Line #13 Trivia/QI


1	* AccentDepundent: One episode has Creator/StephenFry jokily responding to Rich Hall talking about his aunt with "I didn't know you had an ant." Since in most people in Southern England pronounce "aunt" as "ahnt" (in a few dialects of American English, "aunt" is pronounced as "ahnt" too), that particular pronunciation sounds to Southern English ears more like to "ant" than anything else.
2	* {{Corpsing}}: "Just the Job" includes a clip of Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green going to pieces when a piece about the (very silly-sounding) oldest recording of the human voice was directly followed by an obituary.
3	* EditedForSyndication: The BBC America episodes are 40 minutes long (regular episode + commercials) and shown three at a time.
4	* ExecutiveMeddling: "The Immortal Bard" exists despite its tenuous link to the letter 'I' because Creator/TheBBC were planning a special season of programming based around Creator/WilliamShakespeare, and wanted an episode of ''QI'' as part of it. Similarly, "Just the Job" was part of a series of programmes about famous inventors.
5	* FalselyAdvertisedAccuracy:
6	** As Rich said, "a lot of it's lies," especially by going too far in the opposite direction of "common knowledge." It can also be a toss-up whether they expose an urban legend as a fraud or simply repeat it verbatim. Sometimes they later correct themselves on-show (often by [[ComedicSociopathy forfeiting a previously-correct answer]]), and sometimes they leave it for the DVD or not at all. For instance:
7	** Cruithne is identified as a terran satellite, which even at the time astronomers did not believe it to be, but a "quasi-satellite," a solar body with a close orbit, but distant enough to only weakly feel our gravity. It's also mispronounced, and corrected on-air to a slightly better mispronunciation. The series has re-addressed the question of how many moons the Earth has no less than four times, and if anything their answer has gotten more wrong each time:
8	*** Two moons: the other is Cruithne. It's actually an asteroid that orbits the Sun, but occasionally crosses Earth's orbital path.
9	*** Five moons: The Moon, Cruithne, plus three more: 2000PH5, 2000WN10, and 2002AA29. Again, these are asteroids that have a similar orbit with the Earth around the Sun.
10	*** 18,000 moons. The above mentioned plus thousands of extra asteroids. Such objects may occasionally fall into Earth's gravity for a short time before escaping. In particular was mentioned RH-120, which again orbits the Sun but occasionally makes close approaches to the Earth.
11	*** There are no moons. The Earth and the Moon are both planets, and form a binary system. This one is not as obviously wrong as the others, but nevertheless is a minority and eccentric scientific opinion.
12	*** Despite claiming to be acting "on the latest info from the scientific community," none of the above mentioned objects were ever considered to be permanent satellites of the Earth, much less moons. On the other hand, Stephen does admit they're claiming these things "just to confuse you."
13	** [[SedgwickSpeech Sedgwick]] is wrongly said to have died mid-word.
14	** Alan is told there's no Welsh word for blue. There is, and it corresponds exactly, unlike such words in many languages.
15	** Stephen at one point "corrects" Jimmy Carr (in a rather patronising manner) for saying that marsupials are mammals, which they absolutely are.
16	** Pretty much everything that Stephen says about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras Mithras]] in ''December'' is completely wrong.
17	** Stephen, describing three-strike laws, implies that the California law he describes applies across the US, and says a crime constitutes the third strike "no matter how trivial," even though, trivial as these crimes often seem, it must be a felony. (In fairness, there is another law that makes any theft by a convicted thief a felony, so some people have been sentenced to 25-to-life for what would be a petty theft (less than a year) anywhere else.)
18	** The show at one point addresses a letter calling them out for spreading an urban legend about the Flowerpot Men.
19	** Stephen says of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon [[CrowdSong iiis]], that there are no straight lines. He corrects this in a later episode; while curving pillars to make them look straight from certain vantage points is seen in some ancient buildings, the Parthenon is ''not'' one of them. (See [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entasis entasis]])
20	** Discussed in "Jingle Bells" when Stephen claims the twelve days of Christmas end on January 6th and is corrected by Danny Baker.
21	---> '''Phill Jupitus:''' Oh, the chatrooms will be ablaze now...
22	** The show claims that the Hundred Years' War started when Eleanor of Aquitaine left Louis VII of France and married Henry II of England. Rather odd, given that the Hundred Years' War happened more than two centuries after Louis and Eleanor divorced, and was declared by the ''English'' monarch, Edward III, due to his maternal claim to the throne. And no, it had nothing to do with Eleanor and Henry - he was the only living male descendent of his maternal grandfather, Philip IV of France. That said, there is enough evidence to suggest that Edward III only claimed the French Throne as a bluff so that he could be "negotiated" down to an expanded Aquitaine free from French suzerainty[[labelnote:*]]Which is exactly what happened in the Treaty of Bretigny of 1360[[/labelnote]]. So it could be said the Hundred Years' War had its roots in the marriage of Henry and Eleanor, but to say it started then requires a long term view of cause and effect. Although this is at best AccidentallyCorrectWriting since Stephen mentions none of this and implies the conflict began directly as a result of Henry and Eleanor's marriage.
23	** The show claims that one instance of [[HaveAGayOldTime ejaculation]] within the ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' canon is ambigious as to whether said exclamation is from Holmes or Watson. However, given the actual context of the story, Holmes realizing that [[spoiler: Hugh Boone and Neville St. Clair are the same man]], it's clearly Holmes ejaculating all over the place, not Watson.
24	** More cases and possible cases can be found [[http://www.qi.com/qi_quibble_blog/ here]].
25	** Eventually, this was acknowledged in "Knowledge" when talking about the half-life of facts. In fact, the panelists were given back the number of points that would statistically be owed to them over the years. Jo Brand received 84.73 points, Jimmy Carr received 43.58, the studio audience got 23.24, while this is just Graham Linehan's first ''QI'' appearance so he receives nothing. Alan however was awarded ''737.66 points''.[[note]]And even he continues to get things wrong and ends the episode at 689.66 points.[[/note]]
26	* DarkHorseVictory: In Death, [[spoiler:the audience]] wins.
27	* FridayNightDeathSlot: On BBC America, the show airs on Sunday mornings, though this may not be as much of a problem since people who get BBC America would also likely own [=DVRs=]: switched from 4:30 PM Thursdays to 9:30 AM Sundays, which makes the opening "Goooooooodeveninggoodeveninggoodevening!" a little awkward. They also air only once, whereas in the 4:30 slot they were repeated a few times.
28	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Because of [[NoExportForYou tremendous legal difficulties in importing the show to the US]], a small but persistent fanbase has always accessed the show via Website/YouTube. However, since the show was aired, briefly, on BBC America, its owners now have legal recourse to block it on that site for American viewers, forcing fans to find alternative means of sharing it.
29	* MissingEpisode:
30	** The episode "Idleness" was in limbo because the week before its broadcast panellist Jeremy Clarkson made controversial comments on ''The One Show'' about strikers that led to over 30,000 complaints, leading the BBC to postpone it. It was, however, accidentally uploaded to the iPlayer after it should have gone out, and somebody managed to get it on Website/YouTube before the BBC realised their mistake. It ultimately aired in May 2012, one week after the Shakespeare special.
31	** "Occult" is the only episode missing from BBC [=iPlayer=], a casualty of a cull of all shows Russell Brand appeared in after his sexual abuses officially came to light.
32	* NoExportForYou:
33	** The cost of clearing the rear-projected images for international showing has [[IncrediblyLamePun put paid]] to no fewer than four attempts to bring the programme stateside. However, Series F has been broadcast in New Zealand, and Australia broadcast Series F and G, then looped back to Series A - E before resuming with Series H. Also, the show has been remade for the Dutch market at least; the host of the Dutch version made a guest appearance during Series G to demonstrate the correct pronunciation of "[[Creator/VincentVanGogh van Gogh]]".
34	** A [[http://www.svt.se.s45.en.wbprx.com/intresseklubben/johan-wester-far-rad-av-stephen-fry Swedish version]] also started airing in 2012.
35	** BBC America showed Series J in early 2015. However, any previous series (or any episodes of the last two series that had been produced since J) have yet to be shown on BBC-A. There is still a [[http://www.bbcamerica.com/qi/ marker]] for the show on the BBC-A website, but it's nothing more than a blurb for Series J, and give an incorrect airing time.
36	** Series 9, 10 & 11 (a/k/a Series I, J & K) are available in the US via Creator/{{Hulu}}, but not the extended "XL" versions.
37	** After BBC America got the rights almost all the episodes on Website/YouTube have been taken down. It's not all bad news though. Series R onward remains mostly available on [=YouTube=] and almost everything up to and including Series N can be found on Dailymotion. With some exceptions, the latter collection largely consists of XL versions of the episodes.
38	* OrphanedReference: Series U's "Upside Down" episode has a RunningGag of Aisling Bea doing different poses that would make for good reaction Gifs to use online. As revealed on [[https://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/1744040645440803219 Twitter by the QI team]], this started as a joke before that episode's recording session, where Sandi noted that Aisling Bea starred in the most used QI Gif (with Alan and Sandi gif's in the top 5). Alan does briefly mention this list later on in the filmed episode, which might go past viewers' heads without knowing the above information, and one of the final shots of the panel is Aisling surrounded by short gifs that are highlights of the episode.
39	* PromotedFanboy: Corey Taylor of Music/{{Slipknot}} might seem like an odd choice for a ''QI'' panellist, but he's a longtime fan and fit in well during his appearance.
40	* RecycledScript: In an episode in the first series, Alan tells an anecdote about being given a chocolate bar by a nice old lady that turned out (after he'd eaten it) to be well past its use-by date, and "tasted like old ladies' cupboards". He reuses the same anecdote in a Series R episode, although given ''seventeen years'' passed between the two recordings, it can be presumed he had forgotten about the first time.
41	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
42	** Initially, John Lloyd's intention was to have Creator/MichaelPalin as the host, with Stephen and Alan as team captains (of the "smart" and "dumb" teams respectively). Palin declined to do it for two main reasons: he wasn't comfortable as the StraightMan, and he wanted to focus on his travel documentaries.
43	** A SpinOff called ''The QI Test'' was planned, which would have been broadcast during the daytime and featured members of the public on the panel. A non-broadcast pilot (hosted by someone other than Stephen) was recorded, but the series did not progress beyond that.

Context Trivia / QI