Misused (needs wicks moved): Accidentally Accurate

CORRECT USE

• Trivia.AIR: The scene in episode 2 where Haruko mentions Misuzu thinking that dinosaurs came from chicken eggs. Misuzu's right, you know. Feathers, air sacs, four-chambered hearts, gizzards, gastroliths, toothed beaks in some birds, pubis bone moved backward into the bird-hipped configuration among some theropods, insulating wings—there's no two-ways about it: Birds are living dinosaurs.
• Trivia.Agarest Senki: Black Hole in this game pulls enemies into its mass black body before evaporating into a small white mass which causes a massive explosion. This is actually accurate; Black Hole did not just conveniently disappear like in some other fictions shown, Hawking radiation has proven that after a black hole loses its mass, an enormous explosion surpassing nukes will happen.
• Trivia.Asterix: Uderzo received a mail congratulating him for his perfect depiction of the antique roadstead of Brest. Uderzo had actually drawn it without doing any research.
• Potholed in Awesome.Diamond In The Rough Touhou: After going into a screening blind, fanfic writer ChibiFenrix, under the name ChibiChen, wrote a Reconstruction of the Gappy Stu concept titled Mind The Gap with barely any research into the Touhou series at all. After asking the normally harsh Spaztique to riff it/critique it, he couldn't find any fault in it. In fact, Spaztique will adapt it after Diamond In The Rough.
• Literature.Babar, in Ascended to Carnivorism: In Babar Comes To America, Babar and his family were shown eating meat. Becomes Accidentally Accurate in that such behavior was observed in elephants in real life.
• Creator.Dingo Pictures, in Artistic License – Biology: The T-Rex-ish thing in Dinosaur Adventures has a red button nose and is apparently the child of two sauropods. In the same movie, meat eating is treated as cannibalism, which suffice to say is quite face-palming for everyone who even remotely knows what dinosaurs are. But Accidentally Accurate in that the ceratopsian like dinosaur is the one who suggests it, this movie having been made several years before the idea that ceratopsians were probably opportunistically omnivorous became mainstream.
• Fantasia:
  • In Artistic License – Paleontology: Rite of Spring, filled with Stock Dinosaurs (including the T. rex) of different Mesozoic periods and sometimes-questionable anatomy. In fact, Tyrannosaurus lived closer to when humans live today than he did to when Stegosaurus lived. According to commentary on the Blu-Ray release, the fight was originally to have between the T. rex and a Triceratops, but the Stegosaurus was switched in as the animators felt the thagomizer would make the battle more interesting. Going by the 1940s understanding of dinosaurs, however, it's pretty accurate (apart of course from the Anachronism Stew)—Accidentally Accurate, in fact, as the "T. rex" was drawn with three fingers, making it an Allosaurus, which did live in the Jurassic alongside Stegosaurus. On the other hand, it is too bulky and lacks the brow horns Allosaurus is also known for having.
  • In Ascended to Carnivorism: In the Rite of Spring sequence, Plateosaurus and Kannemeyeria (both herbivorous) are portrayed eating clams. Becomes Accidentally Accurate in the case of the plateosaurs, which are now believed to have been partially omnivorous.
• Trivia.Hong Kong 97: Yes, Deng Xiaoping was still alive at the time of the game's release, but he actually did die in 1997, making his role in the game cohesive.
• Trivia.Ice Age:
  • An extinct mammal that looked just like Scrat was discovered some time after the first film was released.
  • The Gastornis from the second film don't appear to invoke the same Carnivore Confusion among herbivores as other carnivores in the series do. Skip ahead several years and it's discovered that Gastornis was actually a herbivore.
• Trivia.King Kong 1933: Some have questioned the credibility of the fact that Captain Englehorn is able to translate the language of the islanders, who have apparently never had Western visitors before. He describes it as similar to the language of the Nias islanders. Nias is a real place in Indonesia, but the language of the film is completely fabricated. Nonetheless, Englehorn's ability to translate is not all that implausible; most of the languages of the Pacific share common enough roots to be mutually intelligible to fluent speakers.
• Trivia.Mad: In their Thomas the Tank Engine and Unstoppable parody, Thomas is depicted as having both ends of his running plate dipped, not just the front. While it was done in order to not infringe on the character's image, this is actually how a real life Billington E2 tank engine's running plate is built.◊
• Magical Security Cam: Some courses in Racing Games, such as Mario Kart and WipEout have jumbotrons that deliver a live feed of you racing from your perspective. Even after the race was over, the screens would show the fly-over view of the track as you were viewing it. While the technology to deliver such in-car feeds, called Race Cam, predates the SNES,^note It was tested in Australia in 1979 and first used in America in 1983; meaning it could qualify as Older Than the NES, it's not likely that the game designers of the early '90s were racing buffs, so 4th and 5th gen cases could fall under Accidentally Accurate, as opposed to Justified.^note 3rd Gen and earlier would be straight-plays. Regardless, this still does not excuse using solely the Player Character's camera view for the entire race; apparently Protagonist-Centered Morality has infected the broadcast crew.
• Trivia.Nebula: While Ceres' emergence from Black Hole's head wasn't intended to be anything close to realistic or plausible, some months after the comic's publication NASA actually observed an object coming out of a black hole.
• Neck Snap, under Fanfics: Garfield does this to Doc Brown in Garfield in: "Along Came a Splut", but in an unintentionally accurate example, it doesn't kill him, one of the few things that does make sense about an otherwise Mind Screw of a story.
• Trivia.Penny Arcade: It's probably not intentional and just coincidence, since the implications of the gift aren't mentioned, but the December 16, 2013 comic has Mary, the mother of Jesus, saying, "Who gives a baby myrrh?" Myrrh was used as an embalming ointment... as in for the dead. It would be like giving a coffin at a baby shower. To make a long story short, the myrrh was symbolic, which if you know what it's symbolizing doesn't make it any less disturbing.
• Trivia.Phineas And Ferb: That chattering sound Perry makes? Platypi really do make those noises in real life (though of course not with their teeth, which they don't have). Interviews have indicated that neither the show's creators nor Perry's voice actor were aware of this during production.
• Trivia.The Berenstain Bears:
  • In one episode, the family explores a cave. Papa mentions that cave bears (presumably intended to be an ursine version of cave people) may have once lived in the cave. Cave bears actually existed.
  • Brother once wants some purple ketchup. It is a thing.
• Trivia.The New Dinosaurs An Alternative Evolution: Some species described in the book were later described in some form in real life, although most didn't resemble Dixon's creations except in the most basic concepts.
  • Dwarf island dinosaurs were discovered in the form of Hațeg Island dinosaurs and Europasaurus.
  • Long-necked, long-legged running pterosaurs became reality once better remains of Azhdarchids were discovered.
  • Small arboreal coelurosaurs, such as microraptorines and scansoriopterygids.
  • Large flightless birds evolving in the presence of non-avian dinosaurs; Gargantuavis in particular is not too unlike the troumble.
  • Fur-like plumage on ornithischians (Tianyulong, Psittacosaurus, and Kulindadromeus).
  • An Asian coelurosaur that glided with membranous wings: Yi.
• ShoutOut.The Smurfs: After Gargamel feeds Hackus, he waits for a "thank you" but gets a burp instead to which he accepts. Now who said burping was a compliment? (It actually IS in some cultures.)
• Trivia.Tintin Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets: While nearly everything about the Soviet Union's depiction in this story is laughably inaccurate, one thing that actually was Truth in Television (albeit probably exaggerated) was the "election" seen halfway through the story, with several former USSR citizens attesting in later years that implied and even open threats of violence toward voters weren't too out of the ordinary.
• YMMV.Upstairs Downstairs: At the beginning of Season Three, Lady Marjorie is written off the series by having her go down with the Titanic—even though women in first class had the second-highest survival rate of any group on board. The highest survival rate? First-class women's servants—like Roberts, who shows up later in the season to confirm Lady Marjorie’s death.
• Trivia.We: Like Brave New World it correctly guessed a future medical discovery. In this case that damaging a part of the human brain can destroy that person's emotions. Though it involves an icepick instead of X-Rays.
• Trivia.Raptor Red:
  • Bakker included a therizinosaur ("segnosaur") in the story even though none were known from the right time and place when the book was written. (Perhaps not coincidentally, it was depicted as a mountain dweller, therefore living in an environment unlikely to preserve its fossils.) A decade later, a therizinosaur (Falcarius) contemporaneous with Utahraptor was published.
  • Obscure pterosaur Ornithodesmus (now known as Istiodactylus) is depicted as a scavenger, while at the time, it was thought of as a fish eater. In 2012, Mark Witton did some research and confirmed that Istiodactylus was indeed a scavenger.
• Trivia.Monty Pythons Life Of Brian: The whole shtick about the different anti-Roman groups and their infighting is clearly intended as a Take That! against then current leftist groups in the UK, but incidentally the real life anti-Roman groups at the time did more infighting than fighting against the Romans. Ultimately this meant that all three Jewish uprisings against the Romans failed precisely because of that We ARE Struggling Together, though the immense military strength of the Roman Empire didn't help either.
• Trivia.Lost Eden: This game has Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus as different dinosaurs. A new study in 2015 shows this may be true after all.

34 correct examples (lowest indentation level)

MISUSE

A character makes a guess and is correct.

• Funny.Ashes Of The Past: And during her report to her superiors, she comments that if an evil organization has infiltrated the Kalos Elite Four, they have bigger problems. She has no idea how Accidentally Accurate she is. ^note Malva, a Kalos E4 member, is an ex-member of Team Flare.
• Trivia.Family Feud: The ABC finale had the question "Tell me how old you think Ronald Reagan looks" and Richard Dawson guessed that he was 74. At the time the episode aired — June 14, 1985 — Reagan actually was 74 years old.
• Funny.Family Feud: Once, host Tony Barber accidentally asked a male contestant if he had a boyfriend, then realized his slip and corrected it to "girlfriend". The contestant's response? "No, I'm gay."
• FanFic.Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality: Early in the story, a prophecy talks about "The ones who will tear apart the s-". Students guess that the final word was "sky" or "sun." it's "stars".
• It Will Never Catch On: A 2016 Snickers commercial features the filming of the iconic scene of Marilyn Monroe standing on a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch. One of the crew remarks "this scene will never make the cut."^note It didn't. They re-shot a much more modest version of the scene for the film to appease the censorship bureau.
• YMMV.Peachs Slutty Adventure: When Peach first meets DK in the first season, she is quite to assume that he is a pedo gorilla who captured everyone from her castle. She's right.

Another way to mean Hilarious in Hindsight.

• Trivia.Mad: They once did a parody of Cathy called Amy!, which depicted Amy Winehouse hiding drugs in her beehive hairdo. Then someone filmed her pulling a vial of cocaine from her hair, and suddenly it's like, "They knew!".
• Memes.Persona 5: The Ruse Cruise: Another line used to answer many of the game's twists, coined by Twitch users. It picked up steam as when Shido's Palace turned out to be a cruise ship, the twitch chat EXPLODED.
• Trivia.Smosh: In their Death Note parody episode, they introduce an item called the Life Note which can bring people back to life rather than kill them. This was actually featured in earlier drafts of the manga, as an eraser that would bring the Death Note's victims back to life if their names were erased, but was later written out.
• Trivia.Zero Punctuation: In his review of Diablo III he decried the use of procedurally-generated dungeons, comparing it to a book with randomly ordered chapters: "If a book randomly rearranged its chapters with every read, then every chapter would have its characters doing fuck all, because the plot wouldn't make sense otherwise. So the end result will always be a fucking boring book." Someone actually did write such a book, in which the chapters are unbound and can be read in any order, and true enough, nothing much happens in any given chapter. It's open to debate whether the end result is a boring book however.
• Potholed in Trivia.Moonflowers, Similarly Named Works: The title is one letter off from an actual Japanese folktale called "Moonflower," which is amusing since the author discovered it months into her own story's progress.

Person makes a joke that turns out to happen or be true.

• Avatar: The Last Airbender "The Southern Raiders", in Lampshade Hanging: There's a bit of this when Katara marches up to Aang and requests the usage of Appa. Aang, noticing Zuko standing behind her, is quick to jokingly ask if it's her turn to "take a little field trip" with him, just as Aang and Sokka did in the preceding episodes. Katara's answer is a Blunt "Yes", which leaves Aang momentarily startled.
• Characters.SOMA: Just before Jessica's death, he jokes that Golaski only drinks structure gel, since he's always working on the pipes. Little does he know that this is exactly what's happening.
• LetsPlay.The Fantasio 974: In his Batman: Arkham Knight playthrough, he calls the titular character Robin the first time he met him, presumably as a joke. He's technically right.
• Trivia.Weird Video Games: In "Rock 'n' Rage", after expressing disbelief at the random weirdness of the first Ancient Egypt level (such as Cleopatra giving you a forcefield powerup) he sarcastically suggests that the next level, Mediaeval Great Britain, will include Dracula as an enemy. It actually turns out to have Nosferatu as an enemy...
• Trivia.Wheel Of Fortune: On October 27, 2011 (an episode with a Fictional Family puzzle), Pat joked that the category had only been used eight times. At the end of the show, he was told that it actually had been used only eight times...except that was wrong as well — it was the category's tenth appearance.
• Anime.Yuri On Ice: Takeshi and Yuko joke that many skating fans might be hating Yuri now since they believe that he "stole Victor from [ice skating]". Episodes 6 and 8 show that they're actually correct.
• Trivia.The Angry Video Game Nerd:
  • In the Colecovision episode, he jokes that he wonders if The Addams Family had a Coleco Adam computer. The Addams family were actually the first TV family to own a computer, albeit one of the old fashioned UNIVAC types.
  • In his review of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, he points out the famous "I am Error" oddity, and jokes that it's probably just the character's name. In fact, he's right; the character really is named Error.
• YMMV.Two Saiyans Play, in Harsher in Hindsight: While playing Among the Sleep, Krillin says "Whatever's going on, my tiny baby brain can't handle it!" after an Interface Screw moment. Given The Reveal at the end of the game, he's Accidentally Accurate.
• Trivia.Versus: Tyler makes a joke about Josh saying 'snap' being a coded message that his next LP will be Pokémon Snap, which suprises Josh, who was planning on let's playing Pokémon Snap next... but then reveals he was just kidding. But it later turns out he wasn't.
• Trivia.Quatermass: In Quatermass and the Pit (1967), the protagonists uncover remains of primitive humans from five million years ago. The characters state that no such remains have ever been found back that far in time before. In 1974, Lucy would be found and she would be the oldest human/hominid remains at 3.2 million years until even earlier specimens were found, making the concept of humans being in existence five million years ago well within possibility.
• Trivia.Retsupurae: In "LP Mario 64...very slowly", the duo joke about what would have happened if the Nintendo 64 really was as slow as the LPer's emulator made it look like. One of their remarks is how it had state of the art graphics and only 2 MB of RAM. This isn't very far off from the truth — the N64 had 4 MB of RAM without the expansion pack, yes, but it used high latency Rambus DRAM which made it a huge bottleneck on the system.

Another way to mean Irony

• Potholed in PlayingWith.No Man Of Woman Born: Such a prophecy did exist, but Evulz didn't know about it.
• WebVideo.Ten Little Roosters: In-universe with the line in the poem "The killer was killed". Barbara wrote that as part of her plan to frame Ryan as the killer and escape as the survivor, but Ryan turns the tables on her and kills her anyways, fulfilling the poem's original meaning.
• HaruhiSuzumiya.Tropes A To E: All the actors in Haruhi's movie are playing as their respective secret identities, which Haruhi has no knowledge of.

Another way to mean Right for the Wrong Reasons

• Literature.The Hundred And One Dalmatians: In universe. While resting for the night in an old country estate, Pongo is startled when the elderly owner (who thinks he is seeing the ghost of dogs from his childhood) calls him by his real name. Then he remembers that he was named that because it was a common name for Dalmatian coach dogs.
• FanFic.Water Areobics For The Aquaphobic: Luna gets that her pet bunny is psychic, although she doesn't know that that's because he's actually Lord Voldemort in cursed form.

28 incorrect examples (lowest indentation level)