Around the time Aaahh!!! Real Monsters ended, rumors surfaced that there was supposed to be a TV film that ended up getting canceled for being "too dark" for the target audience. A now-deleted section of the show's Wikipedia page claimed that it was canceled because Viacom bought Paramount. Eventually, Klasky-Csupo confirmed on their Facebook that there were never any plans to make a TV movie◊ after a fan asked them about it.
There is a long-running rumor that there were plans in the early '90s to make an Alien animated series titled Operation: Aliens which supposedly had a pilot produced before being scrapped, based on a set of animation frames uploaded on a long-defunct Korean website. In 2018, the director and producer of the animation put up a storyboard on eBay and explained in the description that such a series never existed and that the animation was actually for three toy commercials, which ended up being unused after the producer of the live-action portion of said commercials found a better technique to film the toys and opted to use that instead.
American Dad!: It's commonly believed that "Hot Water" was intended to be the series finale before the show was renewed, but it was always intended to be one of the show's numerous non-canon episodes.
For a long time, fans of The Angry Beavers believed there was an unaired pilot called "Cuffed Together". Because the pilot "Snowbound" was only rumored to exist before turning up on YouTube in 2013, many assumed "Cuffed Together" also existed but was lost media. The rumor was so persistent that even NickRewind mentioned it at one point. Nobody could find any hard proof of the episode existing and it was later confirmed to be a hoax and based on a fanfiction.
At one point, the Japanese Wikipedia entry for the show had translated titles for episodes that weren't dubbed (only the first 12 and episode 49 got dubbed in Japanese), all of which were fake and later got removed.
Due to a Platypus Comixarticle about the show mentioning the fact, many people believe that Zalgar from the Pinky and the Brain episode "Plan Brain From Outer Space" was supposed to be a redesigned version of Gagnort from the Animaniacs episode "Potty Emergency". No evidence of this being the case has been found.
There's a rumor amongst As Told by Ginger fans of the existence of a Deleted Scene from the series finale that depicted Courtney confessing her feelings to Ginger, only for the latter to softly turn her down. Nickelodeonapparently had the scene cut in favor of the one with Courtney crying in the bathroom. Supposedly, series creator Emily Kapnek said as much at a convention in the 2000s; and the rumor of the scene's existence is also believed to have originated there, but no one knows for sure. Regardless, Kapnek eventually debunked the rumors; stating that she never said that and there were never plans for Courtney to come out as a lesbian.
The show had several rumors concerning what the plot would have been for a fourth season, but the one that got the most traction were a series of Tumblr posts between a supposed Nick intern and a fan who claimed to have a discussion with head writer Aaron Ehasz following a college lecture. Ehasz would addressthis during a Reddit Q&A promoting The Dragon Prince, stating that all of this information was fabricated, and later share the actualplans he had for Book 4 had creators DiMartino and Konietzko decided to do one.note Unlike what Ehasz claims, however, the creators state the live-action film did not factor into the decision not to do a fourth season: they simply never planned one. The main reason why that original rumor became so widespread can be traced to one of its claims — Ehasz wanted the show to conclude with Zuko and Katara hinted to one day become a couple — serving as valuable ammo in the fandom's Ship-to-Ship Combat.
It's frequently said that the series' relative unpopularity and eventual cancellation in Japan is because the Fire Nation's imperialism rang too close to home. While the show wasn't very popular in Japan, it was cancelled because Nickelodeon's Japanese channel as a whole wasn't very popular and was taken off the air before Book 3 could be dubbed. The final season would get its Japanese dub a few years later, however, when it was added to Amazon Prime Video in 2015.
Sometime around 2013-2014, someone edited the Italian Wikipedia page for Baby Looney Tunes to mention the existence of two unaired episodes that are farDarker and Edgier than the remainder of the show featuring Zeno, Sylvester's Evil Twin who wants to kill his brother in his desire to Take Over the World. The page for the character was a blatant copy-paste of the description for another character with that name. What really made the hoax obvious, however, was how the episodes were apparently only banned in Italy (when there's no proof of the episodes existing at all).
There is a rumor that Max and Dave Fleischer themselves made a cartoon where Betty Boop and Popeye have sex, supposedly created as a thank-you gift to animators that relocated from New York to their new Florida studio. When an article about it surfaced in 2003, some users on ToonZone (now called Anime Superhero) claimed to have seen the short on pornographic VHS tapes in The '80s (which likely stems from an incident where a home video company called The Video Bancorp forgot to erase a porn film off the end of a VHS tape after they taped Popeye cartoons over it). There is no hard proof that confirms or denies the cartoon's existence.
Big Hero 6: The Series: There's a certain image frequently circulated around social media that shows the aroace flag in Hiro's room, supposedly proving that Hiro is aroace. The image, taken from "The Impatient Patient", is fake. The actual episode shows no such flag.
Multiple false rumors exist as to why Steve Burns left the show. Burns himself stated that he left because he was losing his hair and wasn't comfortable with having a bunch of kids watch him gradually go bald on national television.
It's commonly spread that Blue is female and Magenta is male, and that it was intentionally done to invert gender roles. Actually, they're both female.
Steve is dead. It eventually got to the point where even he has discussed the rumor. Despite it being untrue, people continued to believe the hoax, even after he started guest-starring in the 2019 reboot series Blue's Clues & You!.
It is frequently said that Caillou was cancelled by PBS Kids in 2021, which is not true. The show actually ended in 2010, and PBS Kids simply stopped airing reruns in 2021. Furthermore, PBS Kids was not the one that ended the show, but the actual producers of the show, Cookie Jar Entertainment.
There is a notorious urban legend to the effect that the classic British children's pirate cartoon series Captain Pugwash had characters whose names were offensive sexual puns of a Hello, Sailor! variety, like "Master Baytes", "Roger the Cabin Boy" and "Seaman Staines". In the early 1990s, the show's creator won libel damages from two British newspapers for repeating the legend. Comedian Victor Lewis-Smith has claimed that he started the legend in a comedy routine, although other people claim to have heard it much earlier. Except for Pirate Willy, the characters names are incorrect in the urban legend (for example, Master Baytes was really "Master Mate").
For a long time, it was believed that Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue wasn't rerun because the producers never got permission from Jim Davis to use Garfield in the show, and he threatened litigation if it ever aired again. However, Mark Evanier (head writer of Garfield and Friends) has debunked the rumor, and explained the original plan which got the copyright holders to cooperate with specified limited airings.
Rumors for a supposed Season 5 of Code Lyoko being in the works spread out after the series ended, but nothing came out of it. Ironically, there would be something of a fifth season many years later, Code Lyoko: Evolution.
In May of 2022, an edit on the Wikipedia article for Cyberchase that stated that David Hasselhoff would be replacing Gilbert Gottfried as Digit went viral on social media. Because it lacked a source, the entry was quickly removed.
Danny Phantom: It's widespread in the fandom that Ember's official backstory (which was apparently confirmed by someone who worked on the staff, though it's never mentioned who on the staff) was that she was a bullied girl who was killed in a fire. Not only is this backstory contradicted by the lyrics to "Remember", but it's an unsourced (and most likely false) rumor.
Dexter's Laboratory has the episode "Rude Removal". During 2000s, rumours circulated about an episode that was allegedly shown once or twice at conventions that featured Dexter and Dee Dee being split into good and evil halves, with the evil counterparts being Sir Swears A Lots that spent much of the runtime doing just that as the good versions tried to corral them. The episode, said to be a joke episode produced as a way for the crew to release some steam during a hectic production, was also stated to have all that cussing uncensored. The episode would eventually turn out to be real and received an airing on [adult swim] in 2013 before being briefly posted online. After its airing, creator Genndy Tartakovsky would clarify that the censored cartoon that aired is the only version of the short that they produced: the "uncensored" variant seen on most video hosting sites is actually a fan creation, but the belief that this is the real episode means that the actualofficial version is still difficult to find. It was also a Banned Episode meant to air as part of the second season before Cartoon Network decided against it.
There are various claims in the YouTube comment sections of lost media videos talking about this episode being aired and dubbed in various foreign markets due to different content standards. There is no actual proof of this occurring.
There's a rumor that for one of Walt Disney's birthdays, two Disney animators drew a short of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse (or alternatively, Snow White and other Disney characters, usually the dwarfs) having sex. According to the story, Walt laughed, asked who made it, immediately fired both of them when they said it was them, and then ordered all copies destroyed (or hidden away). Whether the story is true or not is hard to figure out. Its source has been dismissed by many Disney historians and it's highly unlikely the short will ever resurface if it ever existed at all.
Another persistent rumor is that Donald Duck cartoons have been banned in Finland due to the character not wearing pants/trousers. In reality, there is no evidence to support the claims that Donald Duck is banned anywhere in the world, let alone in a country as lax about sexual content as Finland. The rumor comes from a small Finnish town that had to temporarily stop importing Donald Duck comics in the 70s due to their poor financial situation, with media joking that it was because Donald doesn't wear pants. The news spread to other countries with translations missing the joke and reporting it as if it were a fact, and the rumor mill changing it to be the whole country instead of one town.
Every so often, a rumor will spread around that claims that a famous non-Disney animator/artist was fired from Disney for drawing porn. These rumors have no source, and most of them are blatantly false due to the person in question never working at Disney in the first place (along with these rumors being at odds with the long-standing "Disney porn vault" rumor, but that's beside the point). The base for all of these (and the only one that has been confirmed to be true) is Harlan Ellison's tale of getting fired from Disney. According to Ellison, on his first day at Disney, Roy Disney overheard him joking about making a porn film starring various Disney characters while imitating their voices and mimicking various lewd actions, leading to Ellison being fired that same day.
It has been claimed that the BBC interrupted its September 1, 1939 broadcast of the Mickey Mouse cartoon Mickey's Gala Premier when the network ceased broadcasting due to the sudden outbreak of World War II. Supposedly, when broadcasting resumed after the war, the BBC resumed the programme at the exact point it was interrupted. While the cartoon was indeed the last programme shown by the BBC before the suspension, it was aired in its entirety both in 1939 and again on the day the BBC resumed broadcasting in 1946. The urban legend arose from a 1984 documentary about the wartime BBC in which the cartoon was interrupted for dramatic reasons, causing quite some viewers to believe that it was the actual 1939 footage of the Mickey Mouse broadcast.
There was once a rumor on this wiki that the Dragon Tales creators made a Darker and Edgier video special for adults called "Too Hot For TV!" where one of the characters expresses disgust at the idea. No evidence of this special exists, and all the examples mentioning it were promptly deleted.
There was a rumor going around for a time that Liz Phair performed the theme song. Phair herself has confirmed this was never the case, however.
The Dungeons & Dragons (1983) TV cartoon series is subject to a famous urban legend to the effect that the final episode (often reportedly never broadcast, although some people have claimed to have seen it on TV) reveals that the characters were actually killed in a roller-coaster accident and that the setting is Hell. The writer of the actual unmade Grand Finale, Michael Reeves, has denied this and placed his script for the episode online to prove it. (His script ends with the kids deliberating after being offered a choice whether to go back to Earth or continue fighting evil in the D&D world.)
Probably the biggest one is about the name of the infamous Eddy's Brother. There were rumors about his name being "Matthew", supposedly because the show's creator Danny Antonucci named him "Matthew" in a DVD interview. Many fans apparently believed that, and even on this wiki, various editors repeatedly added the name "Matthew" as "confirmed by Word of God". Except that there's no source for that at all and Antonucci's only DVD interview doesn't even mention Eddy's Brother.
The Missing Episode known as "Special Ed," with the rumor seemingly originating from an apparent hack on the creator's own website and editing an interview to add it. There was no more information known about this episode other than its title and it being removed for being "too real," and the episode was eventually confirmed to be a hoax. Fans believe that the episode would have been about Ed being in special education, though the rumor began years before the show's fifth season, when their summer vacation ended and they started attending school.
There are two other missing episodes that were supposedly meant for Season 5 called "Luck Be an Ed Tonight" and "A Room With an Ed." Unlike "Special Ed," there is no hard proof that the episodes don't exist. However, it is likely that they don't because the fansite that the rumors came from, Edtropolis, had been known to give incorrect information regarding the series before.
In 2001, there was another rumor about a Missing Episode known only as "The Scarecrow Boy Episode". The story is that Sarah puts on a play - her own version of The Wizard of Oz - casting herself as Dorothy, Jimmy as the Tin Man, Eddy as the Cowardly Lion (apparently he was also tied to a chair the whole time because he kept trying to walk out on Sarah), Ed as the Scarecrow, and Double D as the director. Sarah became outraged with Ed continuously blowing his lines, and ended up kicking and locking him out of the house (while still in costume); when Kevin and other kids in the cul-de-sac see Ed roaming around, they keep calling him "Scarecrow Boy", which somehow causes Ed to grow stiffer and stiffer each time he heard the name. Eventually, the episode ends with Plank nestled into the ground, and Ed standing on top with his arms straight out, as if he has become a real scarecrow. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that remotely proves such an episode exists, though many fans swear to have seen it, and that it only aired once.
The Fairly OddParents!: It's believed that "Just Desserts" has deleted scenes with Mrs. Turner and Vicky being fat, but no proof of these scenes ever being planned has ever come up.
The Fantastic Four (1978): It's been a long-standing rumor that the reason that the Human Torch was not included in this series and replaced by H.E.R.B.I.E was because nervous executives were afraid that children would set themselves on fire trying to emulate the Torch. The rumor wasn't helped by a 1986 issue of Fantastic Four where Johnny Storm has to face the fact that a child in the story died doing just that. In reality, the reason that the Torch was axed (also, it's theorized, being removed from Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends in favor of Firestar) was that the rights to the Human Torch had been licensed separately from the rest of the Fantastic Four and so they legally couldn't include him.
There was once a rumor written on the Italian Wikipedia page for Fireman Sam that lists a character named "Hecir Price", who was Norman's father who only appeared in the last episode of the third season of the CGI era with a speaking role (due to his Italian voice actor being listed). The rumor was quickly debunked.
There was also a rumor that there was an episode called "Derek's Grotto", but that was also debunked.
There was a rumor floating around the show's wiki that the Canadian dub will have its then-current cast replaced with a new cast. Only time will tell if it ends up being true or debunked, since the US dubs of seasons 12-13 and the fifth special are not released yet.
There was a long-standing rumour (included for a while on this very site's page on the show) that The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang was originally developed as an Animated Adaptation of Doctor Who, and that when negotiations with the BBC fell through, Hanna-Barbera threw in the Happy Days characters and created Cupcake and Mr. Cool as Captains Ersatzes for the Doctor and K9. Eventually, the show's main writer denied it when asked, saying that the time travel concept was invented simply to make the show distinct from the original live-action series and that he didn't think that Hanna and Barbera had even heard of Doctor Who.
Sometime in 2006, someone made a Wikipedia entry for a Foster's Home for Imaginary FriendsBig Damn Movie called "Journey to The Imaginary World", which involved Mac and Bloo discovering a door to a parallel universe and going inside to find oddities like a green version of Wilt. While it didn't stick, it became Hilarious in Hindsight when a similar plot was used for the Made-for-TV MovieDestination Imagination.
There is not a Gargoyles movie in production, but the constant faked screencaps and articles seem to refuse to let it go. You'd think they would have caught on by now when the first news of it came out April 1, 2014.
There is a screenshot of an episode circulating around the internet that shows Dipper and Mabel with the Slender Man watching from behind. The screenshot is actually fake; viewing the episode itself yields no Slender Man. Creator Alex Hirsch would actually comment on this in one interview, noting that one of the first times he overheard someone talk about the show after its premiere was a child telling someone that this rumor was true. Hirsch would pay homage to the rumor by giving the Slender Man a one-panel cameo in the "Face It" story of the post-series graphic novel Gravity Falls: Lost Legends.
The show was originally planned for a three-season Myth Arc, but Alex Hirsch trimmed down the last two acts into a single season due to wanting to wrap things up quickly. The source of this idea comes from a Reddit AMA done after the Season 1 finale, where a fan asked how many seasons he'd ideally like the show to last, with Hirsch's response being that he originally considered three seasons, but now believed that was too much. He'd explicitly say years later that the series never had a three-season arc planned at any point, as the only element of the show's overarching story he and the writers had even finalized when beginning work on the second season was the backstory of The Author. He mostly blames the propagation of this rumor on a combination of him not being allowed to immediately announce that season two was the final season and the show's own tendency to inspire Epileptic Trees.
It was once claimed that Happy Monster Band would premiere a third season in 2014, and there were even IMDb descriptions for the season's episodes. However, given that the show aired from 2007 to 2008, and that there are no screencaps of any Season 3 episodes (combined with the fact that 2014 came and went without the episodes) it's almost certainly fake.
The episode "Pigeon Man" is rumoured to have been intended to have the eponymous Pigeon Man jump to his death after finding his home destroyed by kids, but Nickelodeon forced the writers to change it because they feared it was too depressing. Show creator Craig Bartlett has repeatedly debunked this, as they never intended Pigeon Man to commit suicide. Another, similar, rumor is that the Pigeon Man flying away with his pigeons is his suicide, which is likewise much more false thanks to his appearance in The Jungle Movie.
There's a copypasta that circulates around the internet where someone's psychologist dad watched a few episodes of the show and decided that Lila showed all the signs of being a child sexual abuse victim (with her Missing Mom being the abuser). This is all either coincidental and/or looking too much into Lila's character.
There's a long-standing urban legend that one episode shows Dr. Claw's face. While his face was never depicted on the show, there was an action figure of Dr. Claw which, obviously, had a face (although the creators cleverly put a paper barrier in the package covering his face so you would have to buy the toy in order to see it). His face is also briefly visible in the Inspector Gadget game for the Super Nintendo, although the rather low resolution makes it hard to make out.
Go Go Gadgetinis was allegedly the Darker and EdgierUK-only sequel series to Gadget and the Gadgetinis, despite fan claims that it was real, there is no evidence to prove it. It is rumored that whoever holds control over this long-running hoax maintains several dozen accounts throughout the web, including information sites and art galleries, all under different or similar names. The series later turned out to be a fan project by a fan named Katie.
Invader Zim tends to be a major victim of this thanks to the combination of God Never Said That and Trolling Creator. The alleged and eventually debunked "Invader Dib" is one of the longest-lasting of these: said to be the intended Grand Finale, it was going to be a three-part episode/television movie wherein Dib would travel to Irk and attempt to take over or destroy the Irken race. This would lead to a large war with Dib, the Meekrob, and The Resisty on one side, and Zim, the rest of the Irken, and Gaz on the other. How this would have ended depends on the source, with the common ending having Zim win, somehow becoming the new Tallest, and banishing Dib to Saturn/turning him into a military test subject. This was eventually found to be a complete fabrication that originated on fan wikis. When pressed at an InvaderCon panel about how he would have ended the series, creator Jhonen Vasquez loosely described a completely different plot wherein everyone joins together against a new galaxy-spanning threat. Head writer Eric Truehart would follow this up, both in later convention appearances and in his book The Medium-Sized Book of Zim Scripts: Vol 1: Pigs 'n' Waffles, by additionally stating that no TV movie was even proposed during the show's run (much less an outlined or scripted "Invader Dib"), and if there were any ideas for a proper finale, they resided purely in Jhonen's mind.
Several rumors concerning potential future seasons of Jem exist, such as an episode where Rio finds out that Jem and Jerrica are the same person or an episode where Rapture is confirmed as LGBT. Neither is true.
There's a myth that the reason the series changed to its second intro (which uses a more generic theme lifted from the toy commercials) is because of a potential lawsuit. The myth goes that The Misfits threatened to sue because the intro features the fictional band known as The Misfits singing "But we're the Misfits/Our songs are better/We are the Misfits, and we're gonna get her".
Johnny Bravo has a clip from the episode "The Man Who Cried "Clown!"" circulating around the Internet in which Johnny pulls out a female clown who honks at him seductively, and then takes her to the airplane bathroom where it is implied through squeaky sound effects that they're having sex. This is frequently posted as a Getting Crap Past the Radar moment. In actuality, this is a spliced clip of two seperate scenes. The female clown was actually a decoy for an antagonistic male clown, and the bit involving the bathroom is actually Johnny taking said male clown to beat him up in a Battle Discretion Shot.
In the early 2000s, rumors spread of a lost episode of the show, "Episode 29", which was a Series Fauxnale during season three that featured Henry and June saying goodbye to the audience, and ending with June kissing Henry. The rumors also stated that after the show was renewed for a fourth season, Nick pulled the episode from reruns. Many fans believed this rumor for a long time due to the show itself having several episodes missing online (up until the mid-2010s), half of the series skipped on Nicktoons, and the show not being rerun often and having no home media releases. Many fans even claimed to have seen the episode when it aired. It all turned out to be false when the entire series was eventually found and uploaded online, the rumor beginning from an anonymous user posting the "episode"'s information on IMDb and Wikipedia in 2003, and Mark Marek, who did the Henry and June segments, confirming that June didn't have any romantic feelings for Henry and vice versa. Fans who claimed to have seen the episode turned out to just be misremembering other episodes of the show and getting confused and one "screencap" which surfaced online around 2015 turned out to have been edited.
Rumors also existed of unaired (or unfinished) fifth and sixth seasons of the show, including detailed episode information. Mark Marek confirmed that no seasons were planned after season four.
Several episodes of the show ended up skipped when the show reran on Nicktoons, and rumors popped up as to why they were skipped, including that some episodes were banned by Nick for content they didn't like (which was true for certain episodes of Rocko's Modern Life and The Ren & Stimpy Show). The skipped episodes were only missing from the Nicktoons run due to copyright issues with the Lava and Angela Anaconda segments, and only one episode ("I Just Don't Get It") was outright banned due to content in the episode's Action League Now! segment that was considered too similar to the 9/11 attacks. Other episodes that were missing despite not having any segments with legal issues are just assumed to have been skipped due to either Nick not being able to locate the tape masters or just by accident.
King of the Hill: According to urban legend, in the original airing of "Pigmalion", you could briefly see Trip's bloody mutilated corpse hanging off a hook in the background while Peggy and Luanne celebrate the latter becoming her own woman. However, there's no evidence that this ever happened and when Media Mementos got a copy of a VHS recording of the original airing, he found the ending to be the same as the normal airing.
For years, a set of extended lyrics to the LarryBoy: The Cartoon Adventures theme song circulated around various websites on the Internet, which people believed was a hoax until the full version of the theme song showed up in December of 2020.
A lot of people seem to believe that the young Amon seen in "Skeletons in the Closet" is voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen, the voice of Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, who left the industry after completing that show. It's actually Jack Bertrand.
Prior to the airing of "Skeletons in the Closet", the episode was widely believed to focus on Zuko's life after the Hundred Year War through flashbacks. This misconception was birthed from the early info that Zuko's voice actor, Dante Basco, would return for the episode. He did, but only to voice General Iroh II, Zuko's grandson.
It's widely believed that in the 1963 short Devil's Feud Cake, Satan asks Yosemite Sam "Well, who in Hell are you?" (which would have violated The Hays Code) and that it was Bowdlerized to "What the Devil is your name?" for television (both domestically and internationally). This is false, as all known 35mm theatrical prints of the cartoon have the latter line.
A widespread rumor for years is that Mel Blanc, the voice of several Looney Tunes characters including Bugs Bunny, actually hated carrots and having to eat them in order to create an accurate crunching sound for Bugs, and that he would always spit them out in between takes due to being allergic to them. However this is not true, in an autobiography written in 1988, Blanc states that he doesn't hate carrots and mainly disliked having to constantly eat carrots and proceed to say his next line, which made him understandably burnt out of having to eat carrots all the time.
Supposedly, Season 2 of Making Fiends is complete and ready to be released, but for some reason Nickelodeon is holding the episodes hostage. In reality, these episodes were only scripts. They never progressed any further.
The Mighty B Wiki lists a non-existent DVD and Blu-ray titled Stuffed Happens, supposedly released by Shout! Factory. Shout! Factory has never released the series, nor have they ever released a Blu-ray for any Nickelodeon show.
In 2017, somebody edited the Mr. Men Wiki's articles for The Mr. Men Show episodes "Up and Down", "Supermarket", "Pets" and "Library" to state that each episode had another unseen segmentnote respectively Miss Chatterbox and Miss Daredevil going up into space, Mr. Tickle giving shoppers welcome tickles, Mr. Funny's dog presenting tricks to Miss Magic, and Mr. Happy finding a book about happiness that was shown as part of their initial broadcast, but was removed from all reruns after January 21, 2010. The level of hoax material is incredibly obvious: direct recordings of the episodes' premieres were already on YouTube, they were at the same length as every other episode, and most glaringly of all, there has to be a specific reason for why a sketch should be removed, and there wasn't a single reason stated. These false pieces of information stayed unnoticed on the wiki for a year and a half until one of the show's most die-hard fans believed them as fact and asked where the scenes could be found.
In 2012, a fake Wikipedia screenshot◊ was circulated on various sites, which showed four episode synopses, including a two-parter introducing a new villain named Nocturne and the seventh Element of Harmony, as well "A Derp In The Life", an episode starring Memetic Bystander Derpy Hooves (the part of the fake image that got the most attention from the fandom), and "Luna Returns", where the princesses Celestia and Luna disguise themselves as each other. This could be confirmed false simply by checking the actual Wikipedia page, and because the episode "The Last Roundup" established that saying Derpy's name would come to be off-limitsnote The first airing of the episode had Rainbow Dash say Derpy's name as a Fandom Nod, but the line had to be censored after 10 parents sent in letters that the name was offensive. Much later, in season 5, Derpy finally managed to get a major role for real in the episode "Slice of Life".note Where her name isn't spoken, and the credits list her as "Muffins". As for everything else? The third season did debut with a shadow-based villain, but they didn't want to engulf Equestria in shadow and didn't require the Elements of Harmony to defeat; there technically would go on to be a seventh Element, but the character who wields it is only present in the human AU spin-off; and while Luna and Celestia would eventually headline episodes together, none of them have a remotely similar plot.
In 2014, a fan-made AMV with a misleading title circulated the Brony fandom, many of whom believed it was the actual theme song to the third season of the Japanese dub. In reality, that song was "Yumemiru! Shinjiru! Mirai Kanaete!" by Suzuko Mimori. Not helping matters was that Love Live! (where the song in the video came from) is also owned by Bushiroad, who made the Japanese dub. Even after the true third opening was released, many fans believed that "Wonderful Rush" was actually used in the dub.
Around 2017, rumors began spreading about the show getting an Italian dub, with the characters being Suddenly Voiced with completely made-up dialogue. The hoax came around with fake screens and videos of the ending credits of the show, but was soon debunked since anyone could check on TV and see that they weren't adding any dialogue to the show. While it's true that K2 (the network airing the show in Italy at the time) launched a contest where viewers were invited to add their own voiceovers to the show, there was no actual airing with dialogue added.
At one point, Wikipedia listed an Oswald episode that was a Crossover with Scooby-Doo called "Spooky-Pooky-Doo" on several filmographies of Scooby-Doo voice actors, including a claim that it was the final television role of Mary Kay Bergman.
A number of episode guides and wikis for PB&J Otter assert that there was going to be a TV-movie length installment titled PB&J Otter and the Legend of Snaildarter to wrap up the series. However, given that there are no other sources, and no known concept artwork or script material available from this, it may very well be made up.
Peppa Pig is allegedly responsible for making kids develop British accents similar to the title character's. This rumour started in 2019, where it was debunked, but resurfaced in 2021, since the COVID-19 Pandemic limited the amount of interpersonal contact people could have, making it much more likely that a child would get most of their exposure to English speech from the show.
There was a very popular story that the show was really inspired by a diary written by a schizophrenic little girl who had killed herself. It got to the point where both creators had to debunk it themselves and made a joke or two about it on Twitter.
An older one, in the same vein of the previous one, said there was an interview where the creators confessed that Candace was named in tribute to Candace Newmaker, a girl who was accidentally murdered in a "rebirthing session" (an old therapy tactic that is very, very lethal). Considering the lack of proof of the interview existing anywhere, along with pitch documents that predate the incident showing Candace with her current name, this one was sort of obvious.
Another infamous rumor claimed that Doofenshmirtz was Phineas and Candace's biological father, and there was a lost/cancelled episode that confirmed it. This was also stated to be false by the creators.
Ace's full name has long been thought of as "Ace D. Copular" to the point where even the 2016 reboot, which had no involvement from the original show's creators, acknowledged it in the credits of one episode, though McCracken also debunked this, saying that Ace was never intended to have a full name. No one is quite sure where "D. Copular" came from.
Another rumor has stated that the show had a UK dub on Channel 5's Milkshake block in 2001, with Maria Darling, Emma Tate and Jo Wyatt as Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup respectively. This so-called "fact" came from an audio reel on Jo Wyatt's website, which featured Wyatt voicing all three girls, and surprisingly, these do not use a British accent, but an American one instead, just like the original voices. However, there was no UK dub for the series; it's generally believed that Jo Wyatt alone was hired to be a sound-alike for all three characters for either the UK branch of Cartoon Network or Channel 5's promos and ad bumpers, which isn't an uncommon practice (for example, Marc Silk served as one for Johnny Bravo, Shaggy and Scooby-Doo on various CN UK promos in the early 2000's, replacing Jeff Glen Bennett, Casey Kasem and Frank Welker respectively).
Perhaps the most infamous rumor is the "fact" that the episode "City of Frownsville" was meant to be dedicated to the victims of 9/11, with their "proof" being a memoriam card that looks like this.◊ However, many fans have stated that they didn't recall seeing any memoriam card; not on TV recordings, not on the DVD, or even on any contemporary sources. As it turns out, that piece of trivia was made up by a fan of the show that edited various wikis, even including the aforementioned memoriam card, which is littered with spelling and grammar errors, is in the wrong aspect ratio, and has a R.I.P. to the World Trade Center, with the card using the British-English spelling "centre" instead of the American-English "center". The fact that the episode (along with "Sun Scream") was produced in 2004, three years after 9/11 occurred, should be another red flag, since 9/11 wasn't as tragic of an event as it was back in 2001; at this time it was merely a talking point instead of a massive catastrophe.
Many people believe that the character Jared Shapiro (Blossom's nerdy boyfriend) was a self-insert of the writer Jake Goldman, most likely due to his appearance looking exactly like Goldman. To make things worse, the voice is also by Jake himself, which many people blew way out of proportion, accusing Jake of being a child predator, especially with a scene with a muscular Jared. Luckily, this rumor has since been debunked by storyboarder Grace Kraft, who stated that the team thought it would be Actually Pretty Funny to model Jared after Jake and fitting if he voiced him, too.
It's commonly believed that it was originally going to be an [adult swim] series that only ended up on Cartoon Network due to scheduling issues, as a way to explain the more adult content present in the show (especially the earlier episodes). In reality, the series was always under development for the daytime network; the content was a result of Cartoon Network's experimentation with the TV-PG rating at the time, as can be seen with other pilots created as part of Cartoonstitute.
Due to a widely circulated image◊ on the internet, many people believe that in the original airing of the episode "Grave Sights", the flyers Mordecai and Rigby hand out read "Regular Blow: Suck My Mordecock", and is frequently mentioned as one of the show's most inappropriate innuendos as a result. A recording of the original airing proves this to be false.
There is thought to be another version of the pilot that was animated entirely in Adobe Flash. There are two clips from the pilot that were re-animated in Flash, but according to animator Eric Pringle, they were created as tests and no other scene was recreated in Flash.
There's a rumor that four episodes aired on Teletoon in early 2012 with certain scenes cut out (including everything after the first five minutes of "Benson Be Gone") and with Mordecai's line, "You're screaming like a friggin' maniac!" changed to, "You're screaming like a religious maniac!" in the episode "Ello Gov'nor". However, there is no proof of this. A distorted version of this rumor states that this is how these episodes are always aired in Canada when, in reality, the only alteration on Canadian TV was the removal of Rigby's line, "Now, how in the H are we gonna fix this S?" in the episode "The Power".
For a while, it was thought that Kurt Cobain recorded a theme song for The Ren & Stimpy Show that got rejected because the higher-ups at Nickelodeon didn't like it and John Kricfalusi was rubbed the wrong way by Cobain's arrogance. John K. himself stated in a 2019 interview that he doesn't remember such an incident happening and Billy West also denied it on Twitter, saying that Cobain had wanted to do one, but the song itself was never made.
There is a legend stating that in one episode, Grandpa Lou came back from a game of Russian Roulette, and when asked if he won, responded with "You don't know what Russian Roulette is, do you?" This was inspired by a certain image◊ circulating the Internet, but in the actual episode ("Grandpa's Bad Bug"), Lou actually lies to Stu and Didi about being sick when he stayed up all night playing a pinnacle game, Didi offers to take him to the doctor, and Lou responds that he'll just sleep it off. The Russian Roulette dialogue is actually from an episode of King of the Hill.
A rumor that Japanese movie studio Toho sued Rugrats studio Klasky-Csupo in 2002 over Reptar's similarities to Godzilla, causing the character to appear less often over the show's run, had emerged in 2014 when it was inserted to the Wikipedia article on Rugrats episodes and somebody presented it as a fact on Reddit. The rumor has since been kept alive on social media, with Screen Rant and WatchMojo even incorporating it as a pop culture story and an entry on their "Top 10 Times Animated Shows Got Sued" video respectively. Especially suspicious as there's no docket number or early 2000s news coverage for the alleged lawsuit; and the Reptar character would go on to appear in merchandise, crossover video games, and the 2021 reboot. Besides, Godzilla parodies are ubiquitous in media, so it doesn't make sense for Toho to go after Reptar specifically.
Before all the episodes of Salty's Lighthouse became available on YouTube, it was believed that both Big Mickey and the Fire Tug appeared in the TUGS segments of the show and had their names changed to Big Basil and Red Fin respectively.
Some Sanjay and Craig fans were convinced by a long-gone Wikipedia edit that a character named Satine would be featured as Craig's love interest in an episode called "Snake In Love"; the rumor somewhat died down after the final 7 episodes were revealed, but Satine is still treated as an actual character in some circles.
Shaggy and Scooby were meant to be a sly shoutout to stoners. In reality, the original writers of Scooby-Doo weren't of that generation, and had little knowledge of the stoner culture. Shaggy was actually inspired by beatnik stereotypes (the real beatniks did frequently use marijuana, but by the time the show was made their pop-culture image had been sanitized of any associations with drug use).
The gang is supposed to represent five certain universities. One of the universities wasn't even established until two years after the show went into production. In reality, they are loosely based on the characters from the show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
That the creators intentionally put in Fred/Daphne subtext and that Velma was a lesbian. Neither is true. Anything between Fred and Daphne is pure speculation, and the original series was a No Hugging, No Kissing show anyway. It isn't until later installments that some entries would canonize the couple, precisely because of the rumors and Running the Asylum. The same goes for Velma's sexuality; it was never discussed in the original cartoon, but James Gunn would attempt to have Velma as a lesbian in the 2002 live-action film before it was executive vetoed, the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated animated series had it as Word of Gay subtext, and Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! was the first to make her attraction to women explicit.
For a time, the Wikipedia page of the 1941 Walter Lantz cartoon Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat claimed that it had TV airings in several European countries such as Ireland, France and Spain, as well as one airing on Boomerang USA in 2000. No evidence of the cartoon ever making it to television exists, in part due to Lantz himself going out of his way to prevent it from ever making it to air.
There are recurring rumors that some upcoming episode of The Simpsons will put the series through a permanent Time Skip where the characters will age and the children will be adults, and that the entire series will have its grand finale sometime after. The fact that one of the show's Series Fauxnales, "Holidays of Future Passed", fit this description doesn't help matters.
There's a false rumor that the gag in "Sweets and Sour Marge" where the policemen throw Butterfingers in the fire, only for them to bounce out because "even fire doesn't want them", got Nestlé to cancel their longstanding sponsorship deal with the show and that the chalkboard gag in "Half-Decent Proposal", "I will not bite the hand that feeds me Butterfingers", was an apology of sorts. The contract was actually terminated for unknown reasons in 2001, and the gag in "Sweets and Sour Marge" (first aired January 20, 2002) was inspired by it.
In September 2022, an image circulated the Internet claiming that the show predicted Queen Elizabeth II's death. The image actually turned out to be fabricated.
A post occasionally circulates on social media claiming to show an episode from the year 2000 that exactly predicts Donald Trump's announcement of his presidential campaign, down to the shape of his logo. This is incredibly misleading. While an episode from around then did feature a joke about Trump being President (said by a future President Lisa), the screenshot in question comes from a short that was made shortly after Trump declared his candidacy, which is made clear by the HD animation, and was specifically parodying the announcement. (The joke about Trump running for President back in 2000 was specifically a shot at his campaign during said election on the Reform Party ticket, although he lost the nomination to Pat Buchanan. It was this desire which caused him to write his first book about politics The America We Deserve.)
It's a well-known fact that, early in the show's run, merch and promotional material gave Bart a light blue shirt instead of his trademark orange shirt. For years, it was believed that this was done deliberately by Fox as a copyright trap to deter fans away from counterfeit merchandise. In actuality, concept art for the series did in fact depict Bart with a blue shirt, and the merch issue was just Fox forgetting to tell licensees about the change.
A rumor that run around the web for years claimed that, in the Italian dub of Sonic Underground, Knuckles was renamed "Tirapugni" (literally "Punchthrower"). This claim was taken for real for years, until in late 2016 the Italian dub was made fully available on Netflix for the first time since 2005, proving once and for all that Knuckles kept his name in the dub.
The unfinished line "I've never seen so many children molested since..." in "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride" was long rumored to included "Michael Jackson" at the end in its first airing and/or alleged international airings. However, no proof was ever found for the dialogue to have ever existed, and it was later confirmed to be a hoax.
Back in the 2000s, a fan came up with a theory for a "deleted scene" in Bigger, Longer & Uncut that they presented as an explanation for how Kenny could go to Heaven in the end (despite the fact he was pulled to Hell before). However, some fans took this theory seriously and as proof that a missing character ("Flower") and plotline once existed, and it was eventually reported as if it were a fact on some fansites.
While three people who had worked on computer production of the film had claimed that there was enough deleted material over time to fit on "three or four DVDs", Parker and Stone would go on to debunk the claims, stating that the deleted scenes from the movie are merely alternate takes to justify the lack of a special edition DVD (along with the fact that they hate doing commentary tracks).
The infamously bizarre storyline and even more Limited Animation than usual in "A Million Little Fibers" led to it being rumored that Trey Parker and Matt Stone got so drunk or high at an awards ceremonynote (The 2006 Academy Awards is sometimes mentioned, but that took place over a month before the episode aired) that they were left with only three days to put the episode together after they sobered up. The actual truth is more mundane; Parker and Stone simply didn't think the original storyline (a parody of Intervention) was working, and threw together the end product at the last minute.
Season 17's "Console Wars" trilogy conspicuously fails to make mention of the Wii U, which has been claimed to be either the result of the console selling so poorly that Parker and Stone forgot that it even existed, or the two mistakenly thought it was an add-on for the original Wii. In reality, the Wii U wasn't mentioned because the trilogy was specifically a parody of the hype and fan wars surrounding the launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which the Wii U wasn't involved in as it had launched the previous year.
Around the first airing of the Steven Universe episode "Message Received", an alleged screenshot from the airing showed credits from a future episode featuring a character named Jade, voiced by the voice actors of Garnet and Peridot, heavily implying they were going to Fuse. Said screenshot was soon revealed to be fake by an ex-staff member.
The 2003 incarnation of Strawberry Shortcake had a lot of these in its waning years thanks to a particularly prolific troll who claimed to be the niece of someone working in DiC Entertainment. Lies spread by the troll largely include season 4 rumors and false synopsis regarding said season, and she even used manipulated audio as proof (most notably, "Nothing Lasts Forever" from the PB&J Otter episode "Hope Castle" that is said to be from the ending of that incarnation of the show). Even when finally exposed, some people chose to believe the troll and reject the truth.
Supposedly, the first Superman Theatrical Cartoons short, "The Mad Scientist", was edited in later releases to Bowdlerise Clark's line "Don't you think that's a dangerous mission for a woman?" by omitting the "for a woman" part. The chief evidence for this claim is the awkward fade-out as Clark speaks the line. However, there are no known prints of the film that contain the alleged original line.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): Somehow, it became a "known fact" that Irma's last name was "Langenstein", even though it was never mentioned on the show, in production materials, or merchandise. While the name did make it into some products eventually, that was only after the 2010s, and mostly for unrelated incarnations.
Throughout 2022, someone used multiple sockpuppet accounts to make edits on Wikipedia articles regarding an animated series called TeenNick's Smile Kids Preschool that revolved around characters from Nick Jr. and PBS Kids. Needless to say, no such show exists.
Teen Titans (2003): That a sixth season was being planned and maybe even written, but cancelled due to low toy sales or because the show was too popular with the wrong demographic. In reality, a sixth season was never in development. Defunct fan site TitansGo.Net interviewed writer Rob Hoegee shortly after the series' conclusion, where he revealed that the fifth season was slated to be the final one when it was ordered by Cartoon Network as a Post-Script Season, with the writing team given no expectations of another surprise season order. While CN were open to the idea of a continuation towards the end of production, what they wanted (and what was ultimately pitched and rejected) was more of Retool or Sequel Series.
Teen Titans Go!: One image constantly circulated online is of Cyborg literally beating his meat to Raven's legs. Except this is a spliced image showing scenes from two different episodes. While the image of Cyborg meat beating was indeed a masturbation joke, it happened in "Burger vs. Burrito"; meanwhile the shot of Raven's legs is from the aptly-titled "Legs."
There are debates about whether or not a stock Marklin engine can be seen in certain Series 1 episodes.
Whether or not any footage from the pilot made it into the broadcast version of "Down the Mine" is also uncertain.
Based on some publicity photos, there was some speculation that there is a lost Series 2 episode called "The Missing Coach", adapted from the first half of The Twin Engines. An interview with David Mitton later confirmed that while certain scenes were filmed based on those stories, the episode was never finished because they worried the plot point of twins Donald and Douglas switching tenders would be too confusing. Now the speculation has shifted to which Series 2 episode replaced it.
For a while there were rumors that a full model of Flying Scotsman was built for Series 3's "Tender Engines", but the model was damaged and only the tenders make an appearance. In reality, budget restraints prevented the crew from building a full model.
Whether or not Pierce Brosnan narrated more episodes than he did. He was a guest narrator for The Great Discovery, and was supposed to narrate Season 12, replacing both Michael Angelis and Michael Brandon. There exists a clip of his narration of "Gordon Takes a Shortcut", and he can be seen narrating lines for "Best Friends" and "Thomas Puts the Brakes On" on a featurette on The Great Discovery DVD, but it is unknown if he narrated more Season 12 episodes, since he left the show after The Great Discovery came out, and Brandon and Angelis ended up narrating the season anyways. Rumors say that he left due to scheduling conflicts with Mamma Mia!, or because he disliked the transition from models to CGI.
This more pertains to The Railway Series than the show itself, but The Guardian has spread rumors that Christopher Awdry (the son of franchise creator Wilbert Awdry and author of the books since Really Useful Engines in 1983) assisted in the murder of a transgender woman named Christine Chappel, who allegedly wrote Thomas and Victoria while Chris was busy. It's also alleged that Awdry had an affair with her, despite being married to Diana Scott at the time.
According to some sources, there appears to be an episode of Timothy Goes to School titled "The Butterfly Away", which is one of the first things that appears as an add-on when you start to Google the show's title. However, given that the only source claims the episode premiered in August 2014, it's completely false. The plot for this fictional episode involves Timothy and friends watching the migration of Monarch butterflies.
A common rumor was that the reason was cancelled was because constant stalking by a creepy fan towards show voice actress Tress MacNeille caused the staff to fear for her safety and lose interest in continuing the show. According to show creator Tom Ruegger, the real reason was the staff simply felt it ran its course and wanted to move on to new projects, and that a supposed TV interview where he blamed the stalker for the cancellation didn't exist.
Contrary to popular belief, the episode "Elephant Issues" (which contained the infamous "One Beer" segment) was not banned from television, but simply aired infrequently. Nick Knacks dug up some old TV guides, indicating that Fox aired the episode at least twice, and Nickelodeon and Kids' WB! aired it at least a few times. This false piece of information was actually added to Wikipedia circa November 2007, with the cited source being an article on Platypus Comix, which itself was simply based on internet discussions that the article's author had.
The Tom and Jerry short Blue Cat Blues is widely believed to have been the Grand Finale for the original shorts, not helped by its infamous ending which suggests that the eponymous duo are Driven to Suicide. This is not true: Blue Cat Blues aired in 1956, while the actual final classic short was Purr-Chance to Dream in 1967, while the last short directed by both William Hanna and Joseph Barbera was Tot Watchers in 1958.
For a while, there were a couple of people spreading news of a Transformers: Prime movie called "Powerful Alliances" that was set to come out in '15, creating a Wikipedia article and IMDb entry for it, and spreading bogus rumors on other sites. It was basically a bunch of fans trying to pass off their "dream TF movie" as real. Everything about it screamed fake, especially the amazingly Fan Wank-y cast list, and the supposed voice actors themselves said they'd never heard of such a project — yet the rumor took off. After the Wiki and IMDb pages were deleted, another rumor started, claiming that it was cancelled, instead of not being real in the first place.
TVTome was well-known for having many false listings of this kind on their website, including the following:
House of Mouse was rumored to have a Lilo & StitchCrossover episode titled "Stitch Night", which supposedly had a scene where Mickey complains about Stitch's behavior, setting up an inexplicable cameo by the Hamburglar ("voiced" by Frank Welker), who has nothing to do with Disney (unlike the cameo characters who actually appear in the series). Another listing claimed that there would be another crossover episode, this time with Digimon. It turned out that the latter episode was submitted by a fan of the show who was frustrated by how many fake episode listings were on TVTome.
PCMag editor Jordan Minor admitted to writing a large number of fake Street Sharks episode summaries for TVTome as a joke in middle school, which were blindly copied by more reputable sources until they were just accepted as fact. The two most notable examples were an episode where Streex's sister Roxie became a Street Shark via Emergency Transformation, and a multi-episode story arc involving a villain named Meathook, voiced by Henry Winkler of Happy Days fame. Both characters were created whole-cloth by Minor, but that didn't stop internet users from swearing up and down that they'd seen "the episode with the girl Street Shark", or cracking jokes about how Winkler had fallen so far that he was reduced to voicing characters in a cheap Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesknockoff.
The Winnie the Pooh franchise has not been completely Banned in China, contrary to popular belief. While the government has been insistent on censoring memes on social media comparing the bear to president Xi Jinping, Winnie the Pooh merchandise is still commonly sold in places such as Shanghai Disneyland.
Because it is very popular with younger audiences, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum is a goldmine for false rumors added by little kids onto wikis. This mainly concerns supposed upcoming historical figures to be featured. For instance, at least one person claimed that Jesus Christ himself would appear on the series.
◊ after a fan asked them about it.
