Fact Checking Thread

That link is broken for me.

Edited by jandn2014 on Apr 23rd 2021 at 11:21:20 AM

It's the damn special character. Look up "Pokemon controversy" on Bulbapedia. Here's an old news source about it too.

Relayed to Bulbagarden. We do have a confirmed case with Golbat on it (it's a Trainer card titled Koga's Ninja Trick). Checking for other cases, or if it's just that card.

Edit: Nope, just the trainer card.

Edited by Berrenta on Apr 23rd 2021 at 10:31:15 AM

Found this on The Computer Is a Lying Bastard.

• In the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV, when facing the CPU boss, Fusoya tells you to attack the defense node first instead of the attack node (but not both, or else the main CPU will spam a strong attack and then regenerate the nodes). That was fine and dandy on the original version, where the defense node healed the CPU by a lot and the attack node had weak offense, but in the DS, it's the other way around, the defense node gives crap healing instead and the attack node obliterates you, so you need to go for the attack node instead. The line should have been changed (That, or they did left it on purpose to screw players of the original version, which was the mission statement of the DS remake).

The bolded part is natter and should be obviously cut, but there is really some kind of interview/statement by Square Enix stating that they changed stuff to screw veteran players?

I found this on Breaking News Interruption:

• On June 3, 2020, all 3 Disney-owned networks (Disney Channel, Disney Junior, and Disney XD), aired a promotional interstitial celebrating African-American rights on loop for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in wake of Floyd's murder.
• On June 2, 2020, a rerun of the T.O.T.S. episode "Lost Lovey; Diggity Dog" was delayed about 10 minutes from its scheduled airtime in favor of showing an 8 minute and 46 second loop of a promotional interstitial celebrating African-American rights in wake of the murder of George Floyd.

I believe this is incorrect. It was the Viacom networks that aired the 8:46 PSAs, which are covered elsewhere on the page. I never saw anything about the Disney networks doing the same, and looking it up only informs me of the Nickelodeon ones. (Additionally, there's more than three Disney-owned networks.) This is the only bit I could find about Disney airing a BLM commercial.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 23rd 2021 at 3:13:36 PM

On Sleep Cute:

• Kageyama and Hinata in Haikyuu!! on the bus ride back from the first day of the Inter-high competition. This only happens in the manga however, prompting many fans to jokingly say the panel was 'too gay' for the animators to handle. However, this didn't stop the anime from showing Nishinoya sleeping on Tanaka's shoulder in Episode 19.

I added the last sentence myself (which I didn't realize until I checked the page history). I couldn't find anything online about this, and I believe this would be in chapter 48, but Hinata and Kameyama weren't sleeping on each other's shoulders in that chapter, only Nishinoya and Tanaka.

Haven't read it, but that looks like a ZCE anyway.

What context is it missing?

Multiple pages, including Early Adaptation Weirdness and Trivia.Captain N The Game Master, claim Nintendo made the Captain N: The Game Master creators call Pit "Kid Icarus" so they'd say the name of the game as much as possible. Is there a source for this?

Edited by rjd1922 on Sep 21st 2021 at 7:33:58 AM

The part that explains how the work is an example of Sleep Cute.

In other words, it's missing all the context.

EarlyInstallmentWeirdness.Super Mario Bros has a fun claim that "? blocks cannot be hit underwater; Mario just bumps into them as if they were plain".

I don't remember SMB1 or Lost Levels containing any ? blocks underwater — given how water works in that game, there'd be no point if they can't be opened. Maybe the game really is programmed that way, but if the behavior can only appear in ROM hacks I don't think it counts.

Edited by wingedcatgirl on May 3rd 2021 at 4:13:26 AM

It is a strong stretch anyway.

The only Mario game I even remember having ? blocks underwater was Super Mario World.

Official Mario Level Editor games Super Mario Maker and Super Mario Maker 2 allow players to add question blocks underwater.

Edited by Nen_desharu on May 6th 2021 at 12:26:08 PM

None of the underwater levels in SMB 1 has a ? block. I don't know about SMB 2/Lost Levels.

SMB 3 has underwater ? blocks, but they function normally.

Edited by Carnildo on May 7th 2021 at 1:25:04 AM

Yeah, I deleted it, it doesn't make sense.

The Moral Substitute (Food & Drink folder):

• Coffee is a common substitute for alcohol; the word "coffee" comes from an Arabic word for "wine", and was originally introduced to the West as "the wine of Arabia." It's popular with religions that forbid alcohol use, such as Islam and some Christian churches — although Mormonism bans both wine and coffee. (For a while, the Mormons drank ephedrines instead.)

The Arabic word for "wine" is "khamr": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khamr

The Arabic word for "coffee" is "qahwa": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coffee#Etymology

However, there's evidence that "qahwa" and "khamr" were originally synonyms and both meant "wine" or "the dark one" as mentioned in the Etymology section of the History of Coffee article in the Other Wiki.

It would be good if that example were clarified.

Edited by Nen_desharu on May 17th 2021 at 11:09:31 AM

From Peppa Pig:

• What Could Have Been:
  • Jimmy Savile of all people was meant to appear in the show. He declined, so Mr. Potato was made in his place. Considering that Savile was revealed to be a pedophile, this was definitely for the better.

What is the source of this? I took it at face value at first, even rewriting an example that appeared to compare the Mr. Potato character to Savile in order to make this supposed relation more clear (since, considering this is a show for toddlers and Mr. Potato is entirely non-malicious, the comparison is otherwise extremely tasteless). But checking Google for sources, I've found nothing indicating this was ever the case. The claim is repeated once again in the WMG page, but no source is given in any case.

Only connections I found on Google between Peppa Pig and Savile are from very dark and weird fanon sites. Sounds safe to cut this as just bizarre misinformation.

"Sesame Street" Cred says that Glay was on Yo Gabba Gabba. I was really curious how the hell a Japanese band with no English songs on an American kiddie show would work out but... Googling it gets me nothing other than TV Tropes, and the Wikipedia list of episodes doesn't list Glay as a guest nor the names of any of the band's members.

This one's much more minor, but ScrewedByTheLawyers.Western Animation includes this example:

• When Nintendo licensed the Super Mario Bros. for animated television, they included a contractual requirement that Bowser be referred to only as "King Koopa". This also applied to other media, including the Live-Action Adaptation movie. One can only wonder if this obligation carries on to Universal's rumored Animated Adaptation in the works. By The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, the requirement was softened enough to allow his full name "Bowser Koopa" to be used, though not "Bowser" alone.

While it does kinda sound like something Nintendo would do, and it'd explain some things, I've seen no evidence corroborating this anywhere. I always thought they went with "King Koopa" due to a research error or simple artistic choice (in the games themselves, the character has always been referred to as "Bowser" in the West since day one). The entry itself notes that the later series do occasionally use the name "Bowser".

I'm hesitant to just cut it because it does sound somewhat plausible, but Google turns up zilch.

I've found a couple of odd references on the pages involving Pinocchio, discussing problems with Christian Rub, the Austrian actor who voiced and modeled the character of Gepetto.

The boat incident is echoed on the Awesome page and I remember seeing a "Nice Character, Mean Actor" bullet that has since been removed. But is there anything to this?

The Holocaust thing is a load of hooey. (Don't quote that out of context, please) While it's iffy as to when the Holocaust actually began, most historians believe that while Jews were interned shortly after Kristallnacht in 1938, the camps didn't become places of nonstop slaughter and torture until 1942, after the invasion of Russia. Pinocchio was released in 1940, and the animation and recording was mostly done in 1939. According to his Wikipedia page, Mr. Rub had appeared in over 70 American films between 1933 (Hitler becoming Chancellor) and Pinocchio's release. While he certainly could have traveled back home during this time he likely spent most of his time stateside and heard what was going on in Germany second-hand.

In addition, support of Hitler in the West wasn't some insignificant lunatic fringe. Before joining the war, a lot of Americans supported Hitler, or at least believed he was within his rights to expand his borders. The cover of Captain America #1 was very controversial, and that was released in 1941.

Plus, of course, the true atrocities going on beyond "they're locked in work camps and some of them die" were unknown to the world at large until after the war was over, so neither Rub nor the Disney staff had any idea (and the worst of it happened long after Pinocchio was in theaters).

I've been looking through accounts of Pinocchio's production but I can't find a source on this. My personal theory is that Rub was a patriotic German that was stuck on the far side of the ocean due to the war and was pleased to hear of his leader's success in Europe and not shy of boasting about it. The Disney staff, many of whom may have had families in Europe (or maybe just taken by anti-German sentiment), rocked the boat to get back at him. Then after the war and the full scope of what was going on in Europe was known, that morphed into "Christian Rub was overjoyed that the Jews were being slaughtered! Those freedom-loving Disney guys sure put him in his place!". Maybe Rub still supported Hitler's actions after the war was over or maybe he came around to the true horror like most of the world - like I said, I can't find a source. This may have even been conflated with more verifiable similar stories (e.g. Walter Brennan cheering on hearing of Martin Luther King's assassination).

Any Disney nuts capable of shedding some light on this?

If you can't back any of it up, just cut it. I would hesitate to say that, if he had been supportive of Hitler, that it would simply make him a "patriotic Germany". As you mentioned, Kristallnacht had already happened, so anyone supportive of Hitler was at the very least okay with large scale anti-Semitic violence.

Edit: Doing some research of my own, this anecdote does show up in at least one published book about Disney, so I think that should serve as a good enough source.

Edited by TheMountainKing on May 28th 2021 at 4:56:50 AM

I also found similar claims on pages like Video Games stating that Executive Meddling by Nintendo is also the reason why in Captain N: The Game Master Pit is called "Kid Icarus" and many characters are stated to live in places named after their games (Simon lives in the land of Castlevania, Mega Man in the city of Mega Man, Mother Brain on Planet Metroid...)

I already questioned that earlier on this page.

On Ambiguously Human, it says that Katie Kaboom's monster transformations are a metaphor for All Periods Are PMS. Is that true? I thought it was just a parody of Teens Are Monsters or Bratty Teenage Daughter.