Fact Checking Thread

Cicadas are well known here in Michigan.

I agree that the language in Cicadian Rhythm about cicadas being little-known outside Asia can be adjusted or just cut.

I live in Toronto and every summer, I hear cicadas.

Therefore, stuff about cicadas in North America should be kept for Cicadian Rhythm.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Oct 12th 2023 at 11:59:59 AM

Hi. I've been thinking about this for a while, but there's an entry in The Artifact that I wanna bring up.

In the film folder, there's an entry for the 2005 version of RENT that says this:

"When RENT was adapted into a feature film in 2005, director Chris Columbus chose to put the play's Signature Song "Seasons of Love" in the very first scene, presumably because it was an iconic tune that most people in the audience would recognize. This also meant that the song effectively served no purpose anymore: the lyrics explicitly reference the passing of a single year (hence "525,600 minutes...") because the song was originally performed after intermission, and referred to the year-long Time Skip between the first and second acts. In the movie, only a week passes between acts, from Christmas Eve/Day to New Year's, while the second act spans the entire year that follows. This means that technically, the only appropriate place to put the song is at the very end of the film."

However I can point to lots of lines from both Happy New Year A & B in the original musical that indicate that only a week passes between acts there as well. (I believe that Seasons of Love is in fact referring to the year long period of act 2 instead)

I didn't want to unilaterally change the entry without asking for other people's interpretation, so I figured I'd bring it up here.

Yeah, it's explicit in the musical that a year passes throughout the entire musical — hence Mark singing that everything significant happened on "Christmas Eve last year" in "Halloween" as well as the "December 24th" Book Ends. It's not an intermission Time Skip, it's about the entire musical being set over the course of a year.

So there's this example on Aluminum Christmas Trees

• Another thing that surprises a lot of people is the fact that "I'm a Member of the Midnight Crew" was not made up for Homestuck: it was written by ragtime singer Eddie Norton in 1909, and the Midnight Crew are named after it, not the other way around. The a capella cover of the song usually featured in the comic is a modern performance, however, sung by David Ko in 2011. The original version is owned by Terezi as a vinyl record and can be listened to here.

The bit about the crew being named after the song was recently added

Now im not super familiar with homestuck, but it was my understanding that the guy who created the midnight crew didn't know about the song when they made them, and that the song was actually uncovered by one of the soundtrack composers.

Ive tried looking this up to see if im remembering right but can't find much on the subject

That's what I remember also.

This is on Trivia.Animaniacs 2020:

• Creator's Apathy: A varitaion. Acoording to an insider, most of the crew behind of the reboot disliked the original show, and they constantly made fun of it for its "lame" characters, thus a possible explanation for most of the controversial changes, like the absence of most of the original cast and the shift in humor.

Typos aside, is there evidence of this claim? The supposed "insider" isn't even linked to, so it's hard to say.

Also, I'm not sure this is even an example of Creator's Apathy, as the entry calls it a "varitaion", so the point may be moot.

I've never heard of this "insider" once in my life. It sounds like something made up by the reboot's small-yet-vocal hatedom.

I'll just remove it, then.

Does anyone else have anything to say about the homestuck example?

So I just found this example on Howard the Duck.

• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Due to its less-than-glorious reputation, it did not officially release on DVD until 2009.^note And is missing the Daffy Duck voices Mel Blanc recorded for the movie To everyone's shock, it actually got a Blu-ray release for the 30th anniversary, subverting the trope for now (then it got an Ultra HD Blu-ray release).

The note is what confuses me. While I haven't seen HTD, I can't find ANYTHING about Daffy being in the movie, and I also couldn't find any credits from Mel Blanc on Wikipedia or IMDB. Can anyone clarify what this example is referring to?

Edited by MrMediaGuy2 on Nov 12th 2023 at 9:58:09 AM

I wonder if they're somehow getting Howard the Duck confused with Gremlins 2: The New Batch. It sounds ridiculous, but it's the best I can come up with.

Looking up on IMDB, there's apparently a scene where a clip of Robin Hood Daffy playing on a TV, so maybe that's what it's referring to.

I don't see any mention of the scene on the alternate versions section on IMDB. Maybe there was an earlier release where you could more clearly hear Daffy's dialogue and later releases mixed that down?

Either way, the note's not really relevant to Keep Circulating the Tapes.

minor, but on Girls Aloud

'Banned in China: Allegedly banned from a school disco playlist at a school in the Walsall/Willenhall area for some reason.'

ive tried searching this up to see any reports on it but i can't even find any searches related to the group and walsall/willenhall, and the fact that it's alledged isn't giving me confidence. should i cut?

Sounds anecdotal and too small-scale to be relevant anyway.

On the trivia page for the Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire anime

• Creator Backlash: Andrew Rannells, the first English voice actor for Harley hated his time voicing the character, viewing him as a harmful stereotype of LGBT individuals, and in later years would decry the franchise as a whole for its tendency to play into stereotypes regarding gay men.

I looked up Andrew Rannells to see if he ever decried the entire franchise for homophobia but haven't found a source on it at all, just that he was critical pf his Pokémon roles.

that's what i thought too, will cut asap

I found a similar entry for Rannells for Pokémon Live!, but actually gives sources:

I don't know if he specifically brings up Harley there, but that might be a place to start.

On Chris Niosi's page:

Do you guys think we should do a fact check on this if it's possible?

Edited by gjjones on Nov 16th 2023 at 8:48:23 AM

AFAIK, his replacement as Byleth was purely because he broke his NDA, but the other stuff was because of the allegations.

Trivia.Kingdom Hearts I:

• Screwed by the Lawyers: The reason Mickey doesn't have a major role in the game is because he was being used for Capcom's Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, and they weren't willing to share the character rights with Square. After heavy negotiation, Capcom agreed to allow Mickey in one scene as long he was in silhouette.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • A popular story regarding the original concept for the game had Mickey as the main character, with Donald and Goofy helping out. The development team eventually became divided over whether Mickey or Donald should be the true main character. As a result, they compromised by creating Sora. No citations have been made towards where this story originated, on top of contradicting with the above red-tape with Capcom and how Mario was the basis for gameplay.

Does anyone have a source of the developers mentioning Capcom getting in the way of Mickey being in the first game? I feel like it'd be hypocritical for the ULOD example to claim that the story its mentioning has no citations while the story in the above example that it's holding up to be true above doesn't.

YMMV.Paper Mario Sticker Star has this under Memetic Mutation:

• Tower Power Pokey's Theme^Explanation The battle theme for Tower Power Pokey went memetic thanks to a rather... infamous animation by minus8 featuring Ankha Rule 34 set to this song.

Outside of the way the example is written that makes it look like it's an Interrupting Meme where you break into whatever discussion screaming "TOWER POWER POKEY'S THEME!" and everyone laughs, that is not the song used in the Ankha R34 animation. That animation uses Sandy Marton's "Camel By Camel".

I just looked it up (on private search of course) and apparently there's more than one minus8 Ankha... animation, and one of them does indeed use that song. I think it's an earlier, less memetic one, but still memetic enough that I saw people referencing it and the original song.

Edited by mightymewtron on Nov 29th 2023 at 3:17:00 PM