart of the hard drive, isn't working."
This article on Yahoo! Tech blog states that only 1.5% of computer users have DVD-ripping software installed, and only 1% of users actually use it, therefore DVD piracy isn't as big a problem as it's made out out be. Thereby revealing a)the blogger has no idea how piracy works, and b)has no idea how many people have computers. The really sad part is the comments agreeing with him.
- Hey, anything to get the DRM bastards out of my hard drive.
Referring to the internet as "the internets" and similar. Recently Ian Hislop mentioned "The Youtube" on Have I Got News For You.
- Parodied in Top Gear, with quotes like: "If you are lucky enough to live near an internet, why not visit our website, which you can find at...a computer, probably."
"Something Awful is a cult that supports drug use, rape, racism, illegal use of firearms, harassment, piracy and child pornography. We exist to expose the cult that is Something Awful and the mastermind behind it Richard Kyanka." [2]
- Yeah. Now if they were talking about [[Squick /b/]] on the other hand...
An article that defined "slash fiction" as stories where fans put other authors' characters into new, imagined situations.
- Well, they certainly are new most of the time. And imagined.
Dublin University student Shane Fitzgerald planted a fake quote about death on famous, recently deceased composer Maurice Jarre's Wikipedia page. For over a month, newspapers were using it as fact before he finally came forward and confessed. Let that be a lesson for you, journalists: Stop using Wikipedia.
This Troper once read a quote about the decline of the Popeye the Sailor Man franchise, where the person quoted pointed out that Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits no longer even uses him on their packaging. However, this person failed to realize that the chain wasn't named for that Popeye at all, but rather Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle from The French Connection.

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