Yeah keep in mind if this exists, it's most likely a commercial or promo that was aired on TV. Not related to any full episode and not something that was made exclusively for the internet.
In another thread, a user recollected a SpongeBob Super Bowl commercial that they thought was lost but it looks like it's already online- youtu.be/1rOGLJB5dj8?si=xh2k-T22g4CWUdCM
This is dated 2004 and is probably exactly the kind of thing we're looking for with this topic- the animation, the year, and the obscurity. Not to mention it looks like the only upload of it is that one, from 11 years ago. It's possible the fortune cookie commercial is online already and we just haven't come across it yet
My comments section mentioned a lost collaboration with Panda Express but it could have also been made for some other Chinese related content, like the New Year as crumbelivable pointed out.
There's a potentially huge update to this search from the comments section of my video that discusses the topic. For starters, if this really is a false memory, then a LOT of other people are remembering it incorrectly too. I feel like with a lot of false memory stories or topics that are likely to be fake (Caillou Charlie being a contender for that), basically no one else recalls or can back up the claims. That is simply not the case for this.
However, more importantly there are a couple comments that remembered the animation and claimed that SpongeBob had a collaboration with Panda Express in the early 2000s, which is a fast food Chinese restaurant. Apparently this collab is very rare with no one being able to find content from it. I looked very quickly and found no mention of it either but I believe this could be a very useful lead.
While it's not confirmed that's exactly what this is, it's very possible what we're looking for is another lost SpongeBob commercial that had a limited time on the air from back in the early to mid 2000s. There were a few more claims about when and where it aired, I think another person said they saw it un the UK in the late 2000s but I didn't check every comment.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what we can uncover now!
Oh nice! I messaged the user about uploading a copy but it looks like we have the clip now. The animation look bizarre, definitely that early 2000s special animation feel. This is something I'd like to see in full.
This is definitely not my area of expertise but I know there are a lot of movie fans on here, so this might be of interest to someone.
I was informed on X that the 1982 TV adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is scheduled to be rebroadcast in February for the first time since its premiere.
I don't have the TCM channel so I can't confirm if they'll actually air it, but this could be the only chance to get a copy of it recorded. Apparently the film had no home media release or bootlegs available.
I'm pretty sure we already excluded the Naruto Hundo Marathon from the possible candidates, it's not close enough to what slyshi claimed to remember unfortunately.
When I was researching the topic for my video, I did come across big playlists for the "New This Month" Grim Newspaper promos, and also the promos that predated the Grim ones which involved characters in an airport.
In both of these cases, the playlists seem to be incomplete and don't cover every month for every year. However, there are a couple Naruto clips seen in the Airport bumpers from January and February 2007, which is around our timeframe, but nothing from the 3D bumper.
Based on this, I'm guessing the Naruto bumper would have been shown in a Grim promo from late 2006 promoting its upcoming release, which has not been archived, and then later was moved to the Airport promos once the series started airing in 2007. But if that's true, we're missing 2 to 3 whole years of Grim promos. So either the early ones are rare, or maybe ti4848 was misremembering.
Not to mention, I don't know when the Grim promos started officially airing, but this other video of someone who claims to have animated it puts a date of 2008 on its production- youtu.be/WzlEsNcfbTU?si=g1KxsVpqLlYKI8wp
If that's true, a Grim promo wouldn't have even existed in 2006. I'm starting to think something isn't adding up here.
Many years ago I researched most of these Johnny Bravo spin-off blocks and a lot of them continue to be elusive.
JBVO is the one that has been recovered the most, with one user who has every episode on tape having begun the process of digitizing them. I think they got about a third of the way through the series when they were hit with a takedown on their archive.org account, but they told me they will get them back up and continue to digitize the remaining episodes.
Viva Las Bravo was like a spiritual successor to JBVO that aired in the mid 2000s on Cartoon Network UK. I'm pretty sure more of its content has resurfaced over the years but not to the extent of JBVO, mostly only more commercials and promos. However I'm pretty sure this topic has made the rounds with more users over the years, with claims that people remember watching it as kids or have recordings from back then. I don't think any of those leads have really materialized but I know there was discussion about it at one point.
Toon FM was basically JBVO, but the European version of it. It had different host characters and animations used in it, compared to American JBVO. Very little of this block had been saved last time I checked, and apparently they aired special version of it too like "Live from Tokyo". We have no idea how much exclusive content exists or if there are any regional exclusive features- 3 or 4 different dubs exist for the different languages in Europe and they all have very little available online.
Finally is Big Bravo Breakfast, which was only discovered to exist years after the initial interest in the previous three. Again, there's almost nothing known about it aside from a couple promos that someone uploaded to YouTube. I think the uploader was actually the person who made them for Cartoon Network so if it hadn't been for them, we'd probably have no idea it existed. I believe it was also a Cartoon Network UK exclusive block but someone can correct me on that if I'm wrong.
It's also possible more of this content has been in circulation since I last looked but I believe it's all up to date. I haven't really heard of anyone looking for or having come across any of this after the JBVO tapes were uploaded.
I believe that if it exists, it's a segment from SpongeBob's Nicktoon Summer Splash. It starred SpongeBob and usually Patrick doing short, bumper length jokes, was released around the time of Season 2 and had shoddy animation that resembles Season 1/2. We actually have no idea how much of this block (and others in its vein like Nicktoons Summer Beach House) exists, so my guess is the fortune cookie joke was one of the lost bumpers.
I really like this idea, and it fits perfectly into why it would be so obscure and the recollection of the animation.
The only slight issue is Summer Splash was early 2000s and OP claimed to see the fortune cookie animation in the mid 2000s. This would mean that either OP is misremembering the timeframe (assuming the topic is real), or more likely Summer Splash's content would have been aired outside of the block.
We do have evidence of this happening, but there isn't a lot to go off of for how often they were reused.
I looked at the oldest DMs in my recent conversations but the person wasn't there, so I must have talked to them before 2023. I have over 450 friends on Discord so I'll have to look through every DM at some point because I can't remember their name.
Last Edit: Jan 14, 2024 5:35:11 GMT by LSuperSonicQ
I almost solved this mystery a couple years ago when I looked into people who contributed to IGN's site. The story of the image is that it was some kind of exclusive Japanese content that no one else had managed to get, but IGN's Japanese correspondent did and shared it on the website. However, it was blurred out in the article mentioning it and could only be seen on the forums.
Their forums had just launched at the time and considering the strangeness of the image, it's believed to have been completely faked by IGN simply as a way to get people to go to the forums. However this was never proven but finding out who that correspondent was could solve the mystery.
A couple years ago, I did a search for old IGN writers that had resumes and job descriptions that listed what they used to contribute, and I actually did find a guy who was their Japanese/foreign correspondent. I sent them an email and unfortunately they never replied but the email could have been dead and I'm not sure if I tried anywhere else at the time.
It's something I could look into again and would probably get us an answer. And if IGN didn't make the image, I would really like to know where it came from or who made it. As far as I know, there hasn't been any word on it's actual origin other than the likelihood that IGN made it.
If no backups were ever made and we have to get most of the episodes again, the last time I checked they were pretty cheap on Yahoo Auctions Japan so that's an option.
There was also someone else on Discord who messaged me about having these on VHS around the same time the thread was initially active but I'll have to see if I can find them again.
Ughh, I don't want to harp on small details like this but I get so annoyed when people claim x media was posted to YouTube years ago but was deleted. It's like the easiest excuse to give for why someone remembers seeing content that nobody can find now.
The same claim was made with Slamfest '99 and we found no evidence it was ever posted on YouTube. For that matter, why would Me and My Friends have ever been posted on YouTube in the first place? It doesn't even make sense.
I'm working on a new video documenting the search so I've been going down all the old rabbit holes again, and I recalled that the people over at the Bakcyardigans Wiki had known about this pilot many years before it made its way to the lost media community. If it really had been online at one point, they would have known.
Thanks ghostgirl708 I'm glad you enjoy my videos! Yeah there are a lot of scrapped ideas I would definitely be interested in experiencing, as well as getting answers for why certain content was cut at all. I'm not sure if Nintendo has ever discussed the game in depth before but the clock is just one of my favorites.
Maybe it would have felt too similar to Pikmin with the time limit, but I always felt like adding an element of pressure would have made the game even better. Especially with the illusion that you were in the mansion so late at night.
Was going to post that the parental disclaimer was found but I see bluebaron already did! That showed up way faster than I thought it would, and given its source I wonder if there is more lost Naruto content in that server the reply mentioned. Someone could have the missing episodes this thread was originally talking about.
This voice claim is most likely false as we've found an old capture from Rick Lyon's website (do not contact him) that mentioned kids were going to voice the characters. We don't know if they actually did, but I haven't heard anything else about audio from anyone else. Eyewitness accounts don't just show up out of nowhere for a topic as heavily protected like this.
This is also not the first time false information has spread about its content so I would be very careful about believing unverified stories. A while ago we also found an edit on the Backyardigans Wiki article that talked about the plot, with no evidence to suggest it was real.
I think out of all the lost Nintendo betas and prototypes that we've seen, this one is my most wanted. For some reason I was always fascinated by how different the original game was. I remember when I was still making art videos, I sculpted a Luigi out of clay and was planning to put him onto a clock base as a reference to that unused element.
With that said though, I definitely don't think we'll ever get this unless it shows up in an unofficial way like through a leak. But even then, we haven't really gotten a lot of GameCube era beta content like we have for Nintendo 64. I also don't think there are a lot of people who would prioritize this one over anything else from the Nintendo 64 era like Earthbound 64 or Spaceworld versions of Ocarina of Time.