Post a random fact people probably don't know! (And even if they did, they wouldn't care.)

[Dragoncat]

1 hour ago, ping said:

Of course, the plot twist being that Winston Churchill, the next morning, was still an arsehole.

But he was sober.

[The Roger The Paladin]

Way back in 1977, Marvel Comics introduced the world to a Super-Hero named "The Human Fly".... alias Rick Rojatt. The series was about a stuntman, who crashed during the landing after doing a 27 school-bus jump on a motorcycle to more than double the record Evel Kneivel had set of 13 school buses. While he made the jump... the landing was... a bit of a mess. Afterwards, he donned an exo-skeleton costume to engage in daredevil stunts for childrens' charity... meeting the likes of Spider-man (who mistook him for a super-villain known as the Human Fly), Ghost Rider (after all, they're both stunt cyclists) and Daredevil (because, you know, fitting) over a 19 issue career. After that he was never seen again.... in fiction. For Rick Rojatt, his costume, and his feat were all ripped from reality. The comic was largely a dramatization of the exploits of the real life Canadian Stuntman Rick Rojatt. The biggest difference (besides the involvement of fictional characters) perhaps being the aftermath of the crash. Where in the comic he was forced to wear an exo-skeleton by the damage of the crash, in reality he suffered little more than a broken ankle, and promptly retired from public life. This leads to the question.... why? Why license a comic about yourself as a super-hero if you're done with the spotlight? And why pose in the exo-skeleton created for the series? What went through the mind of Rick Rojatt for those 19 months of publication? Will we ever see his heroic counterpart again?
Some things man was not meant to know.

[indigoasis]

In Epic Mickey, in the foyer of Lonesome Manor, it is possible to be "softlocked" out of rescuing the trapped gremlin in the area behind the painting on the wall opposite where you exit the foyer. The player can accidentally stop the tables from floating around before rescuing the gremlin, which is how you're intended to reach the area behind the painting. However, it is actually still possible to reach the area behind the painting by utilizing the three sketches that the player should have by that point in the game (TV, Watch, and Anvil). When facing the wall the painting is on, carefully place an anvil sketch on the railing of the right staircase. If done correctly, the anvil will catch on the newel (otherwise known as the post at the end) of the railing. Quickly place a TV on top of the anvil, and then use a watch sketch to slow down time to ensure that you have enough time to perform the following actions. Jump on top of the anvil+TV tower, and then jump onto the pillar next to the opening in the wall behind where the painting would be (the painting is toon, so make sure to thin it out beforehand). From the pillar, quickly jump into the opening, and save the gremlin! 

This is actually a very tricky process that I came up with myself when replaying the game a couple months ago. I tried resetting to before I had stopped the tables from floating, but the game autosaves after doing certain tasks and I couldn't make the tables float again. The timing of the process outlined above is tricky, and it's important to have enough TV and watch sketches for it. If you run out, simply reset and your supply should be replenished. As for anvil sketches, you can actually grind for those from the beetleworx that spawn in. Also, as for the pillar, it can be a bit tricky to get on top of due to collision and stuff, but it's definitely possible! For me, this whole process was the peak of my creativity in problem solving.

[DragonFlames]

In 1832, beer prices in München went up because they used all the beer to douse the fire that destroyed the opera house in the city went up in flames and the lakes were frozen over.

[ping]

Gotta keep this on the front page!

In chapter 17 of FE7, there's a Cav and a Nomad spawning each turn for four turns (7-10) in total. You can prevent the Cav from spawning by blocking the tile in question, but the Nomad will just appear on a neighboring tile - or even several tiles away if you block all of those neighboring tiles.

(in semi-related news, Sainadin is bloody phantastic)

(no, this wasn't an honest attempt to beat the chapter)

(gotta keep my FE rep intact!!)

[ping]

A far from exhaustive list of Pokémon with a higher physical attack base stat than Onix:

• Piplup
• Oddish
• Poliwag
• Jynx
• Natu
• Vanillite
• Bulbasaur
• Chikorita
• Squirtle
• Joltik
• Sentret

It's tied for physical attack with (again, non-exhaustive):

• Butterfree
• Pidgey
• Zubat
• Staryu
• Mr Mime
• Treecko
• Wurmple

[Sooks]

Cecilia x Roy is illegal. Have a good day.

[ping]

Draug is Sindarin (i.e. Tolkien's Elvish) for wolf, most prominently seen in Draugluin, "Blue Wolf", the first werewolf in Middle-earth and servant of Sauron during Beren and Lúthien's quest for the Silmaril.

On 8/26/2020 at 8:01 PM, ping said:

Byun Hyun-Woo, Korean StarCraft 2 player, World Champion 2016.

He just finished his mandatory military service and immediately qualified for the GSL (the most prestigious SC2 event outside of the world championship) through a very tough bracket, beating the GSL finalist from only three months ago in the qualifying match.

Update after he played yesterday:

Spoiler

Three weeks ago, he topped his (four-player) group in the Ro24, beating PartinG (quarter- and semifinalist in the previous GSL events this year) and Patience (who is more of a mid-tier player) to do so.

Yesterday in the Ro16, he only finished 3rd in his group, which eliminates him from the tournament, losing to Maru in the decider. He didn't look quite as strong as people might have hoped, especially in his first game against Stats, but to be fair - Stats was a finalist last season and Maru is in the shortlist for the best SC2 player of all time.

The most noteworthy game of the day, however was between PartinG (Protoss) and Maru (Terran) in the elimination match:

Spoiler

Game 2 was an incredibly long (40+ minutes) back-and-forth game with both players swapping into air units fairly early. PartinG had the better opener and managed to keep the advantage throughout the game, but the game was only decided when

Spoiler

Maru nuked his own entire fleet. Literally.  To his defense - he was launching the nuke at an expantion that PartinG had taken and their fleets engaged over it while the nuke was inbound, but it was still the most abrupt and hilarious ending possible. Even Maru, after a short initial shock, kept laughing until the next game started.

(in case anyone is interested. Start watching at 1:47:30 for the event in question)

 

 

[ping]

On 6/22/2020 at 8:03 PM, ping said:

I've played a lot of Paradox's Grand Strategy Games in the last couple years, but Crusader Kings 2 never really clicked with me. I always found the base mechanics rather clunky and thought that the game relies on murderincest memes for its appeal - allow (and, honestly, encourage) the player to make his character act so heinously evil that it loops around to hilarious, which wears off rather quickly for me. Now, you might think that I'm being unfair (and off-topic), but consider this Random Fact:

In earlier versions of the game, the majority of the CPU usage in the late game was spent on Byzantine characters pondering over who they wanted to castrate and or blind. Seriously.

So Crusader Kings 3 has come out recently - I haven't grabbed it yet because, as I said, CK2 never clicked with me and also because I'm a bit worried that my toaster would have some trouble running it. When doing some research on the game, I did run across a nice follow-up to the old Random Fact above:

The devs included an achievement called A Perfect Circle. For context: In CK, you play as a line of succession - once your character dies, you switch to their primary heir and so on.
To get the achievement, you need to play as a character who has a total of 12 or less parents, grantparents, great-grantparents, great-great-grantparents, and great-great-great-grantparents. Usually, people who aren't von Habsburgs, from Alabama, or from an isolated mountain village in the alps have 62 of those (2+4+8+16+32).

Related (hurr hurr): In the release version of the game, AI-controlled characters were extremely likely to seduce others and very willing to be seduced, even when it really wasn't appropriate. Your husband who is also your soulmate and/or gay? Yeah, he probably sired two or three children somewhere else. Your son and your daughter? Very keen to help you get the Perfect Circle achievement, that's for sure.

[Sooks]

Bubble tea is named after bubbles that come up when shaking the milk and tea instead of the tapioca pearls at the bottom like many would assume.

[ping]

Only one manager in the first German footsoccerball league has been with his club for more than three years - Christian Streich, who will reach 9 years with SC Freiburg next january. Second-longest is Florian Kohfeldt (Werder Bremen), who will reach the three-year mark at the end of the month. Eight out of the 18 Bundesliga managers have been with their clubs for less than a year.

[Dragoncat]

During development of Spyro: Year of the Dragon, a minigame where you ride a squid was planned. It didn't get in, but you can input a code to change the skateboard in those minigames to a squid.

[Benice]

At one section of the western front of WWI, less than ten kilometers were gained over the four years of the war despite the continuous fighting.

Edited October 18, 2020 by Benice

[Dragoncat]

During WWI or II, either or, the Japanese government gave grenades to farmers. But they didn't know how to use them. They threw them without pulling the pin. Their enemies just pulled the pin and threw the grenade back.

[DragonFlames]

Etzel, the character from Shadow Dragon and New Mystery, carries the Middle High German name given to Attila the Hun in the Niebelungenlied.

[ping]

Another random Starcraft fact, this time about the first game:

Lee Young Ho, or Flash, as he's more known as outside of Korea, is widely accepted to be the best SC1 player of all time - maybe even more agreed upon than the likes of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. For the current ASL (more or less the SC1 equivalent of the GSL I've mentioned before), he has given himself a new challenge: Instead of playing as the Terran faction as usual, he swapped to Random.

While there is an advantage to that - the opponent won't know if Flash rolled Terran, Protoss, or Zerg until he sends a scouting unit across the map - Flash obviously doesn't have the years and years of experience as P or Z like the top players of those factions, so he wasn't considered the favourite coming into this season. That said, he reached the semifinals without losing a single map.

Edited October 22, 2020 by ping

[ping]

CLAPTON IS GOD

Spoiler

...was a popular graffiti during the 60s, refering, of course, to the guitarist and singer Eric Clapton.

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 10/13/2020 at 3:30 PM, Sooks1016 said:

Bubble tea is named after bubbles that come up when shaking the milk and tea instead of the tapioca pearls at the bottom like many would assume.

Bubble tea is an offense to good, proper tea.

Most of which is grown in India these days.

[Sooks]

Rhea (fe16) shares the same VA as Mae (fe15).

3 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Bubble tea is an offense to good, proper tea.

Heresy

[DragonFlames]

9 hours ago, Sooks1016 said:

Rhea (fe16) shares the same VA as Mae (fe15).

She also voiced Makoto in Persona 5, and Plutia and Million Arthur in the Neptunia series.
And she was also the voice of Shana in the Shakugan no Shana movie.

And speaking of voice actor trivia:
Maribelle from Fire Emblem Awakening is voiced by the same person as Neptune, the protagonist of the Neptunia games, as well as Mordimort from Stella Glow.
On the Japanese side of things, Maribelle shares her voice actress with Kaguya from Mary Skelter and Lilysse from Nights of Azure.

Edited October 26, 2020 by DragonFlames

[ping]

The original Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist.

[Emperor_Siegfried]

I'm kind of disappointed I'll probably never get to try Little Baby's Ice Cream if only to see if it was anywhere nearly as good as its self-cannibalizing commercial implies it was.  Unless they sold their recipes to someone else and someone from Philadelphia knows where it might be going now.

[ping]

It would be factually incorrect to call the entire cast of FE Fates a bunch of bootlickers - Corrin walks around barefoot.

[Sooks]

Arbok is a snake Pokémon, and is also kobra backwards. Ekans, its preevolved form, is snake backwards.

[Benice]

The D in D-Day stands for Day, so it is Day-Day.

Edited November 5, 2020 by Benice