Fact Checking Thread

i think this might be a confused mix of various demonstrably true bits of info. revenge of the sith had a lot of deleted scenes cut to streamline the movie; they're available on the DVD. that said i'm not sure if they were cut by executive demand specifically, and most of the cut scenes involved padme forming the rebellion, not anakin's fall to the dark side. anakin's more complex motivations, including his suspicion that padme and obi-wan are having an affair, were added by the novelization. i think it's safe to cut that, or at least rewrite it to reflect the parts we know are true

Edited by NoUsername on Apr 28th 2022 at 11:52:33 AM

Yeah only reshoot I've heard of regarding ROTS is that Lucas forgot to include the scene of Obi-Wan stealing Anakin's lightsaber and had to do a pick up shot of that later but I don't know if that means there were any extensive reshoots

I removed the dubious What Could Have Been sub-bullet from Trivia.Revenge Of The Sith.

~I Am Not A Funguy, where did you read/hear that the Super Game Boy 2 was given out in Nintendo Power contests?

I can't find anything other than speculation about him likely being the father, no official confirmation or anything. So maybe cut?

On a different note, though, I've noticed on a lot of pages related to Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, there are a bunch of mentions that Judai/Jaden was supposed to end up with Asuka/Alexis. However, I've never heard this outside of this website and a lot of the entries bring up conflicting information on who confirmed this and how it was supposed to go.

For instance, here's this entry from Trivia.Yu Gi Oh GX under What Could Have Been that claims that the director wanted them together before deciding to go with the canon Jaden/Yubel:

• The director for GX had wanted to have Jaden and Alexis be together by show's end, but said they wrote themselves into a corner with Yubel and had no way to reconcile it. Thus, the two remained as Just Friends.

Then there's this part of the Fan-Preferred Couple entry on YMMV.Yu Gi Oh GX, specifically the note, which claims that the intended endgame was Judai/Asuka/Yubel but then the head writer decided against it. Extra confusing in that GX had a head writer change between seasons 3 and 4, but the entry doesn't specify which one it was:

• For the occasional threesome pairing, Judai/Asuka/Yubel^note The originally planned romantic endgame before the head writer decided that Asuka did not fit very well, due to the lack of scenes shared with Judai in season 3, eventually opting to focus on the more esoteric/protective Judai/Yubel pairing. seems to have gained traction in the recent years.

There's also another entry bringing it up on Characters.Yu Gi Oh GX Main Characters, which seems to imply it would've had Asuka go through with her Aborted Declaration of Love from the end of season 4:

• Ship Sinking: She backs out of confessing to Jaden at the last minute and goes to America to fulfill her own dreams. A bit ironic considering the original plans would have done the exact opposite: it was the introduction of Yubel in Season 3 and Jaden's general disinterest in dating (even though he was always friendly to her) that took the writers on a bit of a playing spree.

So overall, I'm pretty suspicious of this claim but wanted to bring it here before immediately deleting it in case someone actually has a source on hand.

I've seen this claim about Harvest of Shame and Coca-Cola repeated in a few places on the wiki:

Does anyone have a cite for this? It seems odd that Coca-Cola would have sponsored A Charlie Brown Christmas if this were the case, and there's no mention of Coca-Cola on the show's Wikipedia page. On top of that, the claim in the last sentence is patently false, making me wonder if whoever added this was editing with an agenda.

Edited by lee4hmz on May 5th 2022 at 4:17:13 AM

That seems wrong, but it looks less like an agenda and more like the troper just didn't know what they were talking about.

So I found this on Prehistoric Planet.

• Easter Egg: A green Triceratops toy can be seen in the hadrosaur migration sequence.

I didn't notice this when I watched the show, and I didn't find anything when I googled it. Can anyone confirm whether or not this is real, and maybe provide something like a screenshot?

I’ve been trying to work out if this Black Mirror example from “The Waldo Moment” is a shoehorn:

• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Waldo was based expressly on Boris Johnson, significantly predating his becoming Prime Minister in 2019.

Edited by Azorius24 on Jun 1st 2022 at 5:49:22 PM

:

Wikipedia cites:

https://www.timeout.com/london/tv-and-radio-guide/charlie-brooker-and-hayley-atwell-discuss-black-mirror

"Boris Johnson" is indeed mentioned.

Edited by Malady on Jun 1st 2022 at 9:59:08 AM

Thanks

I removed the sentence on NoExportForYou.Video Games claiming the Super Game Boy 2 was given out in Nintendo Power contests since I Am Not A Funguy didn't give a source.

I found this on CowboyBebopAtHisComputer.Video Games:

• City Connection: Destructoid claims that the game’s soundtrack consists of multiple unique licensed soundtracks, including Deep Purple's "Highway Star". Apparently they had not played more than 5 seconds of each of the stage (read: they have only watched the demo, which rarely lasts more than 5 seconds), or they would've realized that this is absolutely untrue. Sadly, The Other Wiki chose to parrot this incorrect fact and fends off any attempt to correct this.

RAMChYLD added this, and apparently tried to change edit Wikipedia's page on City Connection to this effect and got reverted (same username). alexdapineapple removed the example, saying "As far as I can tell, Wikipedia is actually correct here, and the misinformation stems from a confusion between the NES and Arcade versions of City Connection." Then RAMChYLD added it back with different wording. Is this true or not?

Anyone know if the wick from Kirk's Rock to Series.Kung Fu, is for Kung Fu The Movie?

Wikipedia has no sources for its info...

The Series.Kung Fu wick in FunnyAneurysmMoment.Film presumably is for that movie, but Wikipedia says nothing about strangulation?

FunnyAneurysmMoment.Film needs to be moved to HarsherInHindsight.Film

Edited by Nen_desharu on Jun 7th 2022 at 6:14:48 AM

Because the latter page already has examples, they should be merged.

That's what I meant.

From PopCultureUrbanLegends.Western Animation, under the SpongeBob SquarePants section.

• There's a rather notorious rumor about an unauthorized mockumentary based on the show called A Day With SpongeBob SquarePants. The movie has been confirmed to be an elaborate hoax, yet this does not stop rumors about the film existing in some form. Notably, Amazon has a listing for a DVD of the movie (predictably filled with joke reviews) and IMDb also has a page about it, which provides two unsourced rumors of its own:
  • That the movie was completed in 2011, but sentenced to The Shelf of Movie Languishment because Stephen Hillenburg and the rest of the crew hated it.
  • That Korra was meant to have an Early-Bird Cameo in the movie.

It's worth noting that while the film was never made, it wasn't exactly a hoax, as explained by Blameitonjorge in this video. It was a film idea that was supposedly going to be produced by an indie studio called Regal Films (which appears to have taken part part in a lot of shady dealings, but that's neither here or there), and had no involvement from Nickelodeon whatsoever. However, I'm trying to think of a way to reword the example to make this more clear.

About the two fake IMDB trivia entries, I remember in an earlier version the only trivia entry saying "This film does not exist", for what it's worth.

A Day with SpongeBob reached memetic status on the Lost Media Wiki. Maybe they can help you out with this one.

From Teenage Mutant Samurai Wombats:

"Gargoyles: An ancient clan of "garagates" (who lived alongside humans) awaken in the '90s, after a thousand years frozen in stone, with policewoman Elisa Maza as their human ally. Gargoyles was one of the few shows to acknowledge that a situation like this simply can't last forever, and slowly had the Gargoyles transition from complete secret, to urban myth, to publicly known... and feared. Greg Weisman also said they made the main characters a trio rather than a quartet precisely so they could stand apart from this trope's usual fare."

I'm confused by what the entry means by "main trio." From memory, there are initially five sentient gargoyles in the modern day group. I struggle to think of who the third main character would be, if Goliath and Elisa are the most prominent two(?).

I can't find any source for this example on But Not Too Black, and I'm not sure it's even a valid example of the trope:

• Nadia from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, was going to have curly hair, according to early drafts. She ended up having smooth hair and less dark skin, and the official explanation is that her character design was made simpler by the fear of the outsourced animation company quality of work.

UsefulNotes.Chernobyl...

https://www.alternatehistory.com/wiki/doku.php?id=alternate_history:no_it_doesn_t_actually_mean_wormwood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl#Etymology

Does polyn and / or Chernobyl mean any type of wormwood? If it does, what's the Ukrainian / Russian for grand wormwood?

More of a general concern than any particular example, but wiki-walking brought me to Baby Name Trend Killer today, and I found myself wondering... what's the actual evidence for any of these? Specifically, not a name declining in popularity (which can be objectively tracked), but tying it to a specific work of fiction or other cause. Seems like a potential Fan Myopia minefield.

Edited by nrjxll on Jun 26th 2022 at 8:38:38 AM

Looking at the page I have similar concerns. Let's take this entry from the Live-Action folder as an example:

* "Ellen" used to be a popular girls' name, but its popularity dropped sharply in 1997, after Ellen DeGeneres (and her character in the TV show Ellen) came out as a lesbian, after which the name became heavily associated with the lesbian community. Not helping the name's case is when The Ellen DeGeneres Show was caught up in a scandal in the early 2020s due to its toxic work environment on set.

This entry does link to statistics, specifically Behind the Name... But the name had its heyday in the US during the 50's, with about 5,000-6,000 new Ellens being born each year. Then it started sinking pretty consistently throughout the 60's and early 90's, with only a small increase from the 80's to the 90's. Then, the numbers of newborns named Ellen for each year 1994-2000 according to the Behind the Name page:

• 1994: 1,322
• 1995: 1,312
• 1996: 1,156
• 1997: 812
• 1998: 622
• 1999: 675
• 2000: 631

So I don't think it's fair to say that it "dropped sharply" following DeGeneres coming out in '97 since it already was in decline. She could possibly have contributed to it staying under the 700 mark ever since then, though...

EDIT: I have edited the entry to take this into account. Not sure if it actually should be deleted in case the evidence isn't conclusive enough. Either way we should probably take a look at the other examples as well in case there are other similar situations there.

Edited by SystemCellar on Jun 29th 2022 at 9:31:40 PM

Reading New Media Are Evil, and I think I found more editorial license here:

• FCC chairman Newton Minow's 1961 "Vast Wasteland" speech really wasn't all that important in the long run, was probably a decade too late to have the maximum impact, and unfair: you can take any medium and make it look bad by emphasizing the more vulgar output, not to mention that he illustrated the idea with the idea of staying through one station's daily broadcast schedule without using any discretion of choosing what to watch or even changing channels for alternatives. Plus, Minow's point was to remind TV broadcasters of their duty to the public, not a blanket condemnation of all television. Earlier in the speech he even said "When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better," and even admitted to being a fan of The Twilight Zone. So why was it considered such a landmark speech? Because the print media was terrified of TV taking their audience away, so naturally they decided a government official delivering a Take That! to television should be given maximum exposure.

This seems a bit off, because while I can see newspapers being angry about government officials saying even weakly positive things about TV as threatening, I'm not sure there's any proof they actually did. These days, the Wasteland Speech is pretty highly regarded by everyone.

Edited by lee4hmz on Jul 9th 2022 at 2:18:41 PM

Under Bowdlerise.Western Animation, for Steven Universe:

• In many countries where homosexuality is banned - or at least less accepted - Ruby and Sapphire's relationship is censored by making Ruby male. The writers tried to get around this by putting Ruby in a dress during the EXTREMELY plot-relevant Wedding Episode, but many countries cut either the first half of it, or just the entire thing.

However, there's an entry in CommonKnowledge.Western Animation that says this:

• No one can seem to find any evidence of foreign language dubs making Ruby a male character to erase the homosexual romance between her and Sapphire. As far as anyone can tell, it seems that this started as just a suspicion of how a localization trying to tone down the show's homosexual content could do it, which then got talked up so much that people started thinking it had actually happened, especially after Ruby wearing the dress at her and Sapphire's wedding was suspected to be specifically designed to prevent it.

Since the latter outright says the former is Common Knowledge and has no proof of happening, one of these has to be incorrect. Can anyone verify if there's any dub that did or didn't do this?

Edit: I just checked the She's a Man in Japan page, according to that the Russian dub gives Ruby an ambiguous voice and refers to her with a masculine pronoun once (by "the team," I assume that means the dub voice actors and not in-show), but apparently doesn't say she's a man outright? I guess if that's true that would mean both entries are sort of correct (there's no evidence of a dub outright making Ruby male but there is one that made her gender ambiguous), just that the first would need to be tweaked a little.

Edited by greatpikminfan on Jul 10th 2022 at 12:48:45 PM

Minow's speech was notable enough at the time for the boat on Gilligan's Island to be named after him as a gag - that's not hard evidence, but it does put the claim that it wasn't important at the time into question.