Fact Checking Thread

On the COPS series page, under Nightmare Fuel is a description of a 'banned' episode that sounds absolutely horror-movieish....and I was wondering if anyone has ANY information behind it, anything about what city its based in or what episode number because I've found nothing.

The description of the 'banned' episode is as follows:

A 15-year-old girl calls the cops after her grandma went to investigate a noise outside their house and never came back, leaving her alone in a pitch-black house. Once the cops get there, she finally comes outside and leads them to the abandoned horse pen where she last saw her grandmother go. Everything is completely, disturbingly silent for the entire time and almost completely dark, until a blonde woman throws herself against the bars, and hysterically begs them to help her. However, the real horror comes as she looks to her right and screams at the top of her lungs as a woman wearing all black runs towards them, screaming and brandishing a knife. She is quickly gunned down by a shotgun-wielding cop, which instantly turns the girl into a screaming wreck. She then points out another knife-wielding woman charging at them, who's quickly shot by the same cop. He tells the cameraman and the girl to run as more gunshots ring out. The cameraman ends up driving off with the girl, but it's unknown what happened to her grandmother, those cops, or the woman that begged them for help.

Thank ya'll taking the time to read this.

I can't find anything on that from a ten-minute google search, but I'm otherwise not qualified to confirm or refute it.

Considering I googled "COPS banned episode" and that TVT page is on the first page of results... probably safe to cut.

This sounds so obviously made-up that I feel like the burden of proof definitely ought to be on the side of providing evidence that it existed. Since there's none at the moment...

^^

Dang,a part of me wanted it to be real lol. But yeah, Im sure its 99.9% wrong, its just an odd thing to make up. Unless someone put the synopsis on the wrong page.

It sounds like a creepypasta

That's exactly what I was thinking. I highly doubt the veracity of it, I think it's safe to cut.

From YMMV.Mario Party:

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Island Tour seems to be a compromise between the mechanics of Mario Party 9 and those of the other games.

From a quick look at the mechanics, Island Tour being a "compromise" is not apparent to me. It seems to be a radical departure gameplay-wise from all previous games in the series, even taking 9 into consideration.

• Its win condition fails to resemble virtually any other game in the series (hold most stars; Island Tour is mostly race to the end) except for one board.
• Minigames change your movement on the board instead of giving material rewards. Not even 9 did this.
• A few boards use cards in lieu of dice rolls. Yes, really.
• There are no Bonus Stars or equivalent; when a player finishes the race, the game ends right there. Even 9 kept Bonus Stars.

Edited by Albert3105 on Nov 15th 2020 at 6:07:03 AM

It's a ZCE anyway as it doesn't explain the specific changed aspects that the fandom disliked.

Just thought I'd mention that Elinor Wonders Why and its crosswicks have been subject to false information where a certain troper is listing details from nonexistent episodes (likely with multiple accounts), in case anybody else wants to keep an eye on that.

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 18th 2020 at 10:40:48 AM

There is a discussion that may be relevant to you. The new quote for Merchandise-Driven failed verification.

Oh, I had no idea. I just pulled it from the Magazines folder on the quote page. My guess was it was a quip from their "bullseye" section, which may be why it's hard to find text verification since it would be written on an image that I believe is only on the print article.

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 20th 2020 at 5:35:13 AM

So this is a shot in the dark, but there's a recurring bit on pages for The Nostalgia Critic saying that the Hyper Fangirl character is based off of sexual harassment Doug has faced at conventions. I wouldn't deny that this happened, as I've heard some horror stories from those cons, but every time they discuss the creation of Hyper Fangirl, they usually cite one specific fan as the origin, a Big Name Fan who's friends with the cast (they're an internet friend of mine as well).

Of course, Hyper could easily be a mix of good things from the BNF and bad things from conventions, but I'm curious if anybody has a source on Doug talking about the latter. These pages have a habit of exaggerating the sexual elements of the show and that often extends to the real-life cast. An example entry that illustrates my concern, with the issue in bold:

• During Dawn of the Commercials, the Critic discusses a sexual harassment PSA between a female employee and her boss. In 2018, the "Not So Awesome" documents contain details of former content creators being sexually harassed and before that, in more general terms, Doug talked about getting so much sexual harassment that he created Hyper.

YMMV.Little Big Planet:

• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A common complaint about the game. Game Informer complained that the Vita game in particular has infinite checkpoints for every level except boss battles.

I think whether or not the game is easy or hard is based on opinion, not fact. Maybe take it to Is this an example?

(FWIW I played LBP when I was a kid and found it to be a bit hard, so I would personally say no.)

Trivia.Vinesauce claims this under Creator Backlash:

• Joel is sick and tired of BonziBUDDY. This is shown in his stream of "destroying" a Windows 7 installation, and showed sheer irritation that BonziBUDDY still worked, despite the fact that it looked like it didn't. The same also applies to Grand Dad.

Is this true? From what I’ve seen, Joel has referenced Bonzi in some later streams with no real resentment or hatred attached. There’s also nothing like what’s described in this example in the positive comment he left under the Lazy Game Reviews video on Bonzi here. I think the commenter might be mistaking meme-y jokes for a genuine hatred. With all that said, I am more of a casual Vinesauce fan and I’d love to see any contrary evidence.

I've been on an editing kick for Useful Notes pages pertaining to old consoles. I've been sure to double-check many facts, but I came across this in UsefulNotes.Atari Jaguar.

I haven't been able to verify the claim by the Highlander dev that the Jaguar CD had terrible hardware design. (The fact that the add-on likes to malfunction seems sound.) Does anyone have a source for this?

Edited by Karxrida on Nov 27th 2020 at 12:34:01 PM

Another Disney entry, from the Disney's Nine Old Men page:

• New Media Are Evil: Zigzagged. Frank Thomas was initially very critical about computer animation, but some time after he retired from the business, he became interested in it and began learning how to do it on his own time. Ward Kimball had also expressed that if he hadn't retired from animation, he would have been interested in learning it too. Marc Davis, on the other hand, absolutely loathed it and even bringing up the subject about him was known to make him very angry.

Is there a good source for this? I know Marc was very communicative with fans in his later years, but I'm not sure where this opinion can be traced back to. The whole entry was also added by the now-suspended Prinzenick, who's been known for putting dubious opinions elsewhere.

Edited by harryhenry on Nov 28th 2020 at 7:02:12 AM

This is on AlternativeForeignThemeSong.Anime And Manga:

• Doraemon: The English dub distributed by Viz Media opens with Doraemon telling us about the show's plot. This was made at the request of TV Asahi after a 38-year-old man uploaded the entire Pretty Cure series to Perfect Dark.

The cited article doesn't say these two incidents are connected.

I don't even see how they could be connected. Why would someone being arrested for piracy influence TV Asahi to request Viz change the Doraemon theme song?

On YMMV.Super Mario 64, back in July, ~Mega Mario Man added information claiming that the infamous "L Is Real 2401" sign was intended to read "A secret star lies here", with the edit reason "The sign uses SM 64's font and apparently this is what it hashes out to."

I am unable to find any source for this claim. My search also fails to turn up any solid evidence for the competing theory that it was supposed to read "Eternal Star". So I'm kinda stuck on what to do with it.

I heard that the L is Real phrase was actually put in there to screw with the fans and make them guess what it means.

Source, hope its legit.

Found this bit on Trivia.Pinky Elmyra And The Brain:

Which is seemingly contradicted by this bit on YMMV.Pinky Elmyra And The Brain:

This Executive Meddling example on Trivia.One More Day was apparently added by ~Revolutionary_Jack, whose edits to Spider-Man pages came up in a December 2018 ATT query. I can't find any such CBR post, and everything else on the Internet says it was Joe Quesada's idea to split Spidey and MJ up.

• According to Dan Slott in a series of CBR posts, the decision to end the marriage was something demanded by Marvel's executives, just a few years after the initial widely successful event of "The Wedding", and was something mandated to earlier editors and EIC of Spider-Man titles, and that it was a corporate decision to protect Spider-Man as a company mascot and brand, rather than merely Quesada's or other writer's desire to settle old fan grudges. While Quesada obviously believed in the decision and has no regrets over it, he wasn't the first editor tasked with ending the marriage^note Quesada also oversaw a run of comics that brought Spider-Man and MJ back together after their brief separation at the end of the 90s and also continued to produce Spider-Girl (a comic featuring Peter and MJ's children) despite weak sales and he made it clear that he did not dislike Mary-Jane as a character and considers her an essential supporting character in the Spider-Man mythos, and in all likelihood it would have happened under the hands of another editor anyway.

I mean, it is true that Marvel was trying to get rid of the Spider-Marriage since long before Quesada was EIC. The blog "Life of Reilly", on the Clone Saga, talks a lot about how it was one of the driving editorial forces behind that storyline.

I searched The Cutting Room Floor and The Spriters Resource extensively and can't find anything supporting this on Trivia.The Lion King:

• What Could Have Been: Dummied Out sprites for the "Simba's Destiny" level reveal that the monkeys were originally going to throw feces, but they were changed to rocks after Disney execs complained.