History Main / UrbanLegends

* Area51: A real-life US Air Force base located in Nevada. Due to its highly classified status, it's been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories which claim that it's being used by the US government to store captured alien spacecraft and reverse-engineer them into experimental military aircraft.
** RoswellThatEndsWell: A notorious UFO sighting that was reported near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Although the US military officially stated that the object was merely a weather balloon that fell out of the sky, popular conspiracy theories emerged which claimed that it was actually an alien spaceship that crash-landed and was then secretly transported to a military base (like Area 51).

* For a long time, the voice actor who voiced [[Advertising/AppleAndCinnaMon CinnaMon]] in the Kellogg's Apple Jacks commercials was unknown, leading to rumors that his identity was kept secret because he was a white man acting like a black Jamaican and the company wanted to avoid any accusations of racism. The voice actor was later identified as [[https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0027599/ Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter]] ([[https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0011095/ Jonathan Adams]] in the Cinnamon Jacks commercial), who is indeed Jamaican.

* For a long time, the voice actor who voiced [[Advertising/AppleAndCinnaMon CinnaMon]] in the Kellogg's Apple Jacks commercials was unknown, leading to rumors that his identity was kept secret because he was a white man acting like a black Jamaican and the company wanted to avoid any accusations of racism. The voice actor was later identified as [[https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0027599/ Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter]], who is indeed Jamaican.

* An episode of ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'' has Dr. Cox narrating the investigation of a particularly bizarre and complicated death, which is based on a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Opus well-known urban legend]] originally made up as fiction by an American forensic scientist.

** Case in point: in the earliest days of January 2015, [[TheWikiRule the parade's Wiki]] made a page announcing that a new ComicStrip/{{Garfield}} balloon would debut in the 2015 parade... just barely over a month after the ''last'' parade had happened, at a time when only the marching bands that would perform were known.[[note]]They're always selected a year in advance.[[/note]] Information about new franchises to be represented in the parade generally starts to bubble during the summer, and gradually increases over the year until Thanksgiving month, when all of the elements come together. It's unlikely that Garfield will return to the parade.[[note]]However, this didn't stop Macy's from resurrecting their Sinclair Dinosaur balloon for the 2015 parade after a 39-year absence.[[/note]]

* The cause of UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg fire is still unknown today. As such, it is positively drenched in Urban Legends, in varying degrees of ridiculousness. One of the most common is that ''Hindenburg'' was [[MadeOfExplodium painted in "Rocket Fuel" or "Thermite",]] which is [[BlatantLies completely false,]] but a surprisingly pervasive myth. It may have such wide acceptance because the fabric of the airship ''was'' in fact combustible, albeit very weakly. Furthermore, some go as far as to say that ''Hindenburg's'' hydrogen had nothing to do with the fire ''[[InsaneTrollLogic at all,]]'' which is absolutely untrue. They usually cite the fact that pure hydrogen burns a pale red color, but they neglect to mention that the 250 tons of airship and diesel fuel is what colored the flames bright orange. A less popular, but still widely believed myth is that ''Hindenburg'' was deliberately sabotaged, and that bits of a gun or a bomb were found in the wreck. The Nazis themselves liked to propagate this myth because they didn't want to admit their safety failure.

* Creator/KevinSmith was too large to fit into one seat on one infamous South West flight. It was in actuality most likely a poor assumption on the flight crew's part; he had originally booked two seats (he stated he merely like having the extra room and he has the money to do such a thing), and when his flight got changed, they only had one seat available. A member of the crew most likely saw he had two seats on his original flight, looked at his size and assumed he needed two seats and had him ejected. He tweeted a photo of himself fitting comfortably in one seat when he finally did fly out (he live tweeted the entire experience), but it didn't stop the story spreading that he was simply Too Fat To Fly.

* Certain circles of the internet got it in their heads that UsefulNotes/NaziGermany issued its troops chocolate which contained meth in order to increase their energy and decrease their empathy. While it's no secret that meth use was rampant within the Nazi war machine (though it wasn't exclusive to them either), meth was issued in the form of Pervitin tablets, which were colloquially known as "Panzerschokolade".[[labelnote:*]]Literally, "Tank Chocolate" or "Armor Chocolate", which can at least partially explain the misconception[[/labelnote]] The supposed bar of the stuff is an edit of a chocolate bar from Zotter, which was founded in Austria in ''1999''. Germany did, however, issue [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scho-Ka-Kola caffeinated chocolate]].

* DidAnastasiaSurvive: After the [[RulingFamilyMassacre massacre of the Romanov imperial dynasty]] during the [[UsefulNotes/RedOctober Russian Revolution]], rumors had soon emerged about [[UsefulNotes/AnastasiaNikolaevnaRomanova Grand Duchess Anastasia]] (Tsar Nicholas II's youngest daughter) somehow escaping alive from the carnage. Though such claims about the princess' alleged survival have been proven false.

* WhoShotJFK: The assassination of US President UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy in 1963 has inspired numerous conspiracy theories and speculation about who was responsible, how and why it happened. What all of these various theories have in common is a shared belief that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, and that he was merely a pawn of some sort of convoluted GovernmentConspiracy, serving their secretive political goals by killing Kennedy.

** In another episode, a couple of idiots kill a young woman who'd suffered a drug overdose by transfusing some of their own (incompatible) blood into her. They were imitating an urban legend about drugged-out rock stars "getting their blood replaced" as a remedy. Cue references to Film/PulpFiction.

* ''Series/MythBusters'', as noted above.
* ''WeirdUS'' and the travel-log books it's based on.

* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, being one of the most infamous men in history, has several legends surrounding him, naturally, most of which surround his death in Berlin 1945, as the Soviet army was practically pounding on his door. Most prominently, the legends say the Soviets NeverFoundTheBody and that he may have faked his death, either fleeing to South America or Antarctica to continue running the remnants of the Nazi regime in secret, in hopes of one day returning to launch a "Fourth Reich" against the world.

* Starting in the 2010s, it became popular to claim that national food chains like [=McDonald=]'s and Starbucks maintained "secret menus" of unadvertised items. This idea resulted in many headaches, since employees aren't trained to make these nonexistent "secret" items. Thus, if you tried to order one of these secret items by name, you'd have to either explain what's in it yourself or hope that one of the employees there had learned on their own how to make one (and considering that recipes for "secret" items vary from site to site, this gets even ''more'' complex). In terms of fast food, In & Out Burger is possibly the only one that actually has such a menu, however, it's primarily made up of variations of existing items and is an open secret to regulars. Occasionally, an item might get popular enough to be featured as an ''actual'' item, like when [=McDonald=]'s featured the [=McGangbang=] sandwich in several advertisements. In some cases, the "secret" item might just be completely impossible to make. For example, in early 2022, a hoax started to spread around [=TikTok=] detailing a Starbucks secret item called the "Under the Sea Refresher" (which was shown as a blue drink with a gummy worm in it). While this was clearly fake to those who knew their Starbucks drinks (Starbucks doesn't have any blue drinks, nor do they have gummy worms), many people didn't realize it was fake, leading to upset customers and [[https://www.newsweek.com/starbucks-customers-duped-ordering-made-under-sea-refresher-1679385 many]] [[https://www.distractify.com/p/is-the-under-the-sea-refresher-at-starbucks-real articles]] [[https://www.popsugar.com/food/starbucks-under-the-sea-refresher-tiktok-not-real-48666747 stating]] that it was fake.[[note]]If you ''really'' want to know what it is, it's just light blue Gatorade (the "Glacier Freeze" flavor), gummy worms, and water.[[/note]]

* Certain circles of the internet got it in their heads that Nazi Germany issued chocolate which contained meth. While it's no secret that meth use was rampant within the Nazi war machine (though it wasn't exclusive to them either), meth was issued in the form of Pervitin tablets, which were colloquially known as "Panzerschokolade".[[labelnote:*]]Literally, "Tank Chocolate" or "Armor Chocolate", which can at least partially explain the misconception[[/labelnote]] The supposed bar of the stuff is an edit of a chocolate bar from Zotter, which was founded in Austria in ''1999''. Germany did, however, issue [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scho-Ka-Kola caffeinated chocolate]].

* UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories: Most conspiracy theories are basically (political) urban legends, which allege that mainstream knowledge about various historical or current events are actually fabrications created by the (governmental) authorities, in order to cover up the "true" secret versions of the events from the general public.

* In the anime ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'', the [[TheMafia Mafia]] assassin Vino takes on the persona of the Rail Tracer, an urban legend about a monster that stalks trains. Even better, FridgeLogic makes one realize that he is the one who started his own urban legend. Awesome.

* ''{{LightNovel/Durarara}}'' is in large part about these.

* In ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'', [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1448 SCP-1448 ("LegendTripping")]] is an incorporeal entity that travels all over the world looking for remote places to inhabit. After SCP-1448 arrives in an area, it somehow starts spreading rumors among the local youth population that performing a specific magical ritual in its location will be effective, thus effectively creating a new urban legend.

** A college student killed his roommate so he could get an automatic 4.0 for the semester.
** A corpse was found buried in the end zone of Giants stadium, in imitation of an Urban Legend about the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.
** A man was killed by a chunk of "blue ice" falling from an airplane.

** In another episode, a couple of idiots killed a young woman who'd suffered a drug overdose by transfusing some of their own (incompatible) blood into her. They were imitating an urban legend about drugged-out rock stars "getting their blood replaced" as a remedy. Cue references to Film/PulpFiction.

* ''WeirdUS'' and the travel-log books its based on.

* RazorApples: Apocryphal tales about razor blades and poison being maliciously placed in Halloween candy and given to unsuspecting trick-or-treaters, which inspired paranoid adults to warn children about watching out for tampered candy.

** LivingShadow: Many people claim to have seen "shadow beings", which are apparently spiritual entities made of darkness. However there is an easy scientific explanation for this phenomenon; they're merely hallucinations, often resulting from {{sleep paralysis|Creature}}.

** LivingShadow: Many people claim to have seen "shadow beings", which are apparently spiritual entities made of darkness. However there is an easy scientific explanation for this phenomenon; they're merely hallucinations, often resulting from sleep paralysis.