History Main / PoesLaw

* At least two of A.P. Herbert's ''Literature/UncommonLaw'' were reported elsewhere as real court cases. The most famous is "The Negotiable Cow", in which Albert Haddock writes a check to the Inland Revenue on the side of a cow. There was also "Is It a Free Country?" which shocked one American legal commentator who believed a British judge had actually said "It cannot be too clearly understood that this is ''not'' a free country, and it will be an evil day for the legal profession when it is."

* At least two of A.P. Herbert's ''Literature/MisleadingCasesInTheCommonLaw'' were reported elsewhere as real court cases. The most famous is "The Negotiable Cow", in which Albert Haddock writes a check to the Inland Revenue on the side of a cow. There was also "Is It a Free Country?" which shocked one American legal commentator who believed a British judge had actually said "It cannot be too clearly understood that this is ''not'' a free country, and it will be an evil day for the legal profession when it is."
* Frederick Crews wrote two satirical essays-''The Pooh Perplex'' and ''Postmodern Pooh''-mocking [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotDidactic obsessive over-analyzing]] and FauxSymbolism in literary circles by applying that same analysis style to ''Literature/WinnieThePooh'' and playing it with a straight face. Not only were both mistaken as being serious, but the second essay includes citations to '''actual major academics''' who unironically proposed the exact same EpilepticTrees Crews was pulling out of his ass as a joke.

* In 2020, UsefulNotes/{{KFC}} announced the [=KFConsole=], a new gaming system whose heatsink could be used to reheat food. Most people assumed it was a joke, but a surprising amount of people thought it was a serious attempt at a gaming system. Whatever it is, not much has been heard about the system since, so even if KFC was serious, they must have given up on it.

* At the First West Coast Computer Faire, Apple engineer Steve Wozniak had made several gag brochures for a successor to the MITS Altair called the "Zaltair." The ad copy was filled with absurd claims, like having 18 expansion card slots, a new "BAZIC" programming language that could be rewritten by the user, and a case that will "add to the decor of any living room." People bombarded the MITS stand with questions about the new model, and it wasn't until late in the day that anyone caught on to the joke. Today, these brochures are highly sought-after collector's items. What made it plausible was Woz's unorthodox sense of humor and that everything listed there ''did'' really exist at that time -- the fictional computer just had little to do with those features. Except maybe 18 expansion slots -- this was how many slots were in the full-feature ''Altair 8800'' MB, though not all of them could be used for expansion.[[note]]MITS' S-100 bus was a passive backplane, and at least three to four slots were taken up by the [[UsefulNotes/CentralProcessingUnit CPU]] board, [[UsefulNotes/RandomAccessMemory memory]] board, I/O board, etc.[[/note]] The first MediaNotes/ProgrammingLanguage that could be rewritten on the fly [[note]]John [=McCarthy=]'s Lisp[[/note]] was actually invented [[OlderThanTheythink back in '55]], but was virtually unknown in the microcomputer world, and a case might be successfully built that the case that will "add to the decor of any living room" was present in Woz's own work -- the fair was a venue where the Platform/AppleII was first unveiled, and it was the first fruit of Steve Jobs' famous "computer as appliance" philosophy.

* Creator/CharlesMartinet wrote "So long kinga Bowser!" in response to being asked what Mario says when he throws Bowser a great distance in ''VideoGame/SuperMario64''. However, not only is there clearly not an extra syllable between "King" and "Bowser", but [=MarioWiki=] has taken to ''formatting the quote exactly as Martinet formatted it with complete sincerity'', complete with the [[WantonCrueltyToTheCommonComma lack of comma]] and, in addition to the aforementioned non-existent syllable, the word not being capitalised or hyphenated. Oh, and despite what people who "mishear" the quote may lead you to think, no, he does not say "gay" either.