10 Insane Ways TV Shows Trolled Fans
1. Faking A Leaked Image To Mess With Fans - Gravity Falls
One of the trickiest things that TV writers and showrunners have to deal with is spoilers getting leaked online prior to airing, and so some creatives have resorted to spearheading misinformation campaigns intended to throw fans off.
Usually this doesn't amount to much more than posting false "spoilers" online, but in the case of Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch, he decided to concoct an elaborate spoiler hoax that fans bought hook, line, and sinker.
As fans began to figure out that the author of the series' mysterious journals was Stan's secret twin brother, Hirsch had the show's art department draw up a fake image of a younger Old Man McGucket authoring the journals instead.
Hirsch even had convincing production timecodes added to the image and had the photo taken within the production office's actual edit bay. He then anonymously posted it to 4Chan, pretending to be a fan who saw the image while touring Disney's animation offices.
And he went even further than that, additionally including a real screengrab from an already-announced upcoming episode, to solidify the leak's apparent credibility.
Hirsch then deleted the post and tweeted his faux-anger about the leak on his real account, in turn convincing fans it was real and forcing them to gravitate away from their original twin theory.
Once the episode aired and the truth was out, however, Hirsch posted a follow-up picture showing himself posing with the fake image, confirming beyond any doubt that he was the mastermind behind it.
That's... nothing if not a creative and committed way to get one over on the fans.