Not to mention the whole "Zazie's identity" thing he pulled. For most of the series, the character of Zazie was a total mystery, with no development or backstory whatsoever, although something was clearly up with her. Akamatsu claimed he'd reveal the secrets around her in the final arc. Then she showed up in the Magical World out of nowhere as a demon lord on the side of the bad guys. Fans panicked, went nuts, and generally shat brix... oh wait, no, a few chapters later it's revealed that's actually her identical twin sister. Well played, Akamatsu, well played.
Also, he resolved the plot with The Lifemaker possessing Nagi. (Hint: He didn't. Not in any satisfying way at least). Or the whereabouts of Negi's mother Arika. (That last one was actually him trolling the publishers. See Torch the Franchise and Run for details.)
For some, Kubo may be on his way to graduating from Trolling Creator to Magnificent Bastard, considering how many people complain or bitch about Bleach and yet they keep reading it no matter what.
On the other side of the Pacific, Hideaki Sorachi of Gintama fame is seen as an even greater troll than Kubo. There are even terms stating that "Gorilla is playing with the crotch of the readers again".
Example: Ch 238 showed a bunch of dialogue that seems to imply Tae and Gin became a couple - but then at the last page it showed it was someone else who sounds like them.
The Renho arc helped introduce Sorachi's trolling style to anime viewers. It started off with a tear-jerking scene of Elizabeth leaving his friends behind, with a longer credit song to mark it as a saga, making it greatly resemble the Four diva arc... Until the post credit scene, which shows that the Elizabeth that left is only a temp. Cue fans asking the Gorilla to return their tears.
The Anime does it too. For example, they advertised a movie trailer of the fan favorite Benizakura arc... only to afterwards state that no one would be stupid enough to give them a movie.
And then a real movie of the Benizakura arc came out!
Followed by a trailer for the second movie that focused on Gintoki's past.
Kyoto Animation got a reputation for trolling fans of Haruhi Suzumiya in relation to season 2 of the series—first they denied they were doing it, then they claimed they were just rerunning the first season—but then suddenly, new episodes in the middle of the reruns! And then they did Endless Eight—eight consecutive episodes with the exact same plot, adapted from a short story that only covered the final loop. And they were animated from scratch too, so it wasn't just laziness or budget issues. Endless indeed...◊
This looped into self-trolling when they damaged their own DVD sales and caused the lack of a third season.
Ryukishi07, creator and head writer of the When They Cry sound novels, LOVES to troll his audience whether it's introducing text that no one understands or making the plot even more confusing than it already is! And is loved for it.
Speaking of Anno...While it's unknown who came up with this, this trailer for the third Rebuild of Evangelion movie was definitely created to troll the viewers. It begins with clips from the first two movie, and when it finally shows images from the third movie it shows the internal workings of a Conspicuous CGI piano. Yes, this series is known for Mind Screw, but come on.
The worst part is that the piano appears in official posters and theatre preview trailers.
Gen Urobuchi, the healing-type writer of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. He even trolled the other people working on the anime. For example, he withheld the knowledge of the show's grim-dark setting from character designer Ume Aoki and neglected to inform Emiri Katou, the seiyuu for Kyubey, of the character's true nature. The reactions of both were, in other words, priceless. Not to mention that he refused to bring Sayaka back even when the director Akiyuki Shinbo requested that he do it.
The strangest thing is that when he's not trolling he actually comes off as humble and polite.
A case of Trolling Publisher can also be found in Madoka's English publisher Aniplex US. They witheld the info about Mami Mogu Mogu from Mami's voice actress, Carrie Keranen, and so as she described, she was walking casually for Episode 3, thinking that it's just a normal episode and then...
Hiro Mashima added a character in Fairy Tail who looks exactly like one of the most popular characters from his previous work, with both of them being highly notablecharacters, and then did a crossover between the two stories. Guess which two characters never even get mentioned?
That's nothing compared to his seven year time skip where none of his core cast aged. Let's not even get started with Chapters 261-263... after trolling the fans for 3 chapters in a row, he whips out Chapter 264 which treads into Magnificent Bastard territory. Generally, it has become somewhat of a fan meme on some Fairy Tail forums that Hiro trolls his readers, sometimes even stretching to Hate Dumb when he actually isn't trolling in the way the trope describes, but people insist he is.
Hidekaz Himaruya, the creator of Axis Powers Hetalia has trolled the massive fandom a number of times, leading them up to believe that England was going to confess, America was going to confess to England, slipping his schedule for hours at a time, not really giving a clear answer on anything, not showing his face, and just keeping the fandom on its toes in general.
Some fans say this about the creator of Otaku No Musume San, as Kouta, the main character and the woobie by default, is constantly trolled by everything that he's getting serious about. Consider that he became an otaku after Kanau's mother just left him and disappeared, as a form of consolation. So you can tell how woobie his life is.
Kunihiko Ikuhara has to count. What with the happily mind-fracturing Utena fans by informing us that every interpretation of the series' symbolism is correct, giving "not sure if serious" answers to deep questions at conventions, and to top it all off "explaining" (for a given interpretation of the word) the biggest symbolism WTF of the Utena movie by cheerfully stating that he just wanted to have a pretty girl turn into a car at some point in his work.
All of you have enjoyed making your predictions. Now, I'll tell you the truth. Yes. Just as all of you have predicted all along: the Penguindrum is a pink washing machine.
Eiichiro Oda, author of One Piece, was told by the voice actor for Franky regarding what hairstyles he doesn't want Franky to have. Guess which character inexplicably got a new hairstyle every chapter.
Though not nearly to the extent of Akamatsu, Naruto's Masashi Kishimoto seems to be trolling the shippers a lot over the last couple of years: Sai bluntly stating Naruto's feelings about Sakura, Naruto ignoring Hinata's love confession, Sakura confessing on Naruto, Naruto refusing believing she was over Sasuke, Kushina's vague dating advice (telling Naruto to find someone like her), coupled with the recent revelation that Karin is an Uzumaki. This is also not a series where a Third Option Love Interest is very popular with the fandom, illustrated by the loathing that Shiho gets for having a crush on Shikamaru.
Then there was the identity of Tobi. First it was said he was Madara. Then it turns out that the real Madara IS dead. This is when the Obito theory was finally put to rest, but came back with a vengeance, and it appears that it really was Obito behind the mask, although Tobi has been implying that he stole Obito's sharingan. Turns out Tobi is actually a fusion between Obito and something that Madara created from the Gedo Statue. Oh and Madara is The Man Behind the Man for Obito so technically he IS the Big Bad after all. Cue the entire fandom going crosseyed.
When summaries and magazines announced that, after a long, long stretch or episodes, Ash and co. were finally in Nimbasa Town, people assumed that the "town" part was a mistake, as the gang were supposed to go to Nimbasa City for Ash's next Gym. When the episode aired, we learned that, yes, they were in Nimbasa Town, and still and still had a while to go before they reached Nimbasa City. Understandably, Ash and his friends are pretty shocked by this.
Bavarian comedian Karl Valentin, who would tell deliberately unfunny jokes (and sometimes also So Unfunny It's Funny) or break off a story before the climax.
Andy Kaufman would do esoteric or unfunny sketches if he thought he becoming predictable, or audiences just wanted him to go over the same material again. There are even some people who think his death was faked in order to troll his fans and family.
Comic Books
Infinite Crisis: Many believe Superboy Prime was specifically written to mock fanboys.
Dan Slott: actively lied to the readers about the identity of the Superior Spider Man, and the fate of Peter Parker.
Fan Works
The author of Turnabout Storm, NeoArtimus, had a nice record of teasing, and ocassionally lying to fans during the development of the series. This said, the ending of the rather long awaitedPart 4/4 pushed her straight into troll territory.
To be concluded... In Part 5/4
Word Of God says this was done intentionally to keep the video from being too long.
The reason there is a part 5/4 is because it simply got way too long. Heck, part 5 still is probably going to be the longest part even being split like this. I really want to take my time on this part as I've seen lots of stories be ruined by a sloppy ending.
In Kung Fu Hustle, Stephen Chow's character starts dribbling a soccer ball before smashing it and saying, "No more soccer!" This is in response to fans of Shaolin Soccer who kept demanding a sequel.
Any time the director, producer, and especiallyBen Kingsley talked about the Mandarin, about his personality and motivations, they were completely trolling everyone with a straight face.
Literature
Dragaera: Steven Brust writes his Vlad Taltos books out of chronological order. To frustrate his readers' attempts to arrange them in chronological order, he's written at least one book with parts that happen before and after other books.
Joss Whedon has gone on record that he likes to create loveable, happy, sweet characters that he knows the fans will love, then kill or crush them in the cruelest way possible just to see the reaction. It gave rise to the alternate meaning of "Jossed".
"People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy."
Russell T Davies, former head writer for Doctor Who, has been described similarly with some affection by Steven Moffat: "He likes to make wonderful characters and then melt them"
And to his actors. Notably, he kept everybody (including David Tennant) Locked Out of the Loop on the topic of River Song - except for Alex Kingston herself. The Doctor's confusion when he meets her (and subsequently) is absolutely genuine: Matt Smith was in fact the last person of the main crew to learn her identity. And in series 6, just as the audience is finally given enough hints to figure out who River is, Moffat throws in a massive Ship TeaseRed Herring just to screw with everyone.
And again with the Ship TeaseRed Herrings involving Amy, the Doctor and Rory. Especially regarding who fathered Amy's baby throughout her is-it-real-or-isn't-it pregnancy and even after the birth of her daughter. This culminated in a long speech by Amy to said baby daughter about her father which seems to be describing the Doctor to a T, but is actually about Rory (incidentally highlighting the many similarities between the two).
Another related to Sherlock, the BBC approved series 2 and 3 at the same time. Moffat, however, was very vague as to whether there would be a series 3 at all. After the horrifically gut-wrenching series 2 finale, the fans were whipped up into a "please let there be Series 3, it can't end like this!!" frenzy, when Moffat rather nonchalantly mentioned there had always been a series 3, and they'd planned for that since the beginning of series 2. His fans came dangerously close to a full-fledged mutiny after that.
Three Words. That's literally all it takes for him to make the Sherlock fanbase flip the heck out. And I quote:
"[the three words] may be misleading, are not titles, are only teases or possibly clues, but might be deliberately designed to get you into a lather."
For series two, they were "Adler. Hound. Reichenbach." For the upcoming series three, they are "Rat. Wedding. Bow."
In some parts of the Internet, "Moffat!!" serves quite well as a curse word.
Chris Colfer appears to be Murphy's apprentice in the art. He is a lying little tease who is not to be trusted when it comes to show information.
The Prisoner has one of the most classic and well-known examples of this trope. After its Gainax Ending "Fall Out" aired, series creator Patrick McGoohan had people routinely coming to his doorstep demanding to know what it was all about. His comment:
"I wanted to have controversy, arguments, fights, discussions, people in anger waving fists in my face saying, how dare you?"
McGoohan had almost complete creative control, a budget 1.4 times as large as that of most other series, and no idea where the show was going from episode to episode. After what was broadcast as episode 11, the script editor, George Markstein, quit the series and was not replaced. Scripts and story ideas from that point on came from random people and places: a Western-themed episode was suggested by a video editor, and the infamous episode "The Girl Who Was Death" was an unused script from Danger Man (featuring characters, props and locations from said series).
The series is also believed by many to be a sequel of sorts to McGoohan's previous series, Danger Man, with "Number Six" actually being Danger Man's John Drake. There is at least one shared character (or possibly just a character with the same name and actor), Number Six's "civilian" clothes are the distinctive outfit usually worn by Drake, and a publicity photo of McGoohan as Drake is X'ed out during the opening credits. Official Prisoner novels flat out name the Prisoner as Drake. For many years, McGoohan publicly maintained that the Prisoner was not Drake, but it is suspected that he was just being contrary.
In a commentary for season 1 of Game Of Thrones, the producers talk about the difficulty of adapting certain things from the books, and specifically tell us not to get our hopes up that white ravens will be included. In episode one of season 2 (filmed before the commentaries were made), we do get a white raven.
After LOST concluded, leaving an untold number of unanswered questions, the creators were asked who built the enormous four-toed statue of Taweret. The response: "I assume the Egyptians did it."
Eric Kripke, the creator of Supernatural, released spoilers that Sam would have a new waitress Love Interest named Kristy in Season 4. He was kinda telling the truth (Sam had sex with a "Kristy" in the fourth season premiere, but she is actually the demon Ruby lying about her identity to cover up their involvement from Dean and Bobby), but he admitted that he was just saying it to rile up thefans. It worked.
Video Games
Notch once announced that Minecraft contained one recipe which nobody had ever found and that didn't appear in the recipe-finding Recipe Book mod. This was all he ever said on the matter.
, the whole business of crates... Then there's Gabe Newell never answering any questions about Half-Life 2: Episode 3 and instead focusing on randomness such as Team Fortress 2's hats and Counter-Strike updates.
And when he does talk about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, he says stuff like this.
Yoshinori Ono of Capcom (the man in charge of Street Fighter) is slowly gaining this status. He did declare he wanted to see the gamers suffer with the constant inclusion of Seth and he tops himself by fooling the audience of Street Fighter X Tekken by bringing Dan Hibiki—who had already been killed off within the SFxT timeline because Ono and the dev team didn't want him in the game—to a wishlist poll, and when he saw Dan winning by a far margin, he declared the winner... by replacing Dan with Sony's mascots Toro and Kuro.
Ono has even admitted that trolling the fanbase is part of his job.
Square Enix when it comes to Bonus BossAbsolute Virtue. Every time the players find a way to beat him, the dev team goes out of their way to squash the methods used to beat the monster. Square Enix seem to either want to make Absolute Virtue unbeatable or they enjoy watching players cry as Absolute Virtue's weaknesses gets changed every time people find a way to weaken him.
David Gaider, a BioWare employee and the chief writer of the Dragon Age series, is very fond of telling the story of how he came up with the idea to kill off Alistair in the end if he was romanced. According to him, when he first told it to the other writers, the entire group shared an Evil Laugh, foreseeing the fangirls' reaction, and he still smiles fondly whenever a player is devastated by that event.
Takeshis Challenge announces on its title screen that it was created by a man who hates video games. Much of what the player is supposed to do in the game falls under Violation of Common Sense.
For April Fool's Day 2012, Riot Games, makers of League of Legends, hyped up to a new champion release. On the day of his release, they released a story about how the day before, the new champion had been murdered. However, rather than the fandom being trolled, they went with it and trolled the trollers.
Blizzard had to put up with constant complaints about how "cartoony" and "colorful" Diablo III is compared to its predecessors. As a pisstake to that section of the fanbase, they put this level into the game.
On a related note, Blizzard gave their two newest playable characters in World of Warcraft trollbait dances: the male Pandaren has the LMFAO Party Rock Shuffle, and the female Pandaren has the Caramelldansen.
Everyone in charge of releasing Namco Bandai's Tales games appears to be either this or just plain bonkers. They have a habit of releasing Updated Rereleases of their games on entirely different platforms before even a year has passed (to the point that their latest game always being an Obvious Beta has hit Memetic Mutation among the fandom). Of course, they will make damned sure that there's no way for people with the first version to download all this stuff despite massive DLC expansion packs not being unheard of. They also like to talk about how something is too costly to bring to the west... and then complain that they have no money. That's not the end of it, though. They'll also wait two years, give or take, after the Japanese release of a game to announce that they'll bring it to the west... in another year and a half. Longer for Europe. By which time, the entire fanbase has already bought imported versions of the game and won't buy the English titles either because they've already played the game or just out of sheer fan outrage... and then Namco Bandai will complain that nobody buys their products. what
The creator of Dark Souls, after a year of hinting at the secret origin and use of the starting item that was the pendent and a year of fan theories finally revealed what the pendant did. NOTHING!
Kayin, creator of I Wanna Be the Guy, delves into this occasionally. Perhaps not surprising, considering the game itself trolls the player at every opportunity. Best exemplified when EG Floe premiered I Wanna Be The Guy Gaiden at EVO 2012; Kayin logged into the game session and proceeded to either help Floe with particularly hard sections or spawn random death traps and Interface Screw, whichever was funnier at the moment.
ZUN has recently developed a habit of subverting the Moe personalities fandom attributes to the cast of Touhou. First in Double Spoiler he revealed that Momiji is more of a "lone wolf" type than the Genki Girl portrayed by fandom, and actually hates Aya. Then in Symposium of Post-Mysticism, he did this to about half the cast of Mountain of Faith and Subterranean Animism: Nitori (the "shy kappa") is a shameless racist, possible murderer, and Insufferable Genius, Kisume ("bucket loli" who is also treated as really shy) is a rampagingserial killer... and Tenshi, who spent much of her fighting game being a gigantic, destructive asshole (even by Touhou standards), just needs a hug after being bullied by the cast.
Hideki Kamiya uses Twitter to troll his English-speaking fans mercilessly.
Yager's Spec Ops The Line falls into the "to prove a point" category without any ill intent on the dev's part. The game frequently and harshly criticizes the player for fulfilling a Power Fantasy by way of gruesome virtual war crimes. The devs have stated in interviews they wanted the players coming in with a certain set of expectations, kept the initial part of the game very familiar to players in order to foster that feeling, then set up their shots at the player. Even loading screens get in on the act, mocking the players with phrases such as, "This is all your fault." "How many Americans have you killed today?" and "To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless."
Ed Boon, the creator of Mortal Kombat, likes to troll his fans quite a bit. Everything from misleading tweets about possible characters in MK games to teasing at a crossover with Street Fighter.
While Injustice is warmly welcomed, there's just some things that Ed Boon had to do about trolling the fans. For instance... Raven from Teen Titans looking more adult? Good enough. Distorting her voice to demonic/mannish level that even if it's Tara Strong voicing her, it's kind of unrecognizable?It Makes Sense in Context about Raven, but still, damn it Boon. Promote Dick Grayson/Nightwing a lot and then only have him appear in 2 small cutscenes, have his alias get taken over by Damian Wayne (who by the way, get a very bad case of Adaptational Villainy) who killed him, and not even giving Dick a classic Arcade Ending? Dude!
When announcing names for Rune Factory 4,X Seed tweeted that they had changed Vishnal, one of the characters fans were more anxious about name changes in localization, to Vance. The tweeted again several minutes later announcing that they were only kidding, and his name had made the transition to the US intact.
Tameemi Antoniades became this when his team, Ninja Theory, rebooted the hit action game series, Devil May Cry. The reboot made controversial changes to the series' hero, Dante with Tammeni commenting in the interviews he did not find the classic Dante appealing or cool. This angered fans a lot of course. Even though he stated he did not care what fans thought, the reboot's Dante was modified during development to act like Dante and even look like him. Tameeni's trolling status went even further when in the reboot Dante threw away a wig that made him look like the classic Dante. Tameemi was also shown to act really rude in his twitter account.
Web Comics
Andrew Hussie of Homestuck fame is a big fan of psyching out the readers, especially during Act 2. "Andrew is the best troll" has become a meme among the fandom. He prefers, however, to call it "doing jokes", which is an alternate name for this page.
A great example is in Act 6 Act 1 when Jane was caught in an explosion and apparently died. A few pages later, Hussie's Author Avatar expressed surprise that there were still characters he hadn't killed off yet, and then proceeded to laugh manically. And then, of course, it turned out that Jane hadn't even died after all, anyway. Many a Skyward Scream in his name was yelled on those days.
Also, from the book 2 commentary:
The previous book ended on a cliffhanger. Was John killed really by a meteor??? You didn't know what to think, did you? Here we find out he not only survived, but his clown-riddled house became enshrouded in pure evil. Try to bear in mind though that sometimes I say things which are not true.
And then there was that time he posted a big, dramatic-looking flash animation that took ages to load... only for it to turn out to be a gif which laughed at the reader and said 'You spend no less than 90 seconds staring at this fucking gif image before you realize that the actual Flash animation is on the next page.'
Brian Clevinger of 8-Bit Theater fame, noted for his love of the Anti-Climax. He wrote two separate fake-out endings to his webcomic, and admitted to doing the second one solely to see the readers' angry reactions (only to be disappointed by their Genre Savvy acceptance of said ending).
RK Milholland of Something Positive does this a lot. The more he abuses his fans, the more they love him (to his eternal bewilderment).
And in-universe, Davan, whom Milholland modeled on himself, starts his own Comic Within A Comic, only to grow bored with it. However, rather than abandoning the project, he decides to use it to troll his fanbase. Hopefully, this will turn out better for him than for Davan (Catgirl rampage!)
Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content has a rather unstable relationship with his hardcore fans. When asked if he had ever written a story arc deliberately to piss off the 'shippers, he replied "see my entire comic". One of the strips is even titled "Suck It, Shippers".
One of the later strips*
(set in the period where Marten and the college intern Claire started sharing a lot of screentime together as soon as she revealed herself to be a transsexual - which got kind of blatant when Marten suddenly realized he needed her to drive him to his father's wedding, to the surprise of many readers)
Tom Siddell has been riding on the unexpected plot twists that seem to be the complete opposite of what the readers were hoping. Examples? Nearly every author comment is a sarcastic response about the comic. Every time something happens, he says "Mystery Solved!"MANY ships have been burned, as exemplified by this strip. There's basically a Take That directed to those specific readers in EVERY CHAPTER.
The epitome of this trope, however, is the mystery of Jones. After a long time of speculation from the readers Tom finally writes a chapter where Annie asks Jones about her nature directly. This leads to a series of flashbacks that basically tell us that Jones is a Time Abyss. Then we return to the present and Jones says: "And to answer your previous question... I do not know what I am." This is bad enough, but in the author's comment section there's a flashing GIF banner◊.
Kailin and Richard from Samurai Princess have been known to joke around with their fan base but their ability to troll becomes apparent with their April Fool's day joke for 2011. They teased a spin off featuring a fan favorite character, and when fan favorite Jacquline slipped off a cliff and was falling to her doom Kailin mentioned she had just finished watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Richard claimed all he had written for the next page's script was SPLAT!
The creators of Las Lindas are rather infamous for their habit of interrupting the story (usually at a suspense point, or important plot point about to be revealed) and doing a page that has nothing to do with the story.
Slave.In.Utero, author of Tower of God, loves to surprise his fans, especially with raising expectations and predictions on his blog, just to give them something completely unexpected in the next chapter. He also loves to confuse his readership about the gender of his characters and frequently alludes to that.
Creative Release has a character eventually state that "The author is a troll."
Web Original
If people are clamoring for Yahtzee to review a particular game, he will deliberately review anything but.
...Given options, I'll go for the one that infuriates tosspots.
Averted when he actually gave in when everyone demanded that he review Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Of course the review was overwhelmingly negative, partially due to his own dislike for the series and partially as a screw you to everyone who bothered him to review it.
Rooster Teeth seems to have lapsed into this with their Halo: Reach Achievement Horse series. Despite people clamoring for the original best-of-five rounds, they've steadily decreased the number of rounds to 3 (Achievement Pig) to seemingly 1 (Achievement P), all the while claiming it's what the fans want and that they want to go back to the original 5.
Marik: Okay, listen everybody, listen this is very important stuff I'm about to tell you, okay. A lot of people have been theorising about whether or not Bakura and Iare in a relationship and I wanted to put those rumours to rest right now, okay. You see, technically KILL YOUR FAMILY. KILL YOUR FAMILY. KILL YOUR FAMILY. KILL YOUR FAMILY. KILL YOUR FAMILY. KILL YOUR FAMILY. KILL YOF AMILY. KILL YOF AMILY. (Yes, this goes on for the entire 13 minutes.)
He also posted a remix of "Pharaoh's Throne" (a parody of Lady Gaga's "Telephone") entitled "Pharaoh's Circus". It's actually kind of interesting how well Circus Afro matches up with the beat of Telephone.
LK: I'm not sorry.
Western Animation
The creators of The Venture Brothers can be like this. They admitted to doing things like intentionally giving the Murderous Moppets more screentime and bringing back the Ghost Pirate (who isn't a Scrappy, but no one cares about him) at every opportunity. The episode The Revenge Society was a playful Take That, Audience!. It took the long-awaited return of the most competent villain on the show, Phantom Limb, and turned him into a raving lunatic (he got better), and also revealed that the entire ORB MacGuffin hunt from the previous season was completely pointless.
They had a nice little warm-up at Comic-Con 2011, when showing off their designs for the Metalbending Police of Republic City.
Dimartino: And then, so, Toph's uh...this is Toph's daughter. Chief Beifong... And she's uh, she's the Chief of Police of Republic City and uh, in charge of all those Metalbenders.
It doesn't stop with Lauren. The writers got in on the fun for Season 3. All through the season, trailers spoke about future episodes, but one segment in particular, which depicted Twilight Sparkle with the phrase "and one pony will discover her true destiny", really generated some buzz in the fandom. Cut to Wonderbolt Academy, where Pinkie Pie has been sitting by a mailbox, waiting for mail from Rainbow Dash:
Applejack: Why don't we go see what Twilight's up to? I hear Princess Celestia's got her working on some new spells.
And then epically subverted in the season finale. While it was never said if the spells mentioned in the above passage were referring to this episode, we nonetheless find out what the previews were talking about, and it is glorious.
The first season of South Park ended on a cliffhanger as everyone waited to learn who Cartman's father was. The reveal was promised to come on April 1, but after teasing the answer with "Now, finally, the shocking truth about Cartman's lineage…" Trey and Matt threw an episode-long April Fools Joke at the public with "Not Without my Anus" an episode starring Terrence and Phillip the boys' favorite Canadian TV stars. Cartman's "father" was not revealed until several weeks later. Many viewers were not pleased.
