Little-Known Facts: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

{{quote|''I imagine it must be a great temptation to misuse one's [[Lies to Children|parental authority]] for private jokes.''|'''[[Calvin and Hobbes|Bill Watterson]]'''}}

 

 

For the record, snow comes from ''up'', not down. That's why you never trust a quack like Lucy Van Pelt.

 

 

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

 

== [[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.

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

 

== [[Film]] ==

** The joke actually came from a DVD commentary for ''[[Spaced]]''. Nick Frost genuinely did believe that dogs can't look up.

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

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* The comedy book ''Great Lies To Tell Your Kids'' consists of these:

"Slugs are snails that couldn't afford the rent." }}

* Luna in ''[[Harry Potter]]'' was full of these, mostly focusing on bizarre animals.

* ''[[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 phrase "[[Little Known Fact]]" is used in a ''computer book'' of all things, where the author states that 0.6 times 3 is 1.799999999999998. [[Justified Trope|It's justified]] in that he's pointing out how storing non-whole numbers in a space- and processing-efficient way makes operations on them inexact, causing math glitches (which in most cases can be rounded away).

* The title character of the ''[[Hank the Cowdog]]'' series regularly tries to impress his sidekick, Drover, with exaggerated explanations of natural phenomenon. Drover, not being the smartest dog in the world, believes him.

 

* 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.

* 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."

* [[David Letterman]]'s "Fun Facts" sketches, which were made into a book. Examples include "''[[Match Game]]'' host Gene Rayburn's tombstone reads, 'Loving father, husband and ____.'," "Prior to 1936, elevators only went up, not down," and "For $25, New York will name a pothole after you."

* 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.

* 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]].

* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' had a [[Game Show]] sketch called "Common Knowledge" where the "correct" answers (that is, the answers the judges were looking for) were this. In the sketch, giving the actual correct answer counted as getting the question ''wrong'' (since "correct" was defined as "whatever [[Take That|a majority of high school seniors thought was the right answer]]"). This allowed a teenaged stoner to beat former UN Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick at the game.

* ''[[Top Gear]]'': This trope crops up on occasion. For example, the cup holders on a Ford Fiesta are the perfect fit for holding smoke grenades during a beach assault.

** Also applies to facts about The Stig.

 

== [[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]] ==

* Calvin's dad was notorious for these in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. Thanks to him, Calvin learns about the world only turning color in the 1930s (and pretty grainy color for a while, too), the sun setting every night in Flagstaff, Arizona ([[Depth Deception|Hold up a quarter, the sun's about the same size]]), wind being caused by [[Epileptic Trees|trees sneezing]] (not really, but the real answer is much more complicated), and babies being bought at Sears, as a kit (Calvin was a Blue Light Special from K-Mart, however. "Much cheaper, and almost as good"). Calvin's mom is usually around to correct things, though.

'''Mum''': Dear, if you don't know the answer, just tell him! }}

** What makes this even funnier is that Calvin's dad works as a patent lawyer, a job which requires a good deal of knowledge of technology and science, and as such could explain these things to Calvin if he really wanted to. Not to mention the fact that Calvin is [[Little Professor Dialog|likely to understand it]]. He won't tell you how a carburetor works, though. It's a secret.

** 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.

 

* 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]] ==

Humans can survive underwater, [[Captain Obvious|but not for very long]]. }}

** His fact regarding the melting point of tungsten ''is'' accurate, though. Well, it's only off by about a dozen degrees. Good enough, right?

*** 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]] ==

* Sir Miur in ''[[Harkovast]]'' is either using these, or just a [[Cloudcuckoolander]].

* This was a [[Running Gag]] in ''[[The Parking Lot Is Full]]'', and even ended the comic itself:

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Via ''[[Loading Ready Run]]'':

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."

* [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]] ==

* The first season of ''[[Planet Sketch]]'' had a series of sketches that revolved around a father telling these to his son, and usually ended with the son fleeing the room in panic.

* This was the whole point of the "Ask Dr. Stupid" segments on ''[[The Ren and Stimpy Show]]''. The first one explained why kids go to school: "Your parents are aliens, and while you're at school, they shed their human skins and breathe dryer lint!" Another said that camel humps are where gasoline comes from (one hump for regular, two for premium and unleaded). Even Stimpy himself didn't buy that one.

* This happened on a regular basis on ''[[King of the Hill]]'', and not just from Dale Gribble: pretty much every regular character had engaged in one of these in the series run. In one episode, this is partially averted when an oncologist tells Bobby that there's some ridiculous amount of intestine in a person, something like several thousand miles, to which Hank replies in common sense fashion that if that were true, a steak would have to shoot through a person at the speed of sound in order to make it out of someone by the next day.

* On ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', Garfield starred in a skit called "It Must Be True" featuring several of these. Among them, Wyoming doesn't actually exist: Amerigo Vespucci had extra space left over when drawing the map of America, so his cat gave him the idea to name the blank space Wyoming, which is Italian for "no state here" (as proof: have you ever met anyone from Wyoming? Of course not). The episode ends with Garfield claiming that dogs have no brains, then discovering that his entire audience is made of dogs, who proceed to clobber him for that one.

** Subverted in their knowledge of [[Everything Is Worse With Bears|seabears]]. Every single camping tip they stated turned out 100% factual.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

** 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.

* 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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Comedy Tropes]]