The idea of a manga being outright forced to continue due to Executive Meddling is a common argument, especially concerning series from Shonen Jump, despite having virtually no evidence to this being the case outside of God Never Said That.
In the late '70s-early '80s, when UFO Robo Grendizer aired for the first time in Italy introducing the anime craze in the country, multiple magazines and newspapers spread around the weird concept that, since Japan was seen back then as a technology-heavy nation and the animation was considered not as clear and smooth as the one of most western cartoons, their cartoons were made by a computer after scanning a few character sketches and a plot summary. The whole idea was already debunked in 1979 when Rai (the main Italian TV network, whose channels aired most of the anime shows available back then) aired a special news broadcast showing how animators at Toei worked.
Works
The visuals for the opening of Ai Shite Night showed the main character Yakko with blonde hair (which is her hair color in the manga), instead of the brown she actually has in the anime. Since the Italian opening splices together footage from the show and from the original opening, thus showing both versions of Yakko in separate scenes, many Italian fans were confused. After the entire series was aired and proving that Yakko never dyes her hair blonde in any episode, rumors began spreading stating that the blond girl from the theme song was the host of a segment that was cut in the Italian dub, where scenes from each episode are used to do sexual education lessons (one example was from the episode where the ambiguous looking singer Sheila makes his debut, which allegedly had a segment about homosexuality at the end). Only years later, when the original manga was released in Italy and Internet allowed people to see the original version of the series, the truth came out.
A common rumor among Azumanga Daioh fans claims that Mr. Kimura is meant to be a parody of author Kiyohiko Azuma, and that the latter confirmed this in an interview called Azumanga Daigaku. However, while it sounds plausible given that Azuma previously wrote a teacher-student hentai under a pseudonym, there's no evidence that the interview was ever conducted.
Another common rumor is that the reason there isn't an adaptation of his other work Yotsuba&! was because he had an ancronimous working relationship with the series director of the Azumanga anime. In reality, he merely said that he felt the tone of the series wasn't well-suited for animation.
There is a rumor that Black Butler was originally supposed to be a Yaoi, but was changed to attract a wider audience, which some say is just an urban legend. There is evidence for both arguments, with the strongest evidence for the rumor being that the author has been known to draw Yaoi before.
A common rumor states that Akira Toriyama encouraged series creator Tite Kubo to keep going after Shueisha rejected his original pitch for the series. However, Kubo has never acknowledged this, not even in his tribute post after Toriyama died.
It's also rumored that both Gin Ichimaru and Kisuke Urahara were at one point planned to be the villains, as well as that storylines were planned for Ichigo's other classmates but Executive Meddling meant Kubo had to cut them. No reliable evidence has been presented for either claim (all that is known is that Aizen wasn't initially written as having been working in the shadows the whole time and that this was only decided on after Kubo had drawn him as dead).
There is a popular and uber-persistent rumor about Captain Tsubasa according to which the whole series is All Just a Dream, whose finale has Tsubasa waking up in a hospital to find out he was run over by the truck seen during the first episode and his legs were amputated in the accident (in another version, he knew this beforehand and the whole series is rather a dream provoked by his sadness of being unable to play soccer). While many people have stated that they saw or read the episode, this is in fact false, and there is nothing to prove it besides a poorly photoshopped picture of Tsubasa in a hospital bed. Back when the legend became popular, there were two anime adaptations of the manga and none of them ended like that, and there's the additional problem that the story of the manga had not even ended formally at that point (moreover, the scene with the truck is exclusive to the first anime and doesn't even come from the manga). The creator had been working in several sequels and spin-offs since the second series was released in 2002, and as of 2022, there is no proper series finale in the first place, neither with dreams nor without them.
In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the closing events in the Natagumo Mountain arc, in which Giyu incapacitated Shinobu to prevent her from carrying out her intention of killing Nezuko at first, has been so widespread in its fan edited format (where Giyu slaps Shinobu's butt) that it has surpassed meme status, where a good amount of people actually brought up the Mandela Effect, believing the fan edited butt slap to be real and the actual real scene, without the slap, to be some sort of TV edit or censorship.
A persistent rumor held that Adventure was only supposed to run for a dozen or so episodes, consisting only of the Devimon arc, but its popularity caused it to be extended into a full 50-episode-long series. No official statement has ever been found to support this, and the way anime series are made and planned would make this course of events highly unlikely.
Yet another rumor claimed that the franchise's first movie, included as part one of the localized Digimon: The Movie, was originally a stand-alone project whose good reception led to a full animated series being produced. This is false to the point that the production timeline doesn't even fit: the movie and the anime were produced more or less at the same time, and the former was shown at a film festival the day before the latter's first episode aired.
A schoolyard rumor claims that Tai and Kari's surname, Yagami, was changed to Kamiya in the dub because "Yagami" spelled backwards is "I'm a gay". The truth is much more boring: the change happened because the translators simply read the kanji in the wrong order ("ya-kami" - "kami-ya").
Additionally, a persistent rumor held that, in the Japanese version of Digimon Adventure, T.K. and Kari kiss in a scene that was supposedly censored out for the English version. Another version claims this happens instead in Digimon Adventure 02, but it is equally false. In fact, not only is this not true, but it was actually the dub that added much of the Ship Tease between the two, which wasn't present in the original.
Digimon Adventure 02 has had at least a couple of long-standing rumors about its Distant Finale; one involves an interview where someone who worked on the show said that TK/Kari and Izzy/Mimi were going to be two of the couples, along with the canon Ken/Yolei and Matt/Sora. Another one, commonly perpetuated by Tai/Sora fans, is that Sora and Matt are divorced. So far, there is no evidence that either rumor is true.
The fandom has the still-persistent belief that Renamon was male in the original Japanese. It doesn't help that at least one foreign version (the German one for example) has Renamon as a male character, which naturally caused confusion when one of its Digivolutions, Sakuyamon, appeared and looked very feminine (including breasts, which Renamon doesn't have).
Doraemon has two rumors regarding the series finale:
Similar to the supposed ending of Captain Tsubasa, Doraemon was also believed to end like this. The whole show is (depending on who tells it) either the delusion of a mentally ill kid, or more often, the dream of a boy in a coma. In both instances, Nobita is found bedridden with a Doraemon plushie, and sometimes the story fully conflates it with the Captain Tsubasa by adding that he has no legs. The story, however, does not end like that. The original TV show doesn't have a proper ending; in fact, it continued airing new episodes long after those rumors appeared, evidencing that those were being spread by older fans who grew out of Doraemon's main demographic and had no idea that the show was still making new material. The rumor is stronger in Latin America, fueled by the fact the dub had a hiatus that led people to believe the show ended. The manga never got a proper ending, while the anime has a special with a more And the Adventure Continues style ending.
Another rumor is way more optimistic. According to it, Doraemon starts malfunctioning as his batteries run out, and it then turns out batteries are linked to his memory, therefore replacing them will cause him to reboot. Nobita, not wanting to erase his memories, decides to study hard and do his best to find a way to repair his friend without rebooting his system. It leads to him becoming a successful engineer, and when he finally is able to fix the cosmic cat, Doraemon decides he no longer needs him and he decides to stay with Nobita's son instead. This rumor was created by a very convincing Doujinshi, which confused many people into believing it's the real deal even although it didn't pretend to be taken as the canon ending. However, to show how popular this urban legend was, when the 2014 movie Stand by Me Doraemon was announced in the west, many people over there assumed instantly that it would be a remake or movie adaptation of that ending, helped by the fact that the movie's title would actually fit that story nicely.
Dragon Ball AF was a rumor started after Dragon Ball GT ended, and still hasn't died. It's supposed to be a continuation of the story after GT, where Goku supposedly goes Super Saiyan 5. It went downhill after that. Fan Theories are confirmed, and every character reaches another level of Super Saiyan: 6, 7...50. However, AF simply does not exist. Even the name is a mystery. The ones who want to believe it exists say it's "After Future", the ones who don't say it's "April Fools". A doujinshi was created out of this theory by Toyble, which just made things worse as the art is really good, and resembles Akira Toriyama's. Some fans believed it to be official. The Daizenshuu EX website also played with this theory, which again, just made things worse.
Then there came Dragon BallHoshi, which just like AF doesn't exist. Yet trailers exist around the net, mostly scenes from Dragon Ball video game openings and movies unreleased outside Japan.
And there's the age-old "Toriyama wanted Dragon Ball to end at <insert arc here>*The Frieza and Android/Cell arcs are particularly common versions" rumor, originally stemming from a misunderstanding about a line in an interview with Toriyama published on the American edition of Shonen Jump, which circulated online in the early '00s and perpetuated by many fans to this day, yet rarely supported by factual evidence. In fact, the only original ending point per Word of God was after the original Dragon Ball search — the very first arc. The interview referred to such point as "the third year of work", and due to the American release of the manga publishing the Dragon Ball Z chapters before the Kid Goku arcs, many thought he was referring to the Frieza arc.
The people of the Hispanic Dragon BallBroken Base fell in love with this trope, due to using it whenever they could, well aware of the lack of effort from the fanbase about doing the research to prove them wrong. Examples of the rumors they've spread include the claim that Super Saiyan 3 Vegito could defeat Beerus according to Toriyama and the "fact" that Android 17 won the Tournament of Power because he's the Creator's Favorite (when in reality, he's not quite so high in standing), among other lies.
Dragon Ball rumors are so notorious in Mexico in particular that Mexican fans started making up very tongue-in-cheek ones while Super was airing there. Among the most well known of these parodies are:
Jiren would turn out to have an older brother known as "El Hermano" ("The Brother"), who was generally depicted as a parody of Itachi Uchiha.
There would be a reveal of a Greater-Scope Villain known as "El Padre Grande" ("The Big Father"), who would turn out to be directly or indirectly responsible for virtually all of the bad things that happened in the multiverse in general and Universe 7 in particular through his manipulations of Lord Zeno.
The most famous factoids about anime in Hungary is that some kids got themselves killed by imitating Dragon Ball characters and Dragon Ball Z was banned as a result. The first part is flat-out false, although there were real reports of one kid slitting his wrist and another threatening to commit suicide when DBZ was taken off the air (no follow-up report of actual deaths is known). DBZ was heavily scrutinized by out-of-touch media watchdogs, but an official ban was never imposed. The show was merely cancelled after it was forced to air at midnight with a 18+ rating certificate. Since kids couldn't tune in anymore, the network removed it from their schedule, but the option to continue the broadcast was always open. Years later DBZ received a 16+ rating, but the network decided not to bother with it anymore. The ensuing media fiasco and the suicide threats of an angry teenage DBZ fan were widely publicized in press, which spread the false rumor of a ban and of kids killing themselves.
Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone is often said to have been subtitled Return My Gohan!! in its original Japanese release. As explained by the fan site Kanzenshuu, the film was actually just called Dragon Ball Z there (something which writer Takao Koyama was specifically asked about in a 2006 interview). The article attributes the misconception to the back of the VHS release, which includes the text "Return My Gohan!!" near the top — an area where later Dragon Ball Z films would reprint their actual subtitles. The official Daizenshuu guidebooks would in turn refer to the movie as Return My Gohan!!, further spreading the rumor.
There's a widespread rumor that the reason the Dragon Half anime only got two episodes was because the animators were arrested for possession of drugs. This was the result of people taking a joke in the DVD Commentary literally. In reality, the reason was simply due to poor sales. (Two episode test runs were very common at the time, so this fate wasn't even uncommon.)
In the fanbase you'll sometimes hear the rumor that Winry's name was meant to be "Wendy", but it wasn't spelled correctly. Similarly, "Riza" was intended as "Liza" or "Lisa".
Despite many fans swearing that it's canon, there is no mention anywhere in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) that Envy's real name is "William Elric".
The supposedly unaired Hamtaro episode The Warm Scarf-Capade has remained a mystery for many years, and was eventually confirmed not to exist. Most likely it was either a misunderstood skip of the episode Laura's Valentine or a printing error.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: According to a lot of fans, Hirohiko Araki originally intended Josuke's mysterious savior to be Josuke himself having been send back in time, but abandoned the idea for some reason. However, there is no actual evidence Araki ever said this was the case.
Another one is that the reason Anasui was eventually given a masculine body when he initially had a more feminine one was that either his editors felt there were too many female characters or were uncomfortable with there possibly being a lesbian relationship between him and Jolyne. Araki denied this, saying that it was because he wanted Anasui to go "beyond the standard definition of genders". This idea would later be recycled for Dragona in The JOJOLands.
Kimagure Orange Road: There was a rumor in France that episode 35 was broadcast only once during the show's first French airing in 1990 and that it was edited so severely due to its content that it was about 15 minutes long. While some TV programmes did announce said episode, it was actually skipped and the next episode was aired in its place. It wasn't properly dubbed in French until 2006 for DVD with a different cast (save for Madoka and Hikaru).
A weird edit on the Italian Wikipedia page for Kirby: Right Back at Ya! mentioned an enormous quantity of side characters that were apparently edited out from the 4Kids dub, including multiple appearances of Gooey and Bukiset respectively as Kirby's sidekick and Knuckle Joe's rival, an entire Missing Episode about a penguin army declaring war on Dream Land and a pair of sword-wielding fairies, with detailed descriptions of where they supposedly appear in every single episode of the show. The fact that none of the descriptions actually match with any scene saw in the series can easily prove that was a giant lie.
There's an urban legend that K-On! is based on the diaries of five girls (Yuuko, Misaki, Setsu, Azuka, and Tsunade) who died in a plane crash. Not only is this story false, but there are no records of girls with those names dying in a plane crash.
There's a rumor in the Lucky Star fandom that in a manga omake, Word of God confirmed that Kagami has a one-sided crush on Konata (which of course is prime fuel for the shippers). Except... that this omake doesn't exist, but of course the shippers love to propagate the rumor without ever checking for a source. (The lack of scans online beyond the beginning of Volume 2 contributes to this.) An alternate version is that it was stated in an interview and the quote was more along the lines of "One of the girls has an unrequited crush on the other." but not it specifically being Kagami. Suffice to say, nobody ever managed to confirm this.
The original Magical Princess Minky Momo anime has been associated with the occurrence of earthquakes in Japan. When episode 46 first aired, an earthquake warning appeared on screen at one point. The final episode then aired on the same day as the Sea of Japan earthquake. 12 years later, the final episode re-aired at the same time the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck.
During the boom of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch in Spain in 2011, there was a wild rumor about an upcoming third season named Pichi Pichi Pitch Magic (or Magical, or Fantasy, according to other versions) that was going to introduce a red mermaid princess named Cora Izumi, possibly a relative to Hanon (with some versions expanding that the character had been created in a Japanese fan contest, the winner being an Italian girl residing in Japan), as well as a dark blue mermaid princess named Reiko Minami, supposedly a relative to Noel and Caren (as well as a Canon Immigrant from a supposed Japanese-exclusive videogame). As if the urban legend was not elaborate enough, it contained a supposed release date in Clan TV, where Mermaid Melody had been previously broadcast, and updates about how it might be delayed due to trouble with the distribution. None of this turned out to be real, as the anime never had a third season, but the two new mermaids gained such popularity that tons of fanart and fanfic were created about it, which only added to the confusion. The urban legend resurfaced in 2016 as a series of news claiming it was true, but by then few believed it.
My Hero Academia: A mistranslation of a chapter implied that All Might was in a relationship with his former sidekick Sir Nighteye (he literally states that he can't help Midoriya get an internship with him because they broke up, so it'd be awkward to ask, and Present Mic teases him about letting his feelings get in the way), which led many fans to believe and spread that All Might was interested in men. This was exacerbated when someone edited All Might's page on the wikia to add a false statement from Horikoshi in which he admits that All Might is interested in both men and women, but leaves his relationship with Nighteye ambiguous. While this was quickly cleared, some fans still believe in it.
In the early days of the fandom, there were rumors that Ash's Butterfree dies in the original Japanese version of "Bye Bye Butterfree" and that the English dub rewrote the script so that Butterfree lives. It was supposedly claimed that Butterfree die after mating like real butterflies do, and Ash is sad because he knows this is the last time he'll see his Butterfree alive. Once the Japanese episodes became more readily available, it became clear that this is not the case and Butterfree do indeed survive after mating. He even appears in a future intro with his mate and is reunited with Ash proper in the Grand Finale of Pokemon Journeys.
Rumors for Pokémon: The First Movie are that Mew in the Japanese version has a very horrible opinion on clones and says that they are "inferior and should die". In reality, according to Meowth (Nyarth in this version), its dialogue is:
The real ones are real. If the clones fight only using their bodies and not with skill, the real ones will never lose.
For years, fans spread persistent rumors that the Banned Episodes "The Legend of Dratini" and "Electric Soldier Porygon" were dubbed by 4Kids Entertainment, but later shelved due to the controversy towards both of them. However, Eric Stuart, voice actor of Brock and James, later confirmed at a convention that the The Legend of Dratini waswas never dubbed due to not meeting the standards of The Broadcast Standards and Practices division and what could be shown on Saturday morning television at the time. Electric Soldier Porygon episode appears to have not been dubbed either, in spite of some conflicting arguments from voice actors, as the original Japanese episode had been pulled from television a year before 4Kids officially received the anime's dubbing rights.
For a while after the Western release of Pokémon: I Choose You! some voices (that were even here on this very site) said that in the Japanese version there was a post-credits scene removed from the Western dubs featuring Giovanni and Mewtwo, hinting at a remake of the first movie being released in 2018. Reviews of the Japanese version such as Dogasu's make clear that the only thing said at the end in the Japanese version was "the next movie will be released next year" in text form, with no extra scene whatsoever. It's unknown from where the rumor came from, but a remake of the first movie came out anyway in 2019.
Back before the episode was dubbed, there was a rumor that in "Gotta Catch Ya Later!", Ash gives Misty his hat as a keepsake. This even appeared in fan-magazines and guides. Other rumors exist that the scene was cut by 4kids but exists in the Japanese version.
In the 2000s there was a rumor of a Japanese-only episode where Pikachu was confirmed to be female by turning into a human girl. No such episode exists and Ash's Pikachu was later confirmed to be male.
Back when the "Black and White" series was airing, there was a rumor about possibly replacing Ash with a new protagonist by the end of the Diamond and Pearl series. Likely like the Indigo example, this would have led him to win Sinnoh. It's also likely why Tobias, the trainer who beat Ash in Sinnoh, came out as he did: it was likely decided after they had written the Ash vs Paul battle and the writers realized they needed to knock out Ash so they could keep him going in Gen 5. However, no sources have been found that support this. Various other languages have their own take on the myth: the Italian version states that the writers didn't know how to give the new protagonist a Pikachu; the French and Spanish versions claim that Ash won a poll to stay on as the protagonist instead of being replaced; the German version simply states that the writers didn't have any ideas; and the Portuguese version claims that the staff feared the new protagonist would end up being a Replacement Scrappy. While the part about Tobias turned out to be false and unnecessary (as Ash remained the main character of Pokémon Journeys: The Series despite winning the Alola league), the rumor still came true in a way when it was announced that Pokémon Horizons: The Series would have a pair of new protagonists, Liko and Roy, replacing Ash.
There is a rumor that the Iron-Masked Marauder from Pokémon 4Ever is Jessie and James' Kid from the Future in the Japanese version, but it isn't true. This comes from several summaries (including Netflix's for a while) having incorrectly called him their descendant.
"The Breeding Center Secret" was rumored to be different in the Japanese version, as James says that he stole the Weepinbell that appears, but this is false. It's never explained how he got it until Johto.
There's a myth that someone on the writing staff, or the Japanese version of the anime, revealed the Noodle Incident between Professor Ivy and Brock. What it is differs, but the most commonly spouted one is that Ivy's lesbian.
There's an rumor that Brock was replaced with Tracey because the team wanted a more "white" character to appeal to international fans. Not only is it unsourced but Tracey's Japanese name being Japanese implies he's supposed to be the same ethnicity as Ash and Brock. This page though does seem to imply that the change was insisted upon uppee management.
A very persistent rumor circulated for years, particularly amongst Spanish-speaking circles, that Ash has been aging for years in the original Japanese dub and his infamous Not Allowed to Grow Up status is the result of dub changes. As anyone who has watched the series in Japanese knows, this is not true.
There are many rumors of alternate versions of the first episode where Gary tells Ash what Pokemon he got, or Professor Oak tells him in the next scene before Ash chooses Pikachu. No such alternate version has been proven to exist.
There existed a rumor that the Akanbe eyecatch from Smile Pretty Cure! existed on some prints of episode 9. Several tweets on the Precure hashtag on Twitter have debunked this, with the earliest mention of said eyecatch being on April 8, 2012, the airdate of episode 10.
A common fun fact mentioned regarding the anime film Red Line is that the movie laboured so long in production and was so lavishly-animated that its underperformance single-handedly caused the near-bankruptcy of its production studio Madhouse. Except not really. The studio's early 2010s problems and acquisition by Nippon TV have more to do with complex economic factors such as the aftershock of the 2008 recession, the decline of the DVD market, a general glut of underperforming titles in a stagnant anime market and the collapse of the Japanese bank Madhouse relied on for funding. While the movie did apparently underperform in its initial box office run, subsequent interviews indicate that good sales on home video and cable rerun rights took off most of the hurt and that the movie simply wasn't expensive enough to single-handedly bankrupt the company: the reports of it having a ludicrously high (for an original anime film) budget of $30 million come from a single, questionable source.
Prince Uranus refers to a fan-created rumor (from the long-defunct fan site "Save our Sailors") that was stated to have come from an unnamed Japanese magazine's article interviewing Naoko Takeuchi, who supposedly explained that Sailor Neptune's and Sailor Uranus's lesbian relationship was in fact that of Sailor Neptune and Prince Uranus, who had died and was reborn as a girl (as his sister's powers had passed on to him, causing him to be reborn as her). Needless to say, Sailor Moon fans were not amused, and the site that the rumor came from later quietly removed it.
A popular myth circulated online is that Naoko Takeuchi was "at a low place" and "had no friends," so she based the Sailor Senshi on girls she wished were her friends. Takeuchi was a successful manga artist prior to Sailor Moon, and also had office friends. Read this blog for more info.
Due to its immense success in Spain in 2006, the local fandom of Sgt. Frog used to be a mine of rumors about the anime's movies, especially whether, when and how many of them were going to be dubbed and distributed on the country. Back then, everybody was certain that at least the first movie was available in Spanish somewhere (among other things, because some events in the anime were openly connected to the movie, and it seemed weird that the latter had not been already bought). A posterior rumor would claim that the distribution company in charge of the series had in fact dubbed a few of the movies, only for them to toss the whole thing into the boxroom when they realized the anime's boom had passed and sales would be low. Amusingly, the truth is almost the opposite of all that has been said here: none of the movies was ever brought during the anime's heyday in Spain, with only the first movie being broadcast by Cartoon Network in 2010 when the fad was already gone, and it would not be until 2014 that the second and third moves were distributed by the company in a pretty random business move.
In late December 2022, rumors started that Tsukumizu's Shimeji Simulation would be adapted into an anime for the fall 2023 anime season, six years removed from the anime of his previous manga, Girls' Last Tour, and it would be announced in the following month's Comic Cune issue. No such announcement came at the time, but that didn't stop further rumors throughout the entirety of 2023 about the alleged anime adaptation, including rumors that it would be announced at Anime Expo or with the release of the final chapter, and White Fox, MAPPA, and Studio Shaft were all approached for the anime. 2023 passed, along with the manga's ending in November, and no anime announcement was ever made, leaving the anime's existence in question. However, in January 2024, it was confirmed that an anime was being discussed, so it may leave this territory.
Transformers: ★Headmasters: One rumor floating around, even mentioned in the liner notes of the Pioneer DVD releases, is that the early Headmasters episodes were based on unused scripts from the cancelled American cartoon. These scripts and their content have never been found.
An oft-claimed English-fanbase myth regarding ∀ Gundam is that main protagonist Loran Cehack was conceptualized as a woman, only for either Bandai or Sunrise to supposedly veto having a female protagonist for a Gundam show, and that Loran's distinctively feminine appearance and frequent cross-dressing were made out of spite toward this rejection. No Word of God statement has been sourced to substantiate this claim and early concept art for Loran have him look more masculine than the final design.
It is widely claimed among fans of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds that Crow's Remember the New Guy? and Spotlight-Stealing Squad status was the result of Executive Meddling due to the high sales of his cards, and that he was intended to be the Dark Signers Arc Villain rather than Rex Goodwin. While there does exist early concept art by Kazuki Takahashi labeling him as an antagonist, it was in the "low-level baddie who antagonizes Yusei and then quickly turns over a new leaf" sense, and there's no evidence he was meant to be more than that. And the idea that it was the result of the popularity of his archetype is flat-out impossible: Crow was introduced and clearly established as a good guy with Remember the New Guy? in full effect several weeks before his cards saw their first release. Furthermore, it would be a completely unprecedented event in the franchise, as countless characters with meta decks have fallen Out of Focus or swapped out their decks for worse ones, while countless characters with competitively nonviable decks have stayed prominent and kept getting wins. More or less, it's likely that Crow's role in the story was rewritten at some point, and the writing around him is indeed rushed and messy, but there's no credible evidence that it was Konami's fault or that he was going to be an out-and-out main antagonist.
English/Foreign dubs
A longstanding rumor says that an Italian dub of Akazukin Chacha, titled "L'adorabile Lily" ("The Adorable Lily"), aired only twice between 1994 and 1995 and then disappeared entirely from circulation. For years proofs of this circulated the web, like videos (like this one) that supposedly feature the Italian opening of the shownote Which is actually a fake, made by taking this song from a record of songs inspired by the French cartoon Seabert and editing it to remove the titular character's name from the lyrics, a transcription of the dub credits listing the Dub Name Changes and the voice actors (which can be actually found on MyAnimeList), and fake "translations" of all the episodes titles in Italian. The show actually never aired in Italy. The trolls who made up this rumor were so skilled that this anime still has an official page with the fake Italian title in Italian websites about anime or animated series, and it was also in the Italian Wikipedia for a long time.
There were rumors floating around of an Ocean pilot dub of Case Closed called "Conan's Capers" that edited and merged the first three episodes into one and was heavily edited to remove violence.
There was once a rumor floating around that the Canadian company Nelvana dubbed the Doctor Slump anime for Canadian distribution, but was never released and fell into obscurity. There were also various Wikipedia pages of some of the The Ocean Group actors that mentioned "Dr. Slump" on their filmography, which might've meant that the supposed Nelvana dub might've had a voice cast from Vancouver, just like Nelvana's dub of Cardcaptors. It is unknown if this dub rumor is true or not.
It was rumored that an English dub of Doraemon called The Adventures of Albert and Sydney aired in Barbados. For a change, this legend was confirmed true when several Canadian documents regarding production on the series resurfaced, revealing it was the dub of Doraemon commissioned for TBS that was supposed to air in the 80s.
An Italian commercial for action figures based on the first series uses a peculiar song that appears to be an unused Alternative Foreign Theme Song for the anime, with multiple people online claiming it was used as an ending theme song used when the regional TV network Junior TV began airing the show's second dub. Unfortunately, no other proof that this song was the theme song exists to this day, so it is unknown if this is true.
One reply from a IMDB message board thread about multiple English dubs of Dragon Ball Z mentioned two English dubs of the anime that was never heard anywhere else: A dub by a Hollywood company that only aired the first three episodes of the anime before being yanked off the air due to airing at a bad timeslot and low ratings, and a dub by AB Groupe (most likely) based on the French dub that only lasted the first 100 episodes. Both dubs were released/made in unknown years and they fell into obscurity after their releases, and the user might've heard about the dubs from somewhere or seen one of them, but there's no more info on those dubs to this day. The supposed Hollywood dub was likely conflated with Harmony Gold's dub of the 1986-1989 Dragon Ball anime, which actually was yanked off the air due to poor ratings after airing just five episodes and a pilot that stitched together the first and third movies.
A famous Latin American Dragon Ball rumor involves people having memories of the Brazilian premiere of episode 245 was interrupted by news coverage of the September 11th attacks. A fan later revealed that said episode was interrupted, but not on September 11th-the news report in question was about the US invasion of Iraq.
A decades-old urban legend in Spain claims that the Spanish version of the anime's first opening was performed by legendary rock band Barón Rojo, which is completely wrong: the theme was performed by Jordi Vila, who did both the Castillian and Catalonian versions, and Barón Rojo had absolutely nothing to do with the songs or Dragon Ball in general. This urban legend is so entrenched in Spanish pop culture that it doesn't matter how many times the band or anyone denies it, there are always people who believe on it as gospel, and it is likely there will always be until the end of times. Reportedly, the thing has even become a minor Berserk Button for the members of the band, who are sick and tired of being asked about it over and over.
Goku's scream as he activates Super Saiyan 3 caused his English voice actor Sean Schemmel to pass out due to the strain. While Schemmel did pass out once during recording a Super Saiyan transformation, it was during the dubbing of GT and was mostly the result of overwork, not the result of the voice itself being difficult.
Officially, the Italian dub of Dragon Ball GT removed the final scene from the last episode (a Clip Show of all the key moments from the franchise set to the series's theme song) and cuts after the narrator's commentary on Goku's sudden reappearance years after he went away. For years a rumor floated that a single rerun of the show in early 2007 actually featured the scene and turned it into the episode's ending theme song, replacing "Dan Dan Kokoro Hikareteku" with the show's Italian theme song and overlaying the credits on the left side of the screen, and for the occasion the credits listed the franchise's entire Italian voice cast with every single character listed in order of appearance. The only proof of these credits existing was the thumbnail of a Youtube video that allegedly featured a recording of them that has been removed since a long ago. After years of research, in early 2020 it was finally revealed that the video was only a fanmade AMV, with the main revealing point being that the credits were wrote using the font used for the credits of the first dub of the Dragon Ball Z movies, made by a different company than the show's dub. The extended ending was aired for the first time in Italy in January 2021.
The Big Cartoon Database claims that an English dub of Himitsu no Akko-chan exists under the title The Magic Mirror. While this is the title the show went under in several European countries such as Italy, there is no proof of such a dub exisiting. Also, the official English title is The Secrets of Akko-chan according to the official site of Toei Animation, but it was known as Akko-chan's Got A Secret! for a billingual release of the manga.
IMDB lists Canadian English dubs of several Jewelpet series (including the movie) on the resumes of several Canadian actors, including Shannon Chan-Kent as Garnet. Other than this, there is no evidence of said dubs existing.
Back in Lucky Star's heyday, there was a supposed official statement that the anime was going to be distributed in Spain by company So Good, with even a cast of voice actors announced. This statement was actually just a 2008 April's Fool stunt by prestigious otaku newsletter Ramen para Dos, but many people didn't get the memo and spread it as a fact through several forums, even although the supposed voice cast gave out very quickly how fake it was to anybody familiar with Spanish dubs (it contained a bizarre list of anime voice actors from both Madrid and Barcelona, two zones that very rarely make Cross-Regional Voice Acting in anime even whenever there are reasons to). The legend remained, however, and even today, there's people in Spain wondering what happened to the series and where is the purported dub.
There was a rumor of an early English dub of Lupin III: Part 1 that aired in 1972 and was titled "The Viper". Not much is known about this dub, but since there is no real proof of its existence, it is unknown if this dub is true or false.
For a long time, there was a rumor in Poland that Mokku of the Oak Tree, aside from the 1998 dub based on the Saban version, received another dub back in October 1984 that aired until January 1987 on TP1 (now TVP1). However, since the anime does not appear in any Polish TV schedule from 1984-1987 nor can it be found in a list of all the works dubbed by the studio that was supposedly responsible for that dub, the Polish version from that time most likely does not exist.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: There is a PSA known by fans as the "Evangelion AIDS PSA", which allegedly featured Spike Spencer and Tiffany Grant voicing Shinji and Asuka having sex. The PSA does indeed exist— it was intended to air on Texas radio in the 1990s, only to be banned due to the voice work sounding too realistic— but it had no overt connections to Evangelion outside of Spencer and Grant using voices that sound like Shinji and Asuka; it actually consisted simply of two unnamed teenagers having sex while a narrator notes that one is killing the other by inadvertently spreading HIV. Neither ADV and Gainax had any involvement. Part of the confusion probably comes from Grant, who joked that it was "Shinji and Asuka having sex, basically."
Prior to information on the Ocean pilot dub of the anime Ojamajo Doremi being revealed, there were rumors of a dub of the anime by Cloverway that dubbed and aired two seasons (even more episodes dubbed than the 4Kids dub) in Australia before being banned for the "sexual content" that occured in later seasons.
Samurai Pizza Cats is a Gag Dub of the anime Kyattou Ninden Teyandee (キャッ党 忍伝 てやんでえ, "Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee". For the longest time, it was thought that the reason this show had an English Gag Dub was because the translated scripts couldn't be used. Rumors abounded that the scripts were lost, never sent over, or were so poorly translated that they were incomprehensible. None of that is true; Saban asked if they could basically change the show into something Western audiences would appreciate, since a lot of the cultural and language puns in Japanese simply wouldn't carry over very well, and they were essentially given carte blanche to make any changes they wanted. They also got the blessing of the original series creator to do so. However, this belief was so common that even after the misconception has been corrected, there's still some people who think this is what happened.
Prior to the dub of the franchise distributed by WildBrain being announced, IMDB listed an English dub of Shimajiro and the Rainbow Oasis that used a Canadian cast. If one were to look at the roles, they are false: half appear to be mixed up with a Korean film called The Thieves, while the other half is the cast from Moshi Monsters.
Similarly, there was a rumor circulated in the late 2010s that Shimajiro had been dubbed by Cinar into The Adventures of Shimajiro, that aired on certain CBS affiliates during the Kidshow block in the late 90s. Some people even claimed to have episodes on VHS. This has been officially debunked by Benesse.
In 2016, a fan of Spellbound Magical Princess Lilprispread a rumor about a Canadian dub existing in a post about Bryn McAuley's birthday, showing images of Ringo alongside those of the voice actress. Some fans fell for it, until one person revealed it was a hoax, since the same user posted that Cardfight!! Vanguard would air on Nicktoons, when said show was a webseries in the United States, and also posted a similar rumor about a dub of the Smile Pretty Cure! movie existing.
the fan site Kanzenshuu, the film was actually just called Dragon Ball Z there (something which writer Takao Koyama was specifically asked about in a 2006 interview). The article attributes the misconception to the back of the VHS release, which includes the text "Return My Gohan!!" near the top — an area where later Dragon Ball Z films would reprint their actual subtitles. The official Daizenshuu guidebooks would in turn refer to the movie as Return My Gohan!!, further spreading the rumor.