A recent Russian documentary on wartime propaganda showed what was described as a American First World War anti-German poster. Only one problem - the image was a piece of Team Fortress 2 fan art starring the loveable Soldier, and was brought to you by ”Team Demoman”.
How the hell do these things get past the researchers? Someone must have literally just Googled ”soldier eating babies poster” and then nipped off home early.
The documentary, ‘World War I’, was studying the propaganda methods used by the Western powers in the First World War. The narrator alleges that the TF2 piece was created by the United States Committee on Public Information in order to portray Germans as monsters ”regardless of any logic or common sense”. In actuality it was created by DeviantArt user TankTaur, who presumably harbours no anti-German sentiment whatsoever.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened. British documentary Exposure used in-game footage of Arma 2, claiming it was live video of IRA soldiers firing at British helicopters. That resulted in an embarrassing apology. We’ll see if Channel One issues one of its own.
PC Gamer managed to track down the programme in question on Youtube. It’s in Russian, obviously, but even if you don’t speak the language you’ll get the general idea.