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Trivia / Bill Nye the Science Guy

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  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Shortly after Bill Nye Saves the World came around, there was an image floating around (intended as a transphobic Take That!) which showed a screenshot from this show on the left making it look like he said "gender is determined by chromosomes" with a screenshot from the "Genetics" episode, and one on the right with him saying it was on a spectrum using a screenshot from Saves the World, trying to make it look like he suddenly only changed his view because the world changed. While the latter image was more or less accurate, the former was not. Never in the original show did he actually say chromosomes determined gender; he briefly touched upon chromosomes defining aspects at birth, but the "quote" in the image was never actually said, directly or indirectly.
  • Cast the Expert: While not a trained scientist like his fictional counterpart in the sense that he has no PhD in a particular speciality, Bill is an actual mechanical engineer who worked at Boeing prior to the show and has a legitimately good understanding of science and especially physics.
  • He Also Did: Fans from outside the Seattle area are sometimes surprised when they find out about the mildly risque sketches Bill sometimes did for Almost Live!.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: The series has never gotten a proper home video release, being largely relegated to classroom-exclusive DVDs. Many of these individual DVDs are sold in high prices on the Disney online store, and the reasoning for this is due to Disney having to pay a percentage in royalties to Nye for the use of his likeness (which might also be the reason for the lack of a proper release). Select episodes are available on iTunes, but not all of them. Netflix used to stream most of the show for some time...until May 2019 when the rights expired. Not even Disney+ has it!
  • Licensed Game: One Edutainment GameBill Nye the Science Guy: Stop the Rock! — Released in 1996 for Windows 9x (backwards compatible with Windows 3.x) and Classic Mac OS by Pacific Interactive.
  • Science Marches On: Naturally, as the show is over twenty years old — certain theories and ideas presented on the show have since been modified and/or tossed outright. The most obvious example of course being Pluto's planetary status being downgraded. The most frequent is the use of the now discredited March of Progress visual (now known to be a highly inaccurate representation of evolution) in the opening. The show also once said that storing batteries in a refrigerator increases their longevity, which has since been disproven. Much of the series still retains its educational value despite this.

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