Today I learned...

[Rossman]

9 hours ago, gmoney said:

Not only did Thin Lizzy not think 'The Boys Are Back In Town' was a likely hit, while it was being written it was at various points called "G.I Joe is Back In Town" and "The Lads are Back In Town."

I always enjoy stories about blindingly obvious singles being overlooked by bands. Apparently Phil Oakey of The Human League had to be fought tooth and nail to agree to Don't You Want Me being released as a single, because he didn't think it would sell. 

Bachmann Turner Overdrive's - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. Was recorded as a joke song by Randy Bachmann for his brother Gary who had a stutter. They used it to set the levels for amps and mics when recording their album, Not Fragile. When the rep from the record label came to listen to the album, he said it missed a hit single. They played him the demo of You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and he loved it. It went on the album, and became their biggest hit.

[wordsfromlee]

I was reading about some Mandela Effects today and learnt a couple of new ones:

Bob Geldof never actually said “give us your fucking money”. What he actually said was “People are dying NOW! Give us the money NOW.... Fuck the address, give us the phone, here’s the number.”

Also, C3PO isn't all gold. He has one silver leg. Not something I ever noticed I don't think.

[Carbomb]

10 minutes ago, wordsfromlee said:

Also, C3PO isn't all gold. He has one silver leg. Not something I ever noticed I don't think.

I had to look that up, because I didn't know that either, and I see why: it's reflecting the gold colour of his other leg, or, in the desert scenes, the colour of the sand, so it's barely noticeable.

[davertfnewman]

More noticeable on toys, because they tend to be matt instead of chrome.

[Merzbow]

1 hour ago, davertfnewman said:

More noticeable on toys, because they tend to be matt instead of chrome.

Not all official toys even have the silver leg though.

[LaGoosh]

Also it's only the bottom half of the leg so it's not on screen a lot so easy to miss.

[davertfnewman]

Isn't there a rust red joint on him too?

[BomberPat]

2 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

I was reading about some Mandela Effects today and learnt a couple of new ones:

Bob Geldof never actually said “give us your fucking money”. What he actually said was “People are dying NOW! Give us the money NOW.... Fuck the address, give us the phone, here’s the number.”

Also, C3PO isn't all gold. He has one silver leg. Not something I ever noticed I don't think.

54 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Not all official toys even have the silver leg though.

Stuff like this gives us what I think are some of the easier explanations for Mandela Effect stuff. Geldof's "fuck the address, let's get the numbers" is sort of an aside to someone else off-screen, whereas we remember a more focused rant, where "give us your fucking money" makes more sense - and a hundred people would have done impersonations of Geldof off the back of that, all saying "give us the fucking money", because it's an easier shorthand for what impression you're doing. So you might see Geldof do the rant once, when it aired on TV, but then you hear other people riffing on it so many times that their version becomes more "real".

Similarly for C3PO. If you had a toy that didn't have the silver leg, how often did you see that toy compared to seeing the movie? You'd probably go years without seeing Star Wars, but the toy just sits there in your house, and becomes the dominant image of what C3PO looks like. And when you do watch the movie, it's really not obvious at all, so you don't think about it, because there's not a  single point in the Star Wars trilogy where C3PO's lower leg is the thing you're most paying attention to on screen!

Given how much every single character with half a second of screen-time has been given a fully fleshed out backstory, I'm amazed that there isn't an entire expanded universe novel series about how one of 3PO's legs ended up a different colour.

[Merzbow]

1 minute ago, BomberPat said:

Given how much every single character with half a second of screen-time has been given a fully fleshed out backstory, I'm amazed that there isn't an entire expanded universe novel series about how one of 3PO's legs ended up a different colour.

Some Disney AI bot is scraping this site as you type that, give it a few months and it'll happen.

[Onyx2]

27 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Stuff like this gives us what I think are some of the easier explanations for Mandela Effect stuff. Geldof's "fuck the address, let's get the numbers" is sort of an aside to someone else off-screen, whereas we remember a more focused rant, where "give us your fucking money" makes more sense - and a hundred people would have done impersonations of Geldof off the back of that, all saying "give us the fucking money", because it's an easier shorthand for what impression you're doing.

It's generally agreed it's Harry Enfield's contemporaneous impression of Bob Geldof that spread the rumour.

[lanky316]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

Stuff like this gives us what I think are some of the easier explanations for Mandela Effect stuff.

Obviously leaning in to the Fortean thread a bit more so won't take too much but this is the thing I find interesting about Mandela Effect things. Usually it's portrayed in a certain way as if to say "ooooh freaky, turns out OUT of nowhere suddenly people have suddenly started talking about dazzle ship camouflage, it NEVER used to be like this!" which aside from being bollocks to give some sort of "legitimacy" to something that is ultimately quite explainable and it'd be far more interesting to see the videos actually explaining how through pop cultural osmosis or whatever people have over the years got things tangled. I know it's a shorter series than "oooh freaky! They changed a line in Jaws to something completely different!" for clickbait but how - like the Enfield impression, or toy manufacturing above - became the thing people remember over time.

Ultimately this stuff is basically a catalogue of Today I Learned details so I find how the "changes" happened to be the interesting part of the whole thing. Like how for years I thought the ABBA song was "Super Dooper" despite learning it on keyboard as a kid and stuff, it was years later I finally saw the Not the Nine O'Clock News parody version and how it had mentally usurped the real thing.

[air_raid]

One for football fans - TIL that in his playing days at South Melbourne Hellas (Australian of Greek descent, just like him) Angelos Postecoglou was coached by the one and only Ferenc Puskás.

[SuperBacon]

21 hours ago, air_raid said:

One for football fans - TIL that in his playing days at South Melbourne Hellas (Australian of Greek descent, just like him) Angelos Postecoglou was coached by the one and only Ferenc Puskás.

Look up where the 2026 Champions League final is

[air_raid]

13 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Look up where the 2026 Champions League final is

Better “season 3 finale” by far than Ross pretending he has to think about being with ANY woman over Christine Taylor ‘97, even bald.

[BomberPat]

On 5/23/2025 at 5:11 PM, lanky316 said:

Obviously leaning in to the Fortean thread a bit more so won't take too much but this is the thing I find interesting about Mandela Effect things. Usually it's portrayed in a certain way as if to say "ooooh freaky, turns out OUT of nowhere suddenly people have suddenly started talking about dazzle ship camouflage, it NEVER used to be like this!" which aside from being bollocks to give some sort of "legitimacy" to something that is ultimately quite explainable and it'd be far more interesting to see the videos actually explaining how through pop cultural osmosis or whatever people have over the years got things tangled. I know it's a shorter series than "oooh freaky! They changed a line in Jaws to something completely different!" for clickbait but how - like the Enfield impression, or toy manufacturing above - became the thing people remember over time.

So much of is stuff that used to be maybe a one column pull-out in a movie magazine, of "did you know they never actually said these lines?"

Impressions and references are a big part of it - anyone doing a Darth Vader impression will say, "Luke, I am your father", because "Luke" is the short-hand to telling people what the impression is, and because "No, I am your father" doesn't make sense as a standalone phrase. Same goes for "Beam me up, Scotty", "Play it again, Sam", "Elementary, my dear Watson", and so on.