Pop Culture Urban Legends / Live-Action TV

In General:

• One long-held game show rumor involves a word-guessing game being played by a celebrity and a contestant, with the word in question being "Deer". The celebrity (usually Alan Alda, though others have been credited) gives the clue of "Doe", and the contestant (usually an African-American and/or Southerner) answers "Knob." No record of this ever happening on any show has come up, and complicating things further is the inconsistency regarding exactly what show it's said to have happened on — some say Password, while others say it occurred on a Dick Clark-hosted edition of Pyramid. What makes this unlikely to have happened on Pyramid is that the gameplay by design rarely called for one-word clues; furthermore, while Alda did compete on Pyramid a few times, there is no record of him having ever been on Password. Jamie Farr claims in his autobiography that it happened to him on a 1984 episode of Super Password, but 1.) His episodes have rerun many times and none of them show this happening, and 2.) The legend was already in circulation by this point.
• A famous clothing designer (most often Liz Claiborne or Calvin Klein, more recently whoever is the hot clothing designer) went on a talk show (often either Oprah Winfrey or Phil Donahue) and said their clothes weren't designed to be worn by (insert ethnic group here, usually large African-American women).
  • A similar incident happened for real in 2006 (long after the clothing-related legend started circulating) with alcohol rather than clothes, when a senior executive at the French champagne house Louis Roederer expressed some displeasure at the way that their hugely-expensive top-of-the-range "Cristal" blend had been taken up as a signifier for luxury and wealth by African-American rappers and R & B singers. A number of performers publicly announced a change of allegiance, most prominently Jay-Z.

By Series:

• Rumor has it that during a break in taping one episode of The $100,000 Pyramid, host Dick Clark engaged in a conversation with celebrity player Dick Cavett. At one point, the other celebrity player, Jamie Farr, remarks how it feels to be standing between "two of the biggest Dicks in show business." Has never been confirmed, though what helps this rumor lean into the "not true" territory is the fact that almost never have the celebrity players been both male or female — one is almost always male, and the other is almost always female (the only exceptions being all-celebrity editions, which feature both a male and female on their team, and those only ever happened during the $10,000 era of the early-mid '70s).
• A persistent rumor surrounding 'Allo 'Allo! is that Hans Geering saying "'Tler!" instead of "Heil Hitler" was a result of his actor, Sam Kelly, refusing to give the full salute due to being Jewish. Kelly insists the catchphrase is meant to emphasize Hans' laziness.
• Barney & Friends:
  • Longstanding rumors claim that a Barney suit actor was arrested for some drug-related offense, usually hiding cocaine in his costume's tail. There's no evidence that anything like this happened, and it most likely originated from misunderstood/misremembered news reports of drug dealers using Barney plushies as caches.
  • Similarly, it's been claimed that Barney once cussed out a child on live TV for whatever reason. Not only has no clip of this alleged event ever surfaced, there's no way this could happen for three reasons: first, Barney isn't broadcast live, so even if an actor playing him started swearing, it would never make it into the airings; second, Barney's voice is provided by a different actor than the person who wears the suit; third, the Barney suit is non-miked ^note (according to an interview with Bob West, it almost was during early stages of development for the Backyard Gang videos, but then West turned out to be too tall for the original costume, so David Voss was brought in to suit act Barney while West provided the voice), so nothing the suit actor says during shooting is captured.
  • Other dark rumors include a Barney suit actor being a pedophile, or committing murder, or hanging himself while wearing the costume.
    • On the same topic as above, another popular rumor is that during the 1930s, there was a serial killer named Barney who dressed up as a purple dinosaur that would kidnap kids in a local park and force them to be happy, otherwise they'd be raped and killed and their bodies would be dropped in a near-by river. Even ignoring how nonsensical this story is (there are almost no documented cases of a kidnapper playing snatch-and-grab with kids in a park, and even if one kidnapper were to do so, wearing a distinctive costume in an eye-catching color would be the dumbest thing one could do), there is no evidence this has ever happened.
  • There are also rumours that there was a banned episode where Barney told kids “a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet”, which was pulled after allegedly causing a rise in kidnappings. There is no evidence that this episode exists, nor that any Barney episode caused a rise in kidnappings.
• It's been rumored that Bear in the Big Blue House was cancelled due to the death of Lynne Thigpen, the voice of Luna. Noel McNeal debunked this in a TikTok video, claiming that they actually ended it because they thought the show had run long enough.
• Blue's Clues' original host, Steve Burns, left the show at the end of season 4 for reasons that weren't entirely clear at the time, resulting in a menagerie of early internet hoaxes, such as claiming that Burns died of a drug overdose, a car accident, via suicide, etc. (which never really made sense to begin with as his character was given a full send-off, and was thus not an accident). Burns has repeatedly had to explain over the years that he's very much alive, though it wasn't until 2014 that he publicly confirmed his reasoning for why he left: he was going bald, and didn't feel comfortable with the idea of kids watching him gradually lose his hair over time.
• It's a commonly circulated bit of trivia that the final role of Joe Turkel, known for Paths of Glory, The Shining, and Blade Runner, was playing the creepy janitor in a slasher film-inspired episode of Boy Meets World. The director of the episode says this isn't true and the part was played by a random unknown found by the casting agency.
• Degrassi
  • An oft-repeated behind-the-scenes tale is that in the late 1980s, Aaron Spelling attempted to purchase the rights to Degrassi Junior High/Degrassi High to make an American adaptation, but was denied, so instead he created Beverly Hills, 90210. This legend has persisted in the Degrassi fandom for years, and is even supported by Pat Mastroianni (who played Joey Jeremiah). However, co-creator Linda Schuyler denied that this ever occurred, though she expressed suspicion that he may have watched the show before making 90210. The extreme similarities in certain BH90210 season one plots to certain Degrassi Junior High plots may lend credence to her suspicions.
  • On the topic of Pat Mastroianni, a rumor has persisted to this day that he was fired from Degrassi: The Next Generation for stealing props and selling them on eBay. While Mastroianni has a history of selling and auctioning his own memorabilia, nobody involved with the show has ever spoken about any prop stealing occurring, and some fans have traced the origin of this rumor to a throwaway joke on Boycott The Caf, an old satirical, politically incorrect Degrassi website.
• Doctor Who has a few:
  • There's a long-standing legend that the original TARDIS police box prop was previously used in an episode or episodes of Dixon of Dock Green. In fact, it was built new for the show.
  • 1960s Doctor Who in colour. Various rumours have circulated about parts of or entire episodes of Hartnell and Troughton stories being made in colour as unbroadcast technical experiments. This never happened. The probable source of the rumour lies with unofficial colour films of location shooting for a couple of sixties stories, which were made by crew members or fans.
  • A persistent rumour is that the first season (or seasons) were broadcast live. It wasn't. It was recorded "as live" before broadcast. (Although many other early BBC productions were broadcast live, most notably the original version of The Quatermass Experiment, and in subsequent interviews some cast and crew members claimed Who was originally broadcast live, likely mixing it up with other shows they worked on.)
  • After "The Abominable Snowmen" was thrust into Missing Episode purgatory, fans started claiming that David Baron, who played Ralpachan in that serial, was actually Harold Pinter performing under a pseudonym. Pinter himself would go on to deny the rumor.
  • The "missing sixth episode" of "The Dæmons", set off by an April Fool's prank in a fanzine. The somewhat abrupt and ill-explained ending of the story, combined with its unusual length of five episodes, led to a fan rumour that it was made as a six-part story and then had the last two episodes crudely edited into one. This had happened a couple of times earlier in the show, with "Planet of Giants" and "The Dominators", but "The Dæmons" was written as broadcast.
  • There were several wild rumours involving the true authorship of the stories "Kinda" and "Snakedance", due to the unusually cerebral nature of the scripts and the fact that the writer, Christopher Bailey, didn't write very much else and quickly gave up scriptwriting for academia. It was commonly alleged in fandom that "Bailey" was a pseudonym for a very well-known person who didn't want to be known as a Who writer, with the most common targets being Kate Bush and Tom Stoppard. Bailey himself ultimately debunked the rumors by granting interviews in 2002 and 2011.
  • There was a fan rumour that "Terminus" was supposed to feature the return of the Ice Warriors. These turned out to be false.
  • Another old and now-discredited one is that in "Vengeance on Varos", a story which has always been controversial for its Family-Unfriendly Violence and the Crapsack World nature of its setting, the Sixth Doctor deliberately pushes two mooks into an acid bath, causing them to suffer gruesome and agonising deaths. In an era before home video release or on-demand streaming, many fans "remembered" this as happening, but on viewing the scene anticipating the horrific events it is clear that one of the mooks accidentally falls into the vat while fighting the Doctor, and then pulls the second mook into it in panic. The Doctor does, however, make a Bond One-Liner immediately afterwards, something which would be out of character for any incarnation except the Anti-Hero Substitute Six.
  • The "Cartmel Masterplan" is a rather complicated version of this, in that it's based on some truth but has been greatly exaggerated over time. The basic idea is that Andrew Cartmel, the script editor during the Seventh Doctor's era (1987-1989) wanted to increase the mystery of the Doctor's character and so was gradually building up to a revelation that the Doctor was in fact "more than just a Time Lord", being some kind of powerful mythic figure from the dawn of Gallifrey's history. This has led to a widespread belief that Cartmel would have ended his final season with this major reveal, only for the show to be cancelled before he could do so. This myth heavily informed a lot of Doctor Who fan works and theorising throughout the 1990s (especially the Doctor Who New Adventures). However, Cartmel himself has claimed that there was no real "masterplan" beyond simply doing a bit more to suggest that the Doctor was more mysterious and had more hidden aspects to his past than had been previously revealed (and, in fact, he has pointed out that there's a fundamental contradiction in the theory, in that if the idea was to make the Doctor more mysterious, then building up to some major paradigm-shifting revelation about him would completely undermine any mystery). Furthermore, despite being named for him Cartmel actually had very little to do with any "mythic Time Lord figure" ideas regarding the character, most of which came from writer Marc Platt.
  • A fan myth concerning "The Doctor's Daughter" states that incoming showrunner Steven Moffat learnt that the titular character, Jenny, was to be killed off at the end of the episode, and specifically requested that current showrunner Russell T Davies have her survive as he intended to use the character in the future. This is a result of Gossip Evolution: what actually happened was that Moffat made an offhand remark (after reading the script) that Davies had a habit of creating interesting characters then killing them off, and that prompted Davies to change his mind and have her come back to life at the end of the episode. When Moffat saw the episode go out, he was very surprised to find that Jenny now survived the episode, and was even more surprised to learn that he was the reason she did.
  • There's a common fandom claim that David Tennant would have stayed for Series 5 if he had known Steven Moffat was in charge and writing it. Russell T Davies in his memoir on the show, The Writer's Tale, and Moffat in a retrospective interview on his tenure both independently confirm that Tennant was in the know and decided he was more keen to watch the series under Moffat's run than be in it. What probably led to this rumor was an interview Tennant gave where he said that hearing what Moffat had planned "made him wobble" on his decision to leave, but that ultimately he still believed it was his time to go.
  • But the most notorious urban legends in Doctor Who fandom surround Missing Episodes, with wild tales of evil collectors or secret circles of fans who own copies of missing episodes and refuse to release them to the wider public.
    • In November 2013, tabloids the Daily Mail and the Mirror reported as news that a copy of the seven episodes of "Marco Polo", the earliest missing serial (and one of only three to have no existing footage whatsoever) had been found, recorded off-air by a handheld camera pointed at the TV screen. This was presumably a Chinese whisper based on the fact that many brief clips of footage have survived via this method — filmed by an anonymous Australian fan using an 8mm cine camera — but certainly not any full episodes.
    • Ever since the rediscovery of "The Enemy of the World" and "The Web of Fear", the fandom has been plagued by the "omnirumour", which, promoted by some well-known American geek news sites, alleges that most or all of the 1960s Missing Episodes have actually been found, but that it's been kept secret because the people in possession of them want more money and/or because The BBC wants to keep a guaranteed home video income stream by "finding" them gradually over the next few decades.
    • The "evil collector" legend actually achieved ostension in 2015, when the missing episode hunters who recovered the Nigerian copies of "The Web of Fear" revealed that Episode 3 of the story (one of the most sought-after of all Missing Episodes, since it features the first on-screen appearance of the iconic franchise character Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart) had been stolen between their discovery of the episodes and their official removal from their original location.
    • A more humorous legend which was a popular fandom in-joke but would occasionally be taken more seriously in other circles was that some lost episodes were "held hostage" by the late Robert Mugabe, former president of Zimbabwe!
  • Difficult negotiations with the estate of Terry Nation so the new series would be able to use the Daleks, combined with the species' relatively frequent appearances in the revival that averaged out at around once a year, led to the belief that the series was contractually obligated to have to use the Daleks at least once a year in order to keep the rights. This was debunked by Steven Moffat shortly before he left the position of showrunner, and it has been claimed that the real reason for the Daleks' much more frequent appearances in the new series is due to a combination of Running the Asylum and the species' iconic status as one of the Doctor's archenemies.
  • Fandom Memetic Mutation would have it that the Dalek that shoots the Doctor in "The Stolen Earth", nicknamed "Dalek Fred", didn't shout "EXTERMINATE!" before doing so. Re-watching the episode reveals otherwise.
• In August of 2022, a rumor circulated YouTube that Donkey Hodie had been cancelled. Several people (mainly people who did not know of Season 2 being greenlit) fell for the video that allegedly revealed this until the person who uploaded the video edited the description to mention that it actually got renewed. Even PBS Kids themselves had to step in and debunk the rumor after one such fan asked them about it.
• There's one about El Chavo del ocho, very popular on YouTube, about how the original show ends with the eponymous Chavo dead after he gets hit by a car. This is totally false; the original run ended with the trip to Acapulco three-parter. "Street child killed by car" does happen in the companion book El Diario del Chavo del Ocho, although to a friend of el Chavo, and before the events of the show.
• Fawlty Towers: Viewers claim there is a thirteenth episode that is missing, completed but not aired or in the hands of private collectors; titles given are "the Blackout" or "the Robbers". According to the official book Fawlty Towers Fully Booked, there was never any thirteenth episode.
• Friends:
  • A persistent rumor claims that Rachel's sister Jill, introduced in season 6, was supposed to have a much longer arc that was cut short because Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon didn't get along. Aniston and Witherspoon have debunked this, stating that they were actually good friends and eventually worked together on The Morning Show. Jill was only planned to appear in two episodes; while the producers were open to bringing her back, Witherspoon couldn't fit any further appearances into her schedule.
  • There was also a rumor that circulated during season 8 that Rachel would suffer Death by Childbirth, leaving Ross all alone to raise their child. There is no evidence that this plot development was ever planned.
  • Even on This Very Wiki, there's been a rumor that Chandler was originally going to be gay and him constantly being Mistaken for Gay throughout the show's run is a Development Gag. In reality, Chandler was always planned to be straight, though the creators did toy around with the idea of making him gay in pre-production.
• Gunsmoke:
  • Legend has it that John Wayne was offered the lead role of Gunsmoke. He wasn't even offered the role, as it wasn't common then for film actors to take on regular television roles (a one-shot guest appearance on an anthology series like Playhouse 90 or General Electric Theater would be more typical). This may have sprung from a genuine promo Wayne made which aired immediately before the television premiere in 1955 (which featured an entirely different cast from the radio version, which had been running since 1952) in which Wayne says he wishes he were starring in Gunsmoke but instead the lead will be played by James Arness.
  • In a more ridiculous example, one very strange legend claimed that Albert Einstein guest-starred once. This is derived from a joke that Brent Spiner made in an interview, riffing off the genuine time that Stephen Hawking made a cameo in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• A popular rumor online is that the titular character of Hannah Montana was named Alexis Texas in preproduction and she was quickly renamed when Disney discovered an adult film star already went by that name. That's not true. The series was already named Hannah Montana for at least two years before Alexis Texas had her film debut.
• Legend has it that Happy Days spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi was the most popular TV show in Korea because "Chachi" is similar to the Korean word for "penis". In reality, the show never aired on Korean television, nor was it ever dubbed in Korean.
• Hell's Kitchen:
  • The first contestant to pull a Rage Quit, Season 1's Jeff, was for years rumored to have started a fight with Gordon Ramsay (either in the parking lot, or in the corridor outside the kitchen) after he stormed out of the service, as the result of episode having a post-credits caption saying he left because of an injury. Years later, a former crew member indicated that the actual truth was more mundane, yet somehow also more embarrassing — Jeff was made to wait around backstage after he stormed out of the kitchen, until filming had stopped and Wendy had been eliminated in the usual manner. He then decided to storm up a flight of stairs to confront Ramsay one last time, but somehow lost his footing (possibly the result of Ramsay turning around to face him and Jeff instinctively flinching) then fell down the stairs and did a Face Plant.
  • The show's most infamous elimination, Season 6's Joseph, is claimed by some to have been faked by a ratings stunt, chiefly because of the major case of Law of Disproportionate Response that was involved, and also because people refused to believe that a former Marine could be so openly disrespectful to someone in an authority position. Fellow contestant Jim, who revealed after leaving the show how certain elements of the show were fixed, confirmed that Joseph's meltdown was absolutely the real deal, and other former contestants with military backgrounds pointed out that while most people learn a healthy respect for authority from serving their country, others can develop a disdain for people who haven't served in the military, and really don't take well to being ordered around by then.
  • Raj from Season 8 was such an utter Cloud Cuckoolander that, much like Joseph, a lot of viewers refused to believe he was a real chef and had to have been an actor. Whatever the producers' motivations for casting him on the show, there's a healthy amount of evidence showing him working as a chef at least as early as 1997 and as recently as 2021 (albeit most of it showing him working as a personal or corporate chef, likely explaining why he functioned so poorly as part of a brigade).
• In the mid-2010s, a rumor circulated the Japanese internet that Mana Ashida was one of the babies on Inai Inai Baa! during the Fuuka-chan era. This Yahoo Answers entry explains that Mana would've been too old to participate in the show in 2007, and that people were likely confusing this for Fuku Suzuki's appearance on the show, which happened in 2006.
• The Incredible Hulk (1977):
  • It's thought by some that the Hulk doesn't speak because of Lou Ferrigno being deaf. It does not help matters that his growls were provided by different actors. But that wasn't the reason. Ferrigno is deaf, but not completely - he still has 15% of his hearing and uses hearing aids, thus he's able to speak just fine. The reason the Hulk doesn't talk is because the writers and Stan Lee believed his manner of speech would sound ridiculous in live-action, while his vocal effects were done by different actors simply because it worked better, and Lou has actually voiced the Hulk in all of his later portrayals of the character. On top of that, he said himself that showing emotion without speaking was itself the hardest part of playing the character, further disproving this.
  • Many people believe Bill Bixby dying of cancer was the reason the fourth TV movie was cancelled, with even Lou Ferrigno himself echoing this sentiment on occasion. In actuality, the film was canned due to The Death of the Incredible Hulk receiving low ratings, and Bill's health began declining after the decision to axe the movie was already made.
• The Jeffersons: Mike Evans, who had originated the role of Lionel, left the show after the first season, only to return in time for the sixth. Since he co-created Good Times, which ended its run prior to the sixth season, the prevailing story is that he left to work on Good Times. Both Damon Evans, who took over the role of Lionel until the middle of season four, and Jimmie Walker have stated that this was false, and that Mike Evans was actually released from his contract because he'd threatened to quit if he wasn't given more money and/or screentime. The fact that Mike Evans returned to the Jeffersons after Good Times ended, was just a coincidence.
• The Italian TV show for kids La Melevisione (which, for non-Italian readers, can be described as a Mister Rogers' Neighborhood-like show with a fairytale setting) had a few urban legends around it.
  • One of the biggest ones focused around the replacement of the main host from Tonio Cartonio to Milo Cotogno. Most rumors stated that Danilo Bertazzi, the actor who played Tonio, was either kicked out from the show because he was gay (similarly to what happened to David Yost during Power Rangers Zeo) or was sent to rehab because he frequently used drugs behind the scenes and died shortly after. Both those versions was disproven: Danilo still appeared in a few other shows (including Trebisonda, basically an equivalent of Melevisione for teenagers, and later an actual return on the original show but as a completely different character) and in later years started appearing on various social media to confirm that the replacement was not caused by any of those stories. Albeit the fact that he is gay is indeed true.
  • Another rumor covers the fact that an episode of the show was among the many shows that were interrupted on September 11 2001 to talk about the World Trade Center plane crash, and how that show's interruption is how many children at the time were informed about it. The voice stated that the episode was interrupted during the recurring crafting segment, with Tonio saying "Now we take a yellow ribbon and..." before the interruption, with people literally going on Danilo's Facebook profile to ask him if he still remembers how the episode (which was apparently never reran) ends and what the yellow ribbon was for. Then Danilo answered that the "yellow ribbon" thing was a fabrication of someone's imagination when recalling the whole thing and the episode that was airing that day was a rerun of an older episode that has been rerun multiple times.
• There is an urban legend that claims King Koopa's Kool Kartoons was cancelled because, in response to a negative letter, the host (Patrick Pinney) replied, "Ok, ... you can say all you want about me, but I know where YOU live." before laughing evilly. This seemed unlikely for a few reasons. First off, there are reports of parents complaining about the show. None of them mentioned this alleged incident despite the fact such an incident would spark a media outcry. Secondly, sources conflict on whether the show was aired live or not. If it was not aired live, the scene would obviously never make it to the final product. Third, none of the staff members ever mentioned such an incident despite complaining about the original host Christopher Collins’ Depraved Kids' Show Host behavior. Fourth, the show’s producer, Christopher J. Brough, claims the show got cancelled thanks to a complaint from Michael Eisner (the then-CEO of Disney). The whole legend got ultimately debunked in November 2023, when a new snippet of the show was found revealing the real context of the line: a sketch where Koopa complains to a mail service because the tie-dye shirt he ordered is completely white, so the guy on the other side of the line, named Arthur, sprays him with dyed water via the phone receiver and then Koopa says "I know where you live Arthur! I'm dropping a pair of man-eater piranhas in your bathtub tonight, Arthur!"
• In the satirical Italian 90s TV show Mai Dire TV, the hosts usually commented and snarked at the most ridiculous stuff on Italian TV. One of the shows they frequently made fun of is an obscure Soap Opera titled "Sogni D'Amore" (Dreams of Love) that apparently aired on the obscure regional channel Rete 3 Manila. The quality of the soap (as shown in their footage) is atrocious: episodes no longer than three minutes, non-existent acting, absurd dialogues, main characters that change their first names over the course of the story, and the "plot" is all about a married couple making out, talking about sex, and cheating on each other. Many fans believed the soap opera was real and it even had a Wikipedia page for a while, even if there's no proof that it has ever existed at all (before Mai Dire TV, nobody had ever heard of it), and the cast is unknown. Others suspected that the writers of Mai Dire TV made up the whole thing and just hired some people to create the footage of a fake soap-opera. The truth was revealed between 2021 and 2023, between a few blog posts trying to find the truth behind the soap and the autobiography of the Mai Dire hosts released in early 2023: "Sogni D'Amore" was a joke series written and filmed by a cameraman who worked at the aforemented regional channel and his friends, who then decided to send their material to Mai Dire TV to see them react to it.
• Ms. Marvel (2022): "Kamala's powers were changed because of Reed Richards coming to the MCU, or Marvel Studios wanted to distance themselves from Inhumans". Ever since leaks and trailers revealed Kamala's power set change, many people peddled that statement as the likeliest reason for the lack of official statements on the matter. The claim is that Marvel Studios didn't want to have two headlining characters with Rubber Man abilities, nor wanted to be associated with the apparent "tainted" reputation of the Inhumans brand following its mandated push in the late 2010s by Ike Perlmutter. For nearly a year before its release, various commentators entertained the theory almost as if it was a fact. However, it quickly fell apart close to the series' release, with official statements from series producer Sana Amanat confirming that Reed Richards didn't factor into the change. Likewise, the appearance of Black Bolt in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness shows no aversion to using Inhuman mythology.
• A rumor that Mystery Science Theater 3000 enraged Joe Don Baker by riffing his movie Mitchell, to the point where Baker threatened to kill the Best Brains, circulated in fan spaces for years. There might be a grain of truth to this - according to Joel Hodgson, Baker did admit to a mutual acquaintance that he wasn't thrilled with the episode - but Baker has never made any public statement about MST3K, let alone threatening to murder Joel, Mike Nelson or anyone else involved in the show. Nelson believes that the story originated as a joke he'd made at a press conference soon after taking over hosting duties, that both reporters and fans of the show blew out of proportion.
• Subverted in the case of The Newlywed Game. On a 1977 episode, Bob Eubanks asked "What's the weirdest place you've ever had the urge to make whoopie?" to Hank and Olga Perez. Hank said "on the freeway", prompting laughter and remarks from Bob. Olga, meanwhile, misunderstood the question and said "In the ass". Bob fiercely denied this ever happened, offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove it, and even had a T-shirt made (She Never Said "In the Butt, Bob!"), yet in the early 2000s somebody caught footage of the moment on Game Show Network and Bob admitted defeat. Most likely Bob had had a hard time recalling the incident due to misremembered details told to him over the years — contrary to previously-held belief, the woman who said it was not black, did not speak with any kind of urban dialect^note One version of the story is that it was a black couple and it was the husband that said the line "Dat be da butt, Bob!", and did, in fact, say "in the ass", not "in the butt", with the offending word censored. The episode itself had been rerun on Game Show Network several times before, and the uncensored master tape appeared in the 2002 film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, based on the "autobiography" written by the show's producer, Chuck Barris.
• Pinwheel: Some webpages covering 1970s/1980s Nickelodeon claim that R.E.M. made an early appearance on the show. This is highly unlikely as REM did not form until around 1980 and many of the Pinwheel episodes were filmed in the late 1970s. This may be because they did make an appearance on another early Nickelodeon show, Livewire, in 1983.
• Power Rangers:
  • When season 2 of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers came out, the remaining "Zyu 2" Zord battles Super Sentai creator Toei Entertainment had created specifically for MMPR were either edited to have the villains battle the mechs from Gosei Sentai Dairanger instead, or unused altogether. For years, rumors persisted that one of the latter cases, Bloom of Doom, had Lokar, the Power Rangers counterpart of the Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger Big Bad Dai Satan, appear during her Zord battle. In February 2014, MMPR director/stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt released some of the unused Zyu 2 footage, including the Bloom of Doom Zord battle, in which Lokar does not appear.
  • Due to some loose ends from the finale of Power Rangers Zeo, there's been some speculation about what happened in the events leading up to Power Rangers Turbo. One of the most prominent rumors is about a series of shorts called "Scorpion Rain", made using Stock Footage and various Power Rangers toys to promote Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie in Australia. It later turned out to be a hoax, although "Forever Red" (written by one of the writers behind "Scorpion Rain") alludes to those events.
    • There were also long-standing rumors that this season would be the first without Toei, claiming Hasbro cut ties with the company following the move to Netflix.
• There was a rumor of this type concerning the Japanese version of Romper Room: allegedly, in one episode, Miss Midori, the show's host, asked the children if they knew any words beginning with the Japanese letter "ki", and a boy responded with "I know: kintama!", which is Japanese slang for testicles. Miss Midori then asked the boy if he could think of something a bit more kireina ("nice" in Japanese), prompting the boy to respond with "Kireina kintama!" ("Nice nuts!"). After cutting to a commercial break, the boy was replaced with a teddy bear.
• "Sabrina the Teenage Witch takes place in the same universe as Mortal Kombat: The Movie is a rumor that exploded on the Internet in The New '20s, thanks to a Tumblr post that took a screenshot of an episode of the show starring Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and claiming he has repisoed his role as Shang Tsung from the movie on the show and that the plot of his episode is that he steals Salem's soul and Sabrina has to promote Mortal Kombat tournament to get it back. This is definitely not true and the screenshot is from an episode where he plays a completely unrelated character.
• Saturday Night Live: Following Katy Perry's embarrassingly awkward May 20th, 2017 performance, rumours began to spread that Katy had planned to do a big dance routine with several drag queens, but co-performers Migos refused to be on stage with them, forcing her to improvise something at the last minute. While this does play into the "homophobic rapper" stereotype, there is no evidence to back this up and everyone involved have denied this ever happening.
• There are MANY urban legends and rumors about Sesame Street. The Muppet Wiki even has an entire category about them. Many are also on Snopes and some of the popular ones include an episode where Ernie dies, an episode where Bert and Ernie get married, and Cookie Monster being changed to the Veggie Monster, all of which are false. The rumor about a Muppet character appearing that is HIV-positive is actually true. However, she's exclusive to Takalani Sesame, the South African version of the show; since HIV/AIDS is a major problem over there.
  • Another rumor concerned one of the shorts on the show, "Cracks". Allegedly, according to a rumor, the short was pulled after 11 airings because it scared children. According to someone who knew the children of Caroll Spinney, the short actually was banned from airing because Sesame Workshop worried that the names of some of the animals the girl imagines in the cracks could unintentionally be mistaken for a drug reference.
• William Shatner is subject to two of these, both related to his appearance as a celebrity guest on a game show:
  • It was initially rumored that he was barred from appearing on The $10,000 Pyramid after screaming and throwing his chair in a fit of rage upon accidentally blurting out the answer to his teammate. However, TV programming schedules bear out that Shatner was a guest a few more times after this.
  • In November 1997, Shatner competed on a Celebrity Edition of Wheel of Fortune but had to leave partway through and had soap star Julie Pinson take his place for the rest of the episode. For many years it was rumored that he threw a temper tantrum over poor performance, similar to the above-mentioned Pyramid episode. However, a fan asked host Pat Sajak on Twitter about this, and he confirmed that Shatner had to leave early because the taping ran abnormally long and created a scheduling conflict. Furthermore, a recording of the episode uploaded to DailyMotion in 2021 finds Shatner leaving in a rather pleasant mood despite having no money at the time.
• There is absolutely no one who worked at Sprout named Jenna Wilson. And there is no Good Night Show character named Min played by said person.
• Star Trek:
  • One of the most persistent urban legends about Star Trek: Voyager is that Tom Paris is just a slightly tweaked version of Nick Locarno from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The First Duty" and that they made the changes to avoid paying royalties to the writers of that episode. This was mostly a result of Robert Duncan McNeill, who played Locarno in TNG, being cast as Paris. The truth is that while the character of Tom Paris was based on Locarno the producers of Voyager felt Locarno's character was "irredeemable", and McNeill only read for the part after several other auditions failed to find someone who met the criteria they were looking for. Additionally, Ronald D. Moore, who wrote "The First Duty", pointed out that his contract with Paramount meant he would not have been entitled to any royalties had they re-used Locarno.^note The royalties issue did prevent Paramount from using T'Pau from TOS's "Amok Time" as a regular character on Star Trek: Enterprise, but that situation came about because "Amok Time" was written by a freelance writer, Theodore Sturgeon.
    • This eventually ended up as an in-joke Development Gag in the fourth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, in which Locarno finally does reappear, voiced by McNeill (who had previously voiced Paris as a guest star in an earlier episode), and turns out to be the season's utterly vile Big Bad.
  • Various rumors circulate regarding the reason why Kes was written out of Voyager, the most popular one being that the show didn't have the budget for so many main characters and with the introduction of Seven of Nine in season 4, the writers had originally planned to kill of Harry Kim, only to backtrack when Garret Wang was featured in People's "50 Most Beautiful People" feature. The writers thus settled on writing out Kes to make room for Seven. However, in the 2020 book Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration, the show's cast would come clean and explain that during filming, Jennifer Lien's struggles with mental health problems and addiction had become apparent behind-the-scenes, and proved to be problematic enough that the production reluctantly decided to fire her. Presumably, the reason nobody went on the record before then was to protect Jennifer Lien, as her problems wouldn't become known to the public until well after the show ended.
  • Related to the above, it was rumored that Wang was chosen to be written out because of his habitual lateness and showing up hung-over for filming, with Kim's life being in danger after he gets a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong in the first half of the "Scorpion" two-parter supposedly being how he was going to be written out and replaced by Seven. While there were some on-set issues with Wang, they actually happened towards the start of Season 3, rather than the end, and he was never in any real danger of being fired over them. Kim's life being in danger in "Scorpion" was done purely for story reasons — to provide Janeway with a reason to want to ally with the Borg — and the fact that it happened to time with Ryan's arrival, Lien's departure, and the People Magazine article was entirely coincidental.
  • Early in 2001, rumors circulated that the finale of Voyager would see the ship's crew finally get back to Earth, only to be faced with the Sadistic Choice of either letting the planet be destroyed, or being locked into a "Groundhog Day" Loop and being forced to undertake their journey across the galaxy for all eternity, with the crew choosing the latter option and leading to the show ending on Voyager finding itself next to the Caretaker's array once again, and the crew now having no knowledge of anything that had transpired in the show after the ship was transported to the Delta Quadrant. The show's actual finale, "Endgame" featured a very different storyline (albeit one that still involved time-travel), which resulted in persistent rumors that UPN vetoed the supposedly intended finale. The show's writers later confirmed that while a "time loop" ending was one of many options considered for the finale, it was rejected because it was deemed too similar to TNG's "Cause and Effect", and they knew UPN probably would have vetoed it regardless.
  • It's commonly assumed by Star Trek fans that the instrumental "Archer's Theme" was originally written to be the opening credits theme for Star Trek: Enterprise but was replaced by the Russell Watson cover "Where My Heart Will Take Me". Fairly plausible, as it syncs up with the opening credits perfectly, and a variation plays over the closing credits, but not actually true. According to composer Dennis McCarthy, he created "Archer's Theme" at a fairly late stage, and actually wrote it to match the opening credits rather than the other way around. The actual truth is in fact the opposite of the rumor, as the end credits were originally supposed to use an instrumental version of "Where My Heart Will Take Me", which was swapped out for "Archer's Theme" after the pilot episode.
• Super Sentai: A longstanding rumor amongst fans claims that Chouriki Sentai Ohranger did so poorly that it nearly killed off the franchise,[[ only for the next series (the goofy Self-Parody Gekisou Sentai Carranger) to perform well enough to singlehandedly save it. As explained in this article, there is no concrete evidence that this was the case (including an interview with an actor from Carranger where he was completely unfamiliar with the rumor). If anything, that "honor" would actually go to Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman and Choujin Sentai Jetman respectively thanks for the former's low ratings and toy sales and the latter becoming a hit that salvaged them.
• Superman & Lois: The series has surprised viewers with impressive special effects and a cinematic Letterbox look. It contrasts the perceived reputation of other Arrowverse series, leading to people thinking the series was "co-funded" by HBO Max with a bigger budget. The claim is backed up by two different Deadline reports being misconstrued. The first report with showrunner Todd Helbing essentially talked about changing the cinematography inspired by, and competing with, other streaming series with no mention of a budget increase. The second report talks about HBO Max and The CW in talks to co-produce any potential summer original series, postdating the production of Superman & Lois which is a Fall-Spring seasonal show. Eventually, Helbing addressed the rumor in a January 2022 interview on Seth Everett's Hall of Justice podcast.
  Todd Helbing: “I don’t know where that rumor came from… but it’s not true.”
  Adam Mallinger^note Series writer: "...it comes down to selecting◊ cinematographers with a different kind of style. Todd's years on The Flash also gave him a lot of education in how to spend money◊ on VFX more effectively."
• Back in the early 2000s, there was a rumor that The Tom Green Show was cancelled because of a segment where Tom Green dressed up like Adolf Hitler. Tom Green himself denies that such a segment was ever produced, saying: "We don’t do racist jokes on the show. I don’t really think that racist jokes are that funny."
• The Tonight Show:
  • Rumors of Zsa Zsa Gabor (sometimes another famous actress) appearing on the show sometimes have her bring a cat, which sits in her lap during the interview. The actress would ask if Johnny Carson wanted to pet her pussy. "Yeah, just move the damn cat!" Carson himself officially disclaimed this rumor when it was asked of him on his show by Jane Fonda of all people (in Carson's words: "I think I would recall that!") Both Carson and Gabor sent written correspondence to Snopes denying the incident ever happened. (Weirdly, there is photographic evidence of Gabor bringing a pet onto the set of The Tonight Show with her, however unlikely that may seem — but it was a dog, not a cat.)
  • Another is the wife of a famous golfer (almost always Arnold Palmer) talking about kissing her husband's (golf) balls before games for good luck. "I'll bet that gets his putter up!"
  • A long-standing rumor among Christian Rock fans holds that Jimi Hendrix, when asked by Carson what it was like to be the world's greatest guitarist, said "I don't know, you'll have to ask Phil Keaggy". Technically this one can't be definitely disproven because Hendrix died in 1970, before The Tonight Show stopped wiping episodes. But he is known to have appeared on the show once, on July 10, 1969, though Carson wasn't hosting that night (Flip Wilson was guest-hosting). Therefore Carson couldn't have asked him the question, which already makes the legend highly suspect. A surviving Rolling Stone article discussing Hendrix's appearance makes no mention of the Keaggy shout-out either, though it does go out of its way to berate Wilson for some bizarre antics involving banging a watermelon on his desk, so presumably if Hendrix had said anything so interesting it would have caught their attention.
  • The question has been referenced to have been asked when Hendrix appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. He seemed reluctant to even be called the best guitarist sitting in his chair. He never mentioned Keaggy or another guitar player who was the greatest. Video of that interview exists.
  • Instead of Phil Keaggy, some versions have Hendrix mentioning Rory Gallagher.
• Long-rumored legend in the industry that Adam Carolla was fired/got rejected by producers to be the host of the US version of Top Gear (usually in conjunction with something racist/sexist/homophobic he supposedly said). In reality, he was offered the job (or at least an audition) and turned it down because he was working on a separate TV project and didn't have the time.
• Some people remember an opening to Walt Disney Presents where Tinker Bell flies around the castle and uses her wand to dot the "I" in Disney's name, while others claim that this sequence was used on several VHS tapes of Disney movies.
• For years, rumors circulated online of an unaired episode of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego called "Auld Lang Gone", which featured the winning contestant breaking her arm during the bonus round, and the runner-up having to finish it on her behalf. Other things apparently went wrong as well, such as Rockapella member Sean Altman ripping Greg's jacket, the Plastic Diver Guy's tank breaking, and Greg taking over the Chief's role until the office sketch ended because Lynne Thigpen had a sore throat, prompting Marc Summers to take over his hosting role for the rest of the episode. It also allegedly contained an appearance from Gene Wilder. However, in 2020, BuzzerBlog contributor Christian Carrion researched the episode's existence, and after talking to archivists at WQED and WGBH, creator Howard Blumenthal, and Summers, concluded that the episode never happened and wasn't real.
• A persistent rumour surrounding Would I Lie to You? is that the original host, Angus Deayton, was forced out of his job after making an off-colour joke revolving around unsavoury rumors about the personal life of then-beloved (and alive) TV personality Jimmy Savile, several years before Savile was posthumously discovered to have engaged in multiple acts of child molestation and sexual assault. In fact, while the show was officially censured for the joke, it was an autocue joke that Deayton wouldn't have been held accountable for, and he remained on the show for eighteen months. The reasons why he either chose to leave or was dismissed have never been publicly discussed by anyone involved.
• You Bet Your Life: It's widely believed that Groucho Marx responded to a woman saying she had lots of children because she loved her husband with "I love my cigar, too, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while". But this risqué remark would never have been allowed on TV during the time period when the show aired, and Groucho himself stated in an interview with Roger Ebert that he never actually said it.

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