A rumor has been making it's way online today that /Film wrote an exclusive post confirming that Billy Crudup has been cast as The Riddler in Batman 3. This is completely false, in fact, no such post was even published today on /Film. I grew suspicious when the link to /Film's article took me to a broken 404 page. Had Warner Bros. demanded /Film remove their post? Why was it down? Well...because it was never published in the first place. I was able to confirm that the news was 100% false when an image of the article made it's why online. Continue after the jump as I break down all the problems with this screenshot and explain how I came to this conclusion.
Ok...where do we even begin?
- If you look in the top right corner of the browser, you'll see that the popular AdBlock Plus add-on is installed. AdBlock Plus does just as it sounds, block internet ads while you surf online. If AdBlock was disabled, the icon wouldn't be red, it would be light gray. If /Film was a website that this person allowed ads on, the icon would be green. But the icon is red, therefore ad blocking is enabled. So why are there still ads on this page? Because it's a Photoshopped fake.
- Another problem related to ad blocking is the fact that there are no text ads on the page. Head on over to /Film and you'll see that they don't just have banner ads, but they also have green text ads throughout their articles. Why aren't these ads present on this screenshot? Because it's a Photoshopped fake.
- Perhaps the biggest give away here is the fact that /Film is spelled "Slashfilm" in the article. Go to Slashfilm.com and you'll see that when talking about their website, it's always referred to as "/Film". Not only that, but the styling of the post doesn't match their normal style. Take a look at the website and you'll see that the often bold actor's names, and they would have certainly had a link in the first sentence when referencing the Deadline article.
Unfortunately as we get closer to July 20th, 2012 a lot of fake news is going to make it's way online. You can be confident that the news posted here on Batman-News.com comes from credible sources. I'm not going to post every single rumor I see or hear. It should be noted that /Film is a credible source, which is probably why the website was attacked in this hoax. They may very well be putting up a post confirming Billy Crudup is The Riddler, but they didn't do it today. If you can spot any other inaccuracies with this fake image, please have some fun, and post them in the comments.
