Shocking Revelations and Epiphanies

[Thad]

This is one of those things like the Thing's brow that's so obvious in hindsight I don't know how I never put it together.

[Mongrel]

Wait... what about the Thing's brow?

That they're Kirby's eyebrows, I'm assuming?

[Thad]

Wait... what about the Thing's brow?

That they're Kirby's eyebrows, I'm assuming?

Yeah. Not in the beginning

but he wasn't rocky in those early issues, either, he was scaly.

But he developed the Kirby brow before too long, and I somehow didn't realize that was what it was until last October when I was talking about how the key to a Kirby caricature is the eyebrows.

[Thad]

I don't know why I didn't put my finger on it until yesterday, but I finally realized who Donald Trump's speech pattern reminds me of: Jerry Lewis.

[Büge]

You're gonna like this one, Mongrel

Today I learned that John Byrne based his depictions of Wolverine on Paul D'Amato from Slap Shot, which





I can see it

[Mongrel]

oh my god

asfyghadgfhtuythyyyjawesome

[Yoji]

I never thought about it, but I've been told that all the cookies that Cookie Monster eats are actually just painted rice cakes.

Which makes sense! No oils to stain the puppet, much cheaper to supply, and they crumble and crunch way better than a real cookie.

I wonder why it took me this long to figure it out. I've known since high school that a lot of food in advertisements aren't the real deal, like how plastic ice cubes and mashed potatoes made to look like scoops of ice cream are used because they hold up better under photographic lighting.

[Büge]

And motor oil to look like maple syrup

[KingRoyal]

The fake food photography stuff is mostly a thing of the past these days, partly because of changes in regulation but mostly because modern photography equipment can make real food not look like ass. Though, those tricks were how it was done back in like the 90s

[beatbandito]

all food is AI now

[Mongrel]

Huh, I'd always assumed cookie monster's cookies were just like, shaped foam.

Which rice cakes technically are, sorta, but I figured that if anyone has lots of spare foam lying around, it's the Jim Henson company!

I guess rice cakes are a little environmentally friendlier though.

[Thad]

The fake food photography stuff is mostly a thing of the past these days, partly because of changes in regulation but mostly because modern photography equipment can make real food not look like ass. Though, those tricks were how it was done back in like the 90s

I think by the '90s there were truth-in-advertising laws that required them to use the actual food in ads, but they still used various tricks to make it look better than it would in-person (undercooking burgers so they'd be bigger but coloring them so they looked done, putting a layer of styrofoam in so the patty wouldn't sink into the bun, etc.).

[KingRoyal]

Oh yeah, it's still full of trickery (like all photography) but the food you see is in fact food, even if it's presented in the best possible lighting*

*no pun intended, though the change from hot incandescent model lights to cooler LED bulbs is also part of the change, since the lights they're using to shoot with are no longer cooking the food

[Mongrel]

from hot incandescent model lights to cooler LED bulbs

That's the first one I've seen that actually seems fair.

[Thad]

Justin Bailey is not a hardcoded cheat; it's a string that just happens, by total coincidence, to not only fit the password algorithm but give you a postgame loadout.

Critical Kate has looked through old magazines to find the earliest references to the password and who submitted it, and she believes she's found the original source: Justin Bailey was a toddler in Kentucky and a family member probably tried entering his name as a password just to see what would happen.

[KingRoyal]

Definitely one of the greatest coincidences in all of gaming. Not because some random kid's name happened to conform to a password algo, but because it unveiled the big reveal of the game and spawned decades of spawning what exactly "JUSTIN BAILEY" meant. Up to and including people inventing definitions for Bailey

[nosimpleway]

Cool, now do ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER FUCKER

[Mongrel]

Wait... Hot Topic actually still exists and didn't, like, go bankrupt and disappear/retreat to being an online-only concern sometime in the mid-aughts, as I'd generally assumed?

Well, that's mildly disappointing.

[Büge]

Wait... Hot Topic actually still exists and didn't, like, go bankrupt and disappear/retreat to being an online-only concern sometime in the mid-aughts, as I'd generally assumed?

Well, that's mildly disappointing.

Yep. I saw one at a mall a few weeks back! I'd never been in one, so I dragged Kylie through it.

She forgave me.

[Büge]

@mongrel