• Filler movies are always the worst.

• I just saw "spent several summers as a girl", and I thought immediately, "Wow, this person's summer job was being a transvestite?"

• Birdman kicked my ass!

• im pretty sure thats how the book starts, the novel of the 77 film. it had a lot of the biggs plot.

• >I also foolishly believed there were going to be 9 Star Wars movies So did George Lucas...

• Rob, I was thinking, you need a better screen name. something cool and or badass. how about: "Toht's Last Scream" or "The Chalk Outline" or "Batman's Turgid Voyeur"?

• xoxo

• Even worse than that is I was just telling one of my friends about this contest and this entry because he really likes star trek and figured he would find it funny. He did. Then, I went on to tell him that "I also thought he was a Klingon for the longest time until I realized that they were supposed to be the bad guys and that didn't make sense." He jsut kind of looked at me for a while and didn't say anything so was like "What?" and thats when he told me "Dude, Worf is a Klingon." I'm so bad at Star Trek its ridiculous. I thought Data and Spock were the same person for a while too.

• You were partially right; in The Empire Strikes Back, the emperor is played by a woman (though voiced by a man) in his brief appearance.

• When I was a little kid (this was in the 80s, before the Star Wars prequel trilogy) I thought the Emperor was an old lady, like the wicked witch from Snow White.

• The most erroneous nerd belief is that people would rather think about their most erroneous nerd belief than the identity of the mysterious beauty in the picture... Who cares if you thought that Yoda was a little man in a rubber sit? I want to know more about my future wife, although I have to go through that messy divorce stuff first, I guess... Wait, I DO live in Utah!! Problem solved... ;-) I know it's too late for the contest, and not necessarily "nerdy", but my 3 best erroneous beliefs as a kid were: 1. I thought if you turned a TV show off, it would start up right where you left off (Note, the '1969' in my age denotes the year I was born, and this belief was before I was 5, so it was WAAAY before DVR's were available>) 2. I thought all bands played live down at the radio station, never understood how they got one band playing, the next on deck, and the previous band out the door all pretty much at the same time. 3. My personal favorite: I thought if there was a scene with someone who was supposed to be nude(Such as a shower scene), but filmed form just above the naughty bits, I could walk up to the TV, and look down, and see the naughty bits in all their glory! Not sure why I was already interested in these at 5, but I was disappointed when I figured out that I couldn't.

• I thought Martin Short played Emperor Palpatine in "The Empire Strikes Back."  Those of you too young to remember a time before the internet might not understand this.

• I used to believe that TVTropes was informative and serious...

• I have a book about King Kong where it totally mentions this rumor, and says it's true. So I'm guessing sloppy research on the author's side.

• It's all about Lestat. And I believe Queen of the Damned was about Louis and Lestat doing stuff wasn't it?

• In high school (in the early 90s), I was convinced that George Lucas had written the prequels in novel form and that those novels were rare and out of print. I may have scavenged a bookstore or two for them. A fellow Star Wars nerd convinced me, after I told her this, that she had seen them. I also foolishly believed there were going to be 9 Star Wars movies (3 prequels, 3 sequels), and eventually that belief morphed into the idea that the 3 sequels were going to involve cgi versions of the original cast to keep their ages consistent.

• Yeah that was probably the worst

• I'm still waiting for the end of that long while.  Only, like all good stories, it's expanded through the years.  Nowadays it's any Beatles song, and the children's entertainer changes all the time. I'd totally listen to a Doodlebops version of "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", though.

• I watched the Phantom Menace and could not believe how fucking terrible it was.  It felt like I had been slapped in the testicles with a bag full of hammers.  I felt like I had been spat on. I went to see it four more times. Four more times.  In the theater.  I paid for four more tickets.  Four. Because I thought, i thought maybe, maybe I just didn't 'get' it.  Maybe there was something I was missing.  Maybe I was wrong.  Maybe I was just angry at something else and that's why i felt soiled and filthy after the first time. Four.  More.  Times.

• I thought that the ending of LOST was going to blow me away when it brought every loose end and mystery together in a giant maelstrom of insane brilliance.  BOY WAS I WRONG

• I gave serious thought to that as well.  I now ascribe to the notion that Tolkien was off his nut.

• 1: When I was younger, I believed the animated Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movies were the most amazing thing ever and memorized some of the songs (including Where There's a Whip! XD). I was stuck on it for months. I got better, and am now a proper LOTR nerd who knows better, but there was that time. 2: I thought all webcomics were for old people for some reason. 3: I never believed in Santa until I saw the NOAA Santa tracking, and being the nerdy little kid that I was I totally was all over NOAA and believed in Santa for a couple years, and went around telling all my friends that I officially watched Santa fly over a bunch of countries on NOAA.

• As a kid, I used to think it was universally accepted that freedom was the right of all sentient beings. :(

• Entry #3 I once testified with great fervor and gusto that Frank Miller is TEH GREATEZT. WRITER. EVAAAAAR! and that nothing he made shall ever be shit and/or subject of ridicule. And then, "I'm the goddamn Batman" happened. And my friends simply refused to let that die down. -_-

• Entry #2 Got into a fight with one of my buddies over the translation of the spells in Final Fantasy. I firmly believed that the whole number spell ones ("Fire 1", "Fire 2", "Fire 3") was canon, going so far as saying, "What the HELL is a Firaga? Are you retarded?" He still didn't want to talk to me to this day. -_-

• Note that I was nearly 11 when the movie came out.

• Entry #1 For the longest of time, I believed that Ash and Misty from the original run of Pokemon would ended up together. I even made a theory that later Pokemon adventures would feature their kid, "Kazushi", a composite name from their original Japanese name: "KASUmi" (Misty) and "SatoSHI" (Ash). And that Pikachu would be some kind of Yoda type for the kid's young, inexperienced Pokemon partner. I have an over-active imagination, you see.

• Ahh, a nerd after my own heart. You do know that Daisuke Ishiwatari, Guilty Gear and Blazblue's creator, is just plain weird, right? Why else would he dress a boy up as a hot girl and gave a girl a frickin' BALLOON as a weapon? XD Don't worry about that KH debacle, man. For the longest of time, I firmly believed that the Nintendo translation was the correct one. Even got into a fight with one of my friend, stating that "Fire 3" is the canon, not "Firaga". Wait, this should TOTALLY be part of my entry! XD

• You seem to have misunderstood the rules for this contest, it's for nerd beliefs that are incorrect, not nerd beliefs that are AWESOME. :D

• My wife and I had a renaissance-themed wedding and we went up to that very fair with money to buy stuff. It was so awesome going there with cash to get things instead of just drooling over the display cases. We returned with an awesome set of wine glasses and almost all of the cash we arrived with. It was utterly bizarre. We'd bought a few things there before, and we have since, but that one time we were allowed to it just didn't click.

• I kept telling myself that the next character they revealed would be the one that interested me. The first two didn't, then they slowly marched out the next. I finally waited a year knowing BlizzCon would reveal the one that was right for me . . . and I found the last one to be by far the stupidest. At least with no interesting characters I was unphased when they announced always-on DRM for singleplayer and some of their other "interesting" ideas.

• Even worse, his name is actually Worf ;)

• This is sad on several levels and didn't last very long but I'll never forget it. I was in math class my senior year of high school and suddenly the vice principal started talking on the school intercom. He sounded scared/choked up and we couldn't understand most of what he was talking about except that he repeated "space shuttle" a few times. Then it switched to the newsfeed over the intercom, with no explanation what was happening. The reporter (or whoever was speaking) was too emotional to clear things up but said something about the shuttle being lost in a blaze of fire and light. Aliens. They'd blasted the shuttle--the invasion was on us. For a short but traumatic time I sat there wondering if I should run. Were their ships already over Cincinnati or was there just one firing on Florida? Eventually I figured it out as the news went on but I remember feeling guilty over my relief that it was "only" the shuttle and not the beginning of the end. 

• When Lexx showed up on Hulu I was ecstatic, it was one of those oft-mentioned science fiction series I'd heard about but never seen. I made a valiant effort but after grinding through the first season I never got past the first episode of season two. Sometimes I think I should give it another shot - first seasons are often weak - but I don't think I'll ever manage it. On the subject of Canadian sci-fi, I really should give Starhunter 2300 a try. I saw the first episode and while it didn't drag me in it certainly wasn't bad.

• I think Nog improved a lot - he's rather like Damar in that I generally disliked him at first but loved his character arc. Damar did it better, but Nog still pulled it off. Jake matured as a character but he never grabbed my interest, and even when he became less annoying he was still annoying. Nog managed some poignancy and I think he balanced the ferengi in Star Trek bit very well.

• Agreed. I thought Bakula was a generally decent captain but the episodes just didn't work for me. I mean really, temporal cold war? The concept might work in a different context but not a Star Trek prequel.

• I bet it was a long while before they let you live that one down. :)

• Believe it or not, in one of the Star Wars comics, Han fatally crashes on Earth. Flashforward in time and Indiana Jones discovers his skeleton in the wreck of the Falcon with a still grieving Wookie/Sasquatch outside. I wish I was making this up.

• Seconded

• For many years I was convinced Babylon 5 was a third-rate science fiction series that lacked any depth or innovation. The first time I saw Babylon 5 it was an episode called Acts of Sacrifice. The stuff with G’Kar didn’t make any sense to me as I was unfamiliar with the show’s back story; so all I really saw was a woman who showed a stuffy alien around the station and then he demanded to have sex with her. I wrote the show off as schlock. Years later a friend was incensed when I mentioned my low opinion and he said I’d change my mind if I gave the show a second chance. The only episode he had on hand was the series premier of Crusade. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really change my opinion that much. Again I wrote the show off and ignore people who sung its praises. Then the year before last my sister got me the first two seasons on DVD. I was skeptical but the last time she got me a gift I was unsure of (a copy of Watchmen) I absolutely loved it, and having learned that lesson I popped in the first DVD with an open mind. My wife and I loved it and quickly devoured the first two seasons, and eagerly borrowed the rest from a friend.

• Amen.

• #3 When I was younger, I honestly believed that I was going to grow up to be a member of the x-men. Once I realized I wasn't developing mutant powers, I decided that I was Superman just no one knew because I didn't have my costume. 

• Only occasionally :)

• When I was young, naive, and not yet on the verge of pubescence, I believed that the female body types prominently featured in comics and videogames actually existed in nature. Of all the instances of childhood wonder being dashed against the jagged cliffs of reality, I purhaps took this the hardest...

• Suddenly it makes far more sense!

• Don't think I've seen anyone mention this one yet (which either makes me really incredulous, or really old):  Soon after Star Wars came out in 1977, my friends and I argued over whether "Obi Wan" was actually a bastardization of OB-1, indicating Ben Kenobi was actually the first of a Clone series. I think that rumor floated around the geeksphere right up until the prequels came out...

• I thought that Jack Napier was the Joker's real name.  Thanks a lot Paul Dini.

• Because Skeletor was just mostly dead.

• Look, after Picard enters the Nexus, the rest never happens (the ending and the next 3 movies). It's all his dellusions. I mean, having the ability to leave the Nexus anytime and anywhere, to get in a hand-to-hand fight with the baddie minutes before the baddie wins? Pure fantasy (and way too simple minded of Jean Luc!). Or maybe everything after Kirk disappears is Kirk's fantasy...TNG itself could be Kirk's Nexus imagination...

• Years from now folks will swear that Vader's "Nooooo!" in Revenge of the Sith was longer in the version they watched in the theater.

• I felt the same way on media after media. "I can throw a 5.25" floppy in my Pentium 100; I have no need for 3.5" discs to interchange with my other PC" "My university is full of machines with Zip drives; who'd want to spend $5 for a write-once CD?" "I have a DVD burner now; why would I back up onto an external hard disc." This last time, I jumped the queue and stuffed an SSD into my PC. Actual entry 1: There was a time when I assumed that American comics and in particular animation was the peak and could not be equaled by that up-start Japanese stuff.  Back when "CGI" meant "Beast Wars or maybe Reboot"

• I said that Transformers were doomed forever when they stopped making the toys out of metal and switched to plastic. I looked forward to Episode I and said it would be awesome. I said Picard was the best captain of the Enterpirse; may Shatner have mercy on my soul.

• I said that Transformers were doomed forever when they stopped making the toys out of metal and switched to plastic. I looked forward to Episode I and said it would be awesome. I said Picard was the best captain of the Enterpirse; may Shatner have mercy on my soul.

• That's the best fan theory I've heard yet.

• I thought exactly the same thing. I thought Han and Luke were pulling the robot heads off and hiding in their robotic shells. I'm not sure when I figured out differently.

• I still believe that E.T. is not the cuddly little alien who befriends small children as most people seem to thing BUT in fact is a soulless evil space travelling monster intent on cutting my brain out of my head with his glowing finger. I await his return with my jaunty tin foil hat and squash racquet in hand. Your move E.T.!!!

• I once honestly and truly believed the X-files had it all planned out from the beginning. And even though I ended up getting burned, I still allowed myself to believe that Lost had it all planned out from the beginning.

• I used to think the Force was this ineffable power created by all living things that surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together. Turns out it's all this midi-chlorian stuff. At one point I was convinced that vampires were the hellish embodiment of evil and Victorian fears about sex and disease and were thus hideous, blood-thirsty monsters incapable of basic human empathy. I once thought robots were made of machinery and therefore could not have bodily fluids, beards, testicles, etc. I've passionately defended each of these beliefs in public. Imagine my embarrassment looking back.

• I remember browsing a bookstore and hearing two people discussing the possibility of a prequel trilogy of Star Wars movies – apparently they’d been announced in some official capacity a day or two before. One of the people remarked that he didn’t think Lucas could pull it off a second time.   I was on the young side of my teenage years when this occurred, and I just about walked over to the guy to scoff at the very thought that these movies wouldn’t be as good as the originals. This was George Lucas, he made awesome movies, to suggest otherwise was ludicrous.   Yeah, I’m embarrassed about this to this day – but at least I stopped myself from actually going over and telling him that.

• When I first heard about the DC reboot, I promised all my friends DC was going to use this opportunity responsibly to start over and clean slate everything, letting new readers jump on board and sorting out continuity issues, a la Ultimate Marvel.  A few days later DC started releasing all the details, including the fact that Batman INC was going to continue. For those who are wondering, Crow is best eaten breaded and baked.

• You poor bastard.  Another victim of the cruelest practical joke Robert Zemeckis ever played.

• When I was younger I saw the batman with Eartha Kitt and I was so excited that catwoman was black. After that I wanted to go to the comic book store and get some catwoman comics, and she was white in all the comics! And I was sooo upset and I asked the clerk why did they make catwoman white when shes suppose to be black and I threw a fit because she was suppose to be black to me. I was like 11 or something and I was telling off this much older, much more comic read guy that he's wrong and to give me the 'black catwoman' comics he's probably hiding in the back. I went to several other stores looking for them and finally one guy really yelled back at me that if I wanted a black female hero then to read storm cause thats all there is.  I made a totally ass of myself looking back on it... but I'm still hoping for a black catwoman as long as its not like hallie berry influenced or anything. And that shes not a stripper, prostitute or something like that. 

• On a related note, through most of high school I wore a replica One Ring alternately on my finger and a chain.

• Until I was about 10, I honestly believed that Star Wars was about our pre-history. I was an ID10T back then.

• Back when I was working at Borders (yes, yes, it is sad, but not a story for here) the comics group would have trivia debates over headset on boring days.  I stumped everyone by asking who were the 7 brides of Set in Marvel's Atlantis Attacks crossover. (Storm, Marvel Girl, Dagger, Andromeda, She-Hulk, Invisible Woman and Scarlet Witch.)  No one could answer, and I couldn't truly win unless I knew the right answer. And I did. Except for Andromeda.  I thought it had been Nebula (the possible granddaughter of Thanos).  Everyone agreed, as there are some slight similarities in the two characters and we moved on. Until I was fact checked.  There was a great argument at work, over the same head sets, and thus in full view of the public.  We were so engrossed in the debate that statements like "just because they have the same skin color does not make them the same woman" and "no he didn't kill her, he kept her barely alive" (in reference to Thanos and Nebula in the Infinity Gauntlet) did not go over well when heard out of context by customers.  

• 1. I didn't know about the existence of Monty Python until my twenties, so I used to believe that Life of Brian was a Mel Brooks film. I also believed that he was the mastermind behind The Jerk, Airplane! and The naked gun series, so in my mind he was like the greatest genius ever. 2. Back in that innocent days when I didn't know Monty Python existed, I saw the middle of The meaning of life, that "fishy fishy" thing, and I was convinced it was part of some bizarre Jim Henson film. So for years I told everyone that the guy who created The Muppets also was responsible for some strange movie with a dude in women's underwear and a giant blue elephant.

• I used to think that Star Wars Episode 2 was the best of prequels. I was sadly mistaken.

• Oh hey, thanks for jogging my memory! This is embarrassing enough to qualify as my 2nd entry. Logan's Run was THE movie when I was in 6th grade, mostly because it was played repeatedly on PRISM, the first premium cable channel our neighborhood got. The big draw, of course, was the slow motion orgy scene (with NIPPLES!.... did I mention this was 6th grade?). I also had a thing for ruins and post-apocalyptic settings, and was fascinated by the scene with Peter Ustinov living in the U.S. capital with all the cats. Fast forward several decades: I hadn't seen the movie since I was a kid, and came across it one night on TV. Excited, I convinced my wife (a huge cat fanatic) to watch it with me. Unfortunately, it didn't age well, and both our interests began to flag. I couldn't quit though without seeing the capital ruins, and kept telling her "wait until you see the scene with the Old Man surrounded by all the cats!" Except — it doesn't exist. There are NO cats in the shot, only countless "meows" dubbed in as sound effects. My brain, my memory, had filled in the scene as full of actual felines. My wife laughed about it at the time, but ever since I have questioned not only my memory of childhood events, but the very nature of remembering itself.

• ... that is a terrible belief.

•  Growing up, I always thought Han shot first

• Coulda been worse — it took almost 20 years for my friends to forgive me for dragging them to see "Krull."

• Shortly after I got into anime in junior high,I found out about manga.At first I thought all anime had a manga counterpart,and vice versa,and thought the two versions would be exactly alike,thus proving no need to bother with manga.I found out differently when I found out about (my not-so-secret guilty pleasure shoujo anime) Tokyo Mew Mew's manga sequel,which did not have any element present in the anime.So I bought the only volume of the sequel I could find,volume two,and the last volume of the original manga as a refresher.That last volume blew my mind,showing me just how different anime and manga are. (Oh,and on a sidenote:what I said earlier about my incorrect pronounciation of yaoi,turns out it was how my former club prez said it,while my pronounciation of it before that point was "Yayoi",for whatever reason,and I've just been mimicking his version for the past two years.Memory FAIL.Now thanks to myself,my former club prez(who I don't think had it right either),never actually hearing the word spoken aloud,and the damned spelling,I have absolutely NO idea how to say it.Good thing I'm not one of the genre's fangirls....)

• You can't reply past a certain point, sadly.

• I totally knew from the minute they mentioned Snape hated James. That kind of hatred is usually reserved for the guy that gets the girl the other guy wanted, but didn't have the nerve to speak up and try for.

• Doubledown on the Zip drive: I convinced my parents to purchase one for all their archiving and backup needs ... a month before Iomega went belly up. They were unable to find more of the disks and were stuck with the few they started with

• I guess that is more believable than 9 inch tall people. I think. Maybe.

• That damn show haunts my soul. It is sooo bad.

• Just like it's spelled: "ya-o-i". It usually ends up sounding more "yow-wee" than "ya-wee". A difference so subtle that only the most pedantic of pedants would point it out, but you never know...

• I erroneously believed until reading these comments that nobody could possibly have thought that Lightsabers were called "life savers". It turns out MANY people thought this. Yikes. 

• I have a friend who honestly believed that the term "Star Wars Trilogy" consisted of all six movies. I had to explain to him, a man in his mid-twenties, what the word "trilogy" means. He also believed that Return of the Jedi takes place thirty years after A New Hope, and that all the characters just looked young for their ages.

• That would be it, good sir! I watched that recently and man, I can't believe I used that as a credible source. I also hated how it basically ruined the ending of Watchmen.

• slave II was actually a smaller auxiliary ship that fett had on occasions when the main ship was too big/well known.. or broken  (this is from what I remember of the story, so feel free to correct me if I goofed)

• I figured he had to be, for a few reasons: 1. Why would people keep mentioning that Harry had his mother's eyes if it weren't important? 2. Why would Snape feel guilty about telling Voldemort about the prophecy that resulted in James & Lily's deaths?  Why would he be so damned affected by it - enough to become a double-agent at great personal risk - unless it was somehow personal?  It's not like he had a sudden change of heart - he was a Death Eater!  It couldn't be the crap reason that Dumbledore gave, that Snape felt he owed James for saving his life at school.  He hated James, with good reason.  But what if he hated James not only for bullying him, but for ending up with the woman he loved?  So it must have been Lily. 

• My erroneous nerd belief is that if I should win a TR shirt... It should be hand delivered by the girl in the photo.....

• I sure do! 

• Everybody knows Smurfs aren't people! They're some kind of laboratory-grown semi-sentient fungus, I believe.

• Boba was in the sarlacc for a chunk of time. My guess is that a survivor of that fiasco took it and hauled ass away from tatooine.

• This is EXACTLY what I thought when I first saw Rocky IV, too! (I was 9) I mean look at his training montages: They looked more like they took place in a laboratory than a gym! They even had dudes in white coats with clipboards standing around--it's not a difficult stretch for a kid to make :)

• Jake redeemed himself a bit during the Dominion occupation of DS9. He actually helped out and manned up a bit. he was still the weakest character on the show. This is of course like the smallest diamond in the bag.

• Lexx was that show that was not great, but I enjoyed it very much anyway.

• You have inspired my 3rd entry brodie man! I followed the Superman death very close. I had a theory about how it would all work out that was beautiful in its complicated nature. ALL of the Supermen that showed up would end up being part of the reborn Supes! Superboy contained Kal Els DNA, Steel was his soul.   The Eradicator contained all the powers somehow(which would explain his bad eyesite that required goggles. when his heat vision kicked in, all would be revealed)   The Cyborg contained all of Superman/Clarks memories. Lois would be the one to figure this out, and the 4 would make the ultimate sacrifce and combine into the one true Superman!!

• YES! AMEN BROTHER!!!

• I think Iron man WAS the better film.

• Geoff Johns brought Barry back in Flash Rebirth, not Morrison. So this would count as two entries? :P

• Ewoks are badasses! First, they clearly seem to be ready to eat Han and the gang when they first capture them. They also TOOK DOWN THE EMPIRE!!!!

• They don't? Who played all the Smurfs then?

• You speak of Comic Book heroes unmasked? HC shows it whenevr a comic movies comes out. It is FULL of errors and pisses me off whenever it comes on. GRRR argh.

• When we see Ben at the end of that story, the Goblin had knocked him out for a time. We then go to pete, who goes to the battle. ANYTHING could have happened in that time. Ben could be in a cell somewhere, as part of an elaborate Obsborne scheme. There were a bunch of clone bodies laying around.

• This brings me back. I miss Moonlighting a bunch, even years later.

• I swore up and down that hover boards were real, and the only reason we couldn't buy them was that parents were so worried about us getting hurt. I think I was just hopeful, god I want a hover board.

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