Little-Known Facts: Difference between revisions

'''Lucy''': After it comes up the wind blows it around so it looks like it's coming down, but, actually, it comes up out of the ground, like grass. It comes up, Charlie Brown, snow comes up.

'''Charlie Brown''': Oh, good grief--

'''Lucy''': To loosen the bark so the tree will grow faster. Come along, Linus.|''[[You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (Theatre)|You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown]]'', "Little Known Facts"}}

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Takashi Yamazaki (or Zachary, if you prefer) in ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]'' was notorious for this.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''[[Transmetropolitan]]'' takes place far in the future. [[Future Imperfect|A lot of knowledge has either been lost or is no longer known commonly.]] After procuring some of Hitler's urine to do drugs to, one person explains to a friend the history of the man.

{{quote|"Who was Hitler?"

"History's a wonderful thing, see? We learn from it." }}

 

== [[Film]] ==

* Otto apparently did this a lot in ''[[A Fish Called Wanda]]''.

{{quote|'''Wanda Gershwitz''': Let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself". The London Underground is not a political movement. Those are mistakes. I looked 'em up.}}

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* ''[[The Areas of My Expertise]]'' is full of this, especially in the "Were You Aware Of It?" segments. Among other things, there's a fifty-first state inhabited by thunderbirds, and hobos tried to conquer the United States during the Great Depression.

** Continued in ''[[More Information Than You Require]]''. Thomas Jefferson got the idea for the Declaration of American Independence from mole-men, air conditioners were invented to make Brooklyn more violent, and [[Jonathan Coulton]] was created in a lab to be the ultimate destroyer of cats. There's a reason the series is called ''[[Complete World Knowledge]]''.

* Scott Adams of ''[[Dilbert]]'', in his book ''The Joy of Work'', lists several to try out on [[Too Dumb to Live]] co-workers, such as "French is exactly the same as Spanish, except with more words for cheeses."

* [[The Remarkable Millard Fillmore]] claims that Fillmore saved Andrew Jackson from assassination, wrestled with the emperor of Japan, and invented the t-shirt. If you check Amazon you'll see it has a three-star rating, due to complaints that it is "deceptively advertised" as an accurate biography. The cover illustration of Millard Fillmore riding a unicorn is apparently not enough of a clue.

* The misconception that [[John F. Kennedy]]'s famous proclamation "Ich bin ein Berliner" translated as "I am a jelly donut" may have been started in [[Len Deighton]]'s 1983 spy novel ''[[Bernard Samson Series|Berlin Game]]'', in which the main character makes that claim, and a review of the book in ''The New York Times'' referred to it as a reference to a real fact rather than something the character made up.

 

* RE the 'taking advantage of gullibility' thing: on ''[[Seinfeld]]'', Jerry told Elaine that the original title for Tolstoy's "War and Peace" was "War: What Is It Good For?".

* ''[[Look Around You]]'' was entirely made of this.

* [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All|Cliff Clavin]] from ''[[Cheers]]'' was chock full of these. It's a [[Self-Demonstrating Article|little known fact that "it's a little known fact" was practically his catchphrase.]]

* Doug from the redecorating reality show ''Trading Spaces'' series did this at least once when they started doing "family" versions of the series involving families with young children. When dealing with fabrics, he asked, with a completely straight face, if the kids had ever seen "a wild nylon".

* [[Saturday Night Live|DeepThoughts]] with [[Jack Handey]] bounced back and forth between this and simple inane musings.

** "If you met two guys on the street named Flippy and Hambone, which one would you think would like dolphins more? You'd guess Flippy, right? Well, you're wrong. It's Hambone."

* ''[[The Unbelievable Truth]]'' is ''about'' this trope. The object of the game is to hide four ''actual'' facts within a list of those that are, of course, Little Known.

* Mason from ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' is a total sucker for these. Did you know that when you put money in a parking meter, it goes down to pipes under the sidewalk? It's just as well, because when he's told the money stays in the meters, he goes around breaking them open with a [[Batter Up|baseball bat]]. He actually [[Dead to Begin With|died]] of his gullibility.

** There's also Deuce Loosely, a one-off character who annoys Sifl And Olly with little known facts about [[Pandaing to the Audience|pandas]] ("Like the shark, the panda has millions of teeth which it uses like a hacksaw to cut through bone, candy, and fences. The Chinese believe that if you find a discarded panda tooth, you have the power to summon [[Godzilla]].")

* During the final round of ''[[Talkin Bout Your Generation]]'', the host [[Shaun Micallef|Shaun]] prepares some "interesting" "facts" to share with the teams, claiming to source all of his information from [[Critical Research Failure|Wikipedia]].

** Also applies to facts about The Stig.

* In ''[[Community]]'' episode "[[Community/Recap/S1/E07 Introduction to Statistics|Introduction to Statistics]]", Jeff's first pick up line aimed at Slater consists of an intentionally erroneous one of these.

 

== [[Music]] ==

* ''[[Les Luthiers]]'' on La Gallina Que Dijo Eureka Routine: "To the children we must always tell the truth; of course, in terms they can't understand."

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

** Linus believes in the Great Pumpkin even though he made it up himself.

* Bucky from ''[[Get Fuzzy]]'', usually to Satchel.

 

== [[Radio]] ==

* Likewise, [http://drscience.com/wordpress/ "Dr. Science"] from [[Ducks Breath Mystery Theatre]] and [[NPR]], although he tends to be more interactive, with listeners writing in with questions designed to prompt a spew of twisted factoids.

 

* [[George Carlin]] regularly sprinkled supposed "truefax" lists in his comedy routines. One of the more memorable ones is the "It's No Bullshit" segment on ''Carlin On Campus'', parodying [[Ripley's Believe It or Not!]].

* One stand-up lamented how some accents lend themselves to this; someone with a thick British accent could convince you that cocoa comes from a coconut just be being insistent enough, and conversely nuclear technicians with certain Southern accents...

 

== [[Theater]] ==

* The trope name is a number from the musical ''[[Peanuts|You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown]]'', in which Lucy explains to Linus that fir trees give fur, bugs make the grass grow, and snow comes up out of the ground.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

*** Then there are "facts" made up solely to be against the other personality spheres, Wheatley, and even Chell herself.

* The "Red Freak Facts" on some screens in the Flash horror platformer [[The Bright in The Screen]].

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

Paul: "Well I know it. And I know it well. So it's a well-known fact." }}

* Numerous lists of these "facts" circulate the web. They almost invariably claim "A duck's quack [http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/duckecho.asp doesn't echo,] and nobody knows why."

* ''[[Snopes]]'' has a section of blatantly false "[http://www.snopes.com/lost/lost.asp Lost Legends]" (full title: '''[[Fun with Acronyms|T]]'''[[Fun with Acronyms|he]] '''[[Fun with Acronyms|R]]'''[[Fun with Acronyms|epository]] '''[[Fun with Acronyms|O]]'''[[Fun with Acronyms|f]] '''[[Fun with Acronyms|L]]'''[[Fun with Acronyms|ost]] '''[[Fun with Acronyms|L]]'''[[Fun with Acronyms|egends]]); its [http://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp purpose] is to demonstrate the danger of relying on a single source without applying common sense. (Ironically, one of the legends was taken for fact by the TV show ''Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed''.)

* [http://undeniablefacts.com/ undeniablefacts.com]

* [http://fakescience.tumblr.com/ fakescience] [[Tumblr]] blog, with such gems as the [http://fakescience.tumblr.com/post/16922595159/understand-groundhog-day Groundhog Day Chart].

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In ''[[Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends]]'', Bloo makes up a lot of stuff and believes all of it. Just one example is [[As Long as It Sounds Foreign|his idea of what "the European language" is]].

* In one episode of ''[[Cow and Chicken]]'', Chicken comes out with a bunch of these when he's convinced that he's a genius just because he put on glasses.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

** And I can totally lick my elbow.

** Hey, licking '''isn't''' kissing. Six ex-girlfriends told me that.

*** Or adding adjectives. Of course the Inuits have a language that's sentences are basically really long words, so technically you can have near-infinite numbers of "words" for snow, the same way you can have near-infinite number of sentences about snow in English, but the same applies to any given concept in existence.

*** [[Portal 2|They do, however, have 234 words for fudge.]]

** [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/263/what-are-the-nine-eskimo-words-for-snow "Observe the snow. It fornicates."] [[The Straight Dope|-- Cecil Adams]]

* The notion that a goldfish has a memory of only a [[Viewers Are Goldfish|few seconds]] is false. Actually, goldfish have fairly good memory for fish.

* [[Wikipedia|The Other Wiki]] has an entire page of [[wikipedia:List of common misconceptions|common misconceptions]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]