Random Useless Facts Thread

The earliest episodes of Sesame Street have “parental advisory” warnings on them due to it featuring the characters Cookie Monster smoking through a pipe and Grover hanging out with hippies.

David Bowie used to think he was being stalked by someone who is dressed like a giant pink rabbit. He noticed the fan at several recent concerts, but became alarmed when he got on a plane and the bunny was also on board.

@ILoveMyoozik  
There’s also Don Piano smashing his head against his piano that, y’know, you don’t want toddlers imitating. (And believe me, they did. It’s why his character was cut from the series.)

In Invader Zim, there was going to be part of an episode where Gir would appear covered in blood, and no one would know why he was covered in it.
 
Since they could not get this to appear in a full episode because they thought that Nickelodeon would give them trouble for it, they instead had Bloody Gir appear in very split-second frames of random episodes and random moments in time.
 

@ice1517  
Yep. Some can even be found in the opening a few times in a few episodes.

@mjangelvortex  
Honestly “Bloody Gir” sounds like something form a “lost Episodes” creepypasta.
 
Also another animation related fact.
 
During one episode of the Simpsons, the crew needed a pic of an injured Bart Simpson for the episode. However, when they received a drawing from a Korean animation studio, they were creeped out by it, as it featured Bart covered in blood, dirt and bruises in a disturbingly realistic fashion. To no surprise, they didn’t use that image in the episode.

@ice1517  
It kinda does, except it oddly enough actually happened and wasn’t a creepypasta.
 
And wow. I don’t blame them for not using that image in the episode. Do you know which episode this was supposed to happen in?

@mjangelvortex  
This is also reminding me of an old Nickelodeon movie that actually IS a lost episode turned creepypasta X)
 
And I think the episode was “When Flanders Failed”. Since the sub-plot for that episode is Bart trying to learn karate, I think that is why they needed pics of a beaten up Bart.

@ice1517  
Ah, okay. Thank you for telling me. I might want to check up trivia on that episode.
 
As for the Nickelodeon and creepy pasta thing, you’re talking about Cry Baby Lane, aren’t you? I guess that can make me segway into my own random fact.
 
In the year 2000, Nickelodeon aired a TV movie called Cry Baby Lane. It was a horror story about conjoined twins. One was good and the other was evil. When the two were separated, they died and were buried in different graves. The evil one proceeds to haunt and possess some children while the good twin set out to stop him.
 
When it aired then, it only aired once due to complaints from parents about it being too scary. So they more or less pretended it didn’t exist, leaving it to be mostly forgotten. But in 2011, someone on Reddit brought it up that they recorded the movie when it aired and uploaded it onto YouTube, proving that it did in fact exist.
 
After this happened, TeenNick did play it a few times on 2013 and 2015. They did air the movie again on NickSplat on Halloween as well from what I recall.

@mjangelvortex  
They mentioned it on the DVD commentary for it.
 
And yes, that is the one iwas referring to :D
 
Also I thought that it only got played once because the Nick executives simply forgot that they had the film, and the guy who made it simply thinking that Nick didn’t like the film and thought it was not worth repeating?
 
Also Segway into another banned Nick thing.
 
In the original airings of the SpongeBob episode “Just One Bite” (AKA the one where Squidward get’s addicted to Krabby Patties), when Squidward tried to break into the Krusty Krab at night, he triggers the security system, which has a bucket of gasoline fall on him, before a hand with a matchstick sets him on fire and causes and explosion until he get’s to the kitchen, where the same thing happens to him, before he then finds the vault of Krabby Patties.
 
Since this episode was aired around the same time as 9/11, and it was still fresh in peoples mind’s, later airing cut out this scene and just skipped ahead to Squidward opening the doors and heading to the vault, as they figured that showing scenes of someone being set of fire and exploding would make people uncomfortable because of how close it was to 9/11.

12 people die each year by getting crushed by vending machines

@ice1517  
Ah, okay.
 
Not only that but they didn’t want children to be playing with matches and gasoline.

On December 16 1997, Pokemon aired the episode “Dennō Senshu Porygon”, which featured a scene where Pikachu fires a thunderbolt attack against vaccine missiles, exploding them with large strobing flashes of red and blue light. 685 viewers were hospitalized due to this scene, having reported getting photosensitive epilepsy and seizures. Two were even hospitalized for weeks. As a result of this, the program went on a 4 month hiatus while the episode was never broadcasted again.

@ILoveMyoozik  
I remember hearing about that one.
 
Was that ever aired in English or in other countries?

@ice1517  
No, it was only aired in Japan. There is no English dub of it as far as I know, only the original version.
 
Additionally, despite not being part of the incident, the Pokemon Porygon was also banned from subsequent episodes, up to and including its evolutions Porygon2 and PorygonZ.

@ILoveMyoozik  
Really?
 
So Porygon never appeared in any of the anime episodes all because of that one episode?

@ice1517  
Yep, nor its evolutions despite not causing the explosion.

@ILoveMyoozik  
Well that sucks :c

@ice1517  
And, if I recall, Porygon 2 did show up in the anime…in a picture.

We’re talking about that infamous Porygon episode? More facts in regarding that incident.
 
After that event, the Pokemon anime went on hiatus for a while (and was nearly canceled). The episode that did after afterwards was Pikachu’s Goodbye. Kinda almost feels like the episode was sort of a meta way to both admitting that they screwed up with Pikachu as well as to ease their audience back into the show. The episode was a bit more slow and mellow in tone compared to a lot of the other episodes and as the dub title suggests, Pikachu almost left the cast.
 
That incident also screwed up the order of the episodes being aired as well. Also after that episode, they did went to all of the other episodes had edited the attack animations of certain Pokemon by either dimming the lighting, slowing the attack down, or both. (We obviously got these versions in the dubs.) It’s fairly easy to notice when rewatching the series. A lot of the attacks, especially Pikachu’s electric ones, are played very slowly.
 
Speaking of effects that can trigger seizures in some people, the recent Disney/Pixar film The Incredibles 2 has effects in it that did trigger seizures in a few audience members. I won’t be surprised if they alter those scenes and/or put a warning on it once it gets a home release.
 
And to add onto this, after the Porygon incident, it’s become the norm in Japan for anime to open with warnings to watch the series in a well lit room and far away from the television. Not just with Pokemon but in general.
 
Dragon Ball Kai edited some of the more extreme effects from the original Dragon Ball anime for a similar reason. Goku and Vegeta’s classic fight in the Saiyan saga had to remove some strobing effects that were in the original for example. And another example would be Gohan becoming a Super Saiyan 2. The original anime had the background flashing red and yellow very quickly during his transformation which was something they had to tone down for Kai.
 
Japan also edits TV shows and movies that have these strobing effects when they air on TV. Two examples that come to mind are the Lightsaber fights in Star Wars and the lightning effects in the Harry Potter films.
 
@ILoveMyoozik  
To make things even worse, a few of the news broadcasters played the exact same scene on the news which, y’know, gave even more people seizures.
 
@EPPony  
The Porygon family have also cameoed in some of the movies.

@mjangelvortex  
That’s a lot of info just for one fact, wow…

@mjangelvortex  
On the Incredibles 2 part, I heard that Disney actually got into a lot of trouble because how much flashing bright lights they had for certain scenes, like Elastigirl’s fight inside the Screenslavers hideout, and for not giving a warning about said scenes.
 
I think that the version in the UK had the lights dimmed down and slower to avoid this, and I think Disney replaced the old version with the version with the UK edit, and now advertised that it has an epilepsy warning.

@ice1517  
That’s good news.

Saul Goodman, from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, is a play on the phrase “s’all good, man.”

@AnCapGoku  
That’s a good pun.