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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: How I Met Your Mother created an actual Canadian Sex Acts website.

Like many other long-running sitcoms, the longer How I Met Your Mother remained on the air, the more pieces of continuity and little in-jokes the show collected.

However, the creators of How I Met Your Mother, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, along with their writing staff, seemed to have even more of an affinity for in-jokes and hidden details than most shows. In the past, we’ve covered how they worked in an insult of the show by star Jason Segel into an actual episode of the show and how they hid an actual wedding proposal in an episode. The area, though, where they put a whole lot of attention behind was websites. Did the show seriously create a website explaining various Canadian Sex Acts?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: A woman accidentally got a speaking part in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

The world of film extras is a fascinating one. They mostly serve to fill up the background of crowd scenes (if you had only actors in every scene, then New York City would look awfully sparse) but in a lot of cases, extras are actors who just have not hit it big yet. A number of famous actors got their start working as extra, like Clint Eastwood, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. In a Movie Legends Revealed a while back, I even discussed how Joss Whedon literally cast one of the extras from The Avengers as a lead in his next movie. However, while some extras would love to get speaking roles in films, some extras are just there to make some quick cash. This, then, makes the story of Layla Sarakalo so fascinating. Read on to learn about the woman who accidentally got a speaking part in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: The Brady Bunch’s dog was replaced mid-episode because the original dog was killed.

Audiences are very familiar with actors being written off of television shows for all sorts of odd reasons (like Jay Thomas’ off-air insults of Rhea Perlman leading to him being fired from Cheers), but an odder phenomenon on TV is when characters just disappear from the show without any explanation, like Richie and Joanie’s older brother, Chuck, on Happy Days or the youngest Winslow sibling on Family Matters (whose abrupt departure ultimately led to her doing adult films to make ends meet). An example of this phenomenon are BOTH household pets on The Brady Bunch from the pilot episode, but the most tragic departure is that of Tiger, the Brady’s beloved dog.

Read on to learn why Tiger was written off and why they kept his doghouse around long after his departure!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Waldo (from Where’s Waldo? fame) appeared in Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.

Over the years, the term “easter egg” has become a common one in the world of popular culture, as the idea of hiding something interesting within your work for your fans to discover (like an Easter egg hunt) is an entertaining one for writers, artists and directors. We have featured a few notable ones over the years, like South Park’s hidden aliens, Paul McCartney’s hidden lentil soup recipe and Joe Walsh’s hidden campaign for President. However, one of the all-time strangest easter eggs has got to be Mel Gibson’s use of the children’s book character Waldo inside his 2006 film, Apocalypto.

Read on to see the rather controversial way that the character made his way into the film!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: Sally Jessy Raphael kept wearing glasses even after getting corrective eye surgery.

Sally Jessy Raphael was a popular daytime talk show host for two decades beginning in the 1980s.

She became especially well known for her distinctive bright red eyeglasses…

As the story goes, Raphael became SO identified with her eyeglasses that even after getting corrective eye surgery, her producers would not allow her to stop wearing her trademark pair of glasses.

Is that true?
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Mad Dog and Glory had to change its ending after test audiences couldn’t believe Robert DeNiro not holding his own against Bill Murray in a fight.

Test audiences can often dramatically the change the way that films end. We’ve featured a few notable ones over the years, like who Andie ends up with at the end of Pretty in Pink or who the villain was in Major League (although, contrary to popular belief, test audiences DIDN’T lead to George Reeves being cut from From Here to Eternity).

Test audiences were at play in a big way in the 1993 film, Mad Dog and Glory…

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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about music and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MUSIC URBAN LEGEND: “Maniac” was originally written about a serial killer.

“Maniac” was a major hit song by Michael Sembello that Sembello wrote with his writing partner, Dennis Matkosky.

It was featured prominently on the soundtrack to the hit film Flashdance, starring Jennifer Beals.

The song is best known for its catchy chorus:

She’s a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she’s dancing like she’s never danced before

Amazingly enough, though, the song “Maniac” was originally written about an ACTUAL maniac – a serial killer! Read on to see how it changed…
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: The fifth Simpsons‘ “Treehouse of Horror” was intentionally extra violent because of complaints over the series’ use of violence.

This past Sunday saw the airing of the remarkably twenty-seventh edition of The Simpsons‘ “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween special (it was actually not officially called “Treehouse of Horror” until the fifth installment. Originally it was officially called “The Simpsons Halloween Special”).

These Halloween specials have become as much of an institution as the Simpsons themselves. Since they are “out of continuity,” anything can happen to the Simpsons in the episodes, including rather violent deaths. When they first began doing these specials, because they were a lot more violent than a typical episode of the series, the specials contained warnings at the beginning of the episode that the show might not be appropriate for younger viewers. This was dropped after the first few specials. It is a bit amusing in retrospect, since the earliest specials are particularly tame not only compared to more recent Simpsons Halloween specials, but compared to television in general twenty-five years later. However, one of the earliest (and most acclaimed) Treehouse of Horrors was intentionally even more violent due to an odd source – the United States Congress! Read on to see how Congress led to the creation of “Treehouse of Horror V”
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about movies and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the movie urban legends featured so far.

MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Back to the Future Part II originally traveled to 1967.

As I wrote in an old Movie Legend, the original screenwriters of Back to the Future, Bob Gale and director Robert Zemeckis, never intended for the original film to have a sequel. In fact, Bob Gale gave an interesting interview where he discussed how they never would have ended the first film the way that they did if they intended on actually having a sequel. He noted:

Bob [Robert Zemeckis] has said many times before, if we knew we were going to make a part two, we would’ve never put Jennifer in the car at the end. When it came time for us to write part two, we didn’t know what we were gonna do with Jennifer. She wasn’t a very well-defined character, so we had no idea what to do with her. So, what do we do? Well, she’s sub-conscious for most of the film. [laughs]

By the time that the film was released on to VHS at the end of 1986, however, they had made a deal to put out a sequel to the film. Zemeckis at that point, though, was hard at work on the film that would eventually become Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, so he was not involved with the first crack at the screenplay for the sequel, which was at that time just referred to as “Number Two.” Gale’s first draft of the screenplay is pretty much the basic structure of the second film – Marty, Doc and Jennifer to 2015 (although it was October 7, 2015), Biff steals the Sports Almanac and goes back into the past to give it to his younger self, this creates an alternate 1985 and then Marty must go back to the past to stop Biff from giving the book to his younger self.

However, there was a major difference between the original draft and what was eventually made – Marty goes back to 1967!
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Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about toys and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of all toy urban legends featured so far!

TOY URBAN LEGEND: The original G.I. Joe had a scar on his face so that Hasbro could trademark the figure’s design.

In 1964, Hasbro launched their G.I. Joe: America’s Movable Fighting Man, the first poseable doll targeted specifically to boys as an “action figure.”

The toy was a smash success and is still being produced to this day, albeit in a different form.

An interesting facet of the toy is that “Joe” had a scar on his face? What was the somewhat surprisingly practical reason for it being there?
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