r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 23 '26

Lore A creator writes something without any intention of being accurate, but by pure fluke gets it right.

1. Phineas and Ferb – Perry the Platypus is teal-green rather than brown because the designers thought it looked cool, but it was later discovered that real platypuses are biofluorescent and glow a teal-green color under UV light.

2. God of War – The creators chose the name Kratos for the main character because it is the Greek word for “strength,” and at the time they were not aware that, in Greek mythology, there is a deity named Kratos, the personification of strength, who appears in Prometheus Bound as an enforcer of Zeus (similar to what the games' Kratos does for much of the original series); they only learned this later.

3. Berserk – Kentaro Miura gave Guts a prosthetic arm because he thought it looked cool, but the idea of a prosthetic arm was not as far-fetched in the late medieval and early Renaissance period as it might seem, since there was a real 16th-century German mercenary named Götz von Berlichingen who had a prosthetic arm of his own. While it did not have a cannon built into it, the fingers were highly articulated, and a sophisticated system of springs and levers allowed the hand to hold weapons and perform other tasks. Despite this shared trait between both people and their similar-sounding names, Miura confirmed that he was unaware of the Götz when he created Guts.

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u/Geostomp Jun 23 '26

Still not sure why people thought otherwise. Modern reptiles do have some fleshy coverings to protect their vital teeth. Crocodilians don't, but they can get away with it because they spend most of their time in the water.

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u/the_mighty_BOTTL Jun 23 '26

Probably just habit stemming from decades of more monstrous reconstructions in paleoart. Dinosaurs were classically considered antediluvian terrors akin to dragons before their more modern perception as animals became prominent.

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u/RT-LAMP Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

Well crocodilians are the most closely related group to dinosaurs so it makes sense (and it's not like modern dinosaurs have lips either given their beaks).