Fake News: VeggieTales Did NOT Introduce New Cannabis Character

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: VeggieTales Did NOT Introduce New Cannabis Character

Did animation series Veggie Tales introduce a new character named Cannabis Carl after recreational cannabis use was legalized? And will he be voiced by Kevin Smith? No, that's not true: the whole thing came out of the hazy mind of a Christian satire website. It is not real.

The story originated from an article published by The Babylon Bee on August 9, 2018 titled "Thanks To New Laws, VeggieTales Finally Introduces New Cannabis Character" (archived here) which opened:

GLENDALE, CA--VeggieTales creators are celebrating the legalization of recreational cannabis use with a new character, Cannabis Carl. The character is a sign of the progress the United States has made on its views on the controversial plant. "Kids are ready for this," said Dreamworks executive Brian Jones, who is overseeing production on the current series.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail and they may have confused it for a real news article:

Thanks To New Laws, VeggieTales Finally Introduces New Cannabis Character

GLENDALE, CA--VeggieTales creators are celebrating the legalization of recreational cannabis use with a new character, Cannabis Carl. The character is a sign of the progress the United States has made on its views on the controversial plant. "Kids are ready for this," said Dreamworks executive Brian Jones, who is overseeing production on the current series. ...

But "The Babylon Bee" comes with following dislaimer on every page:

The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.

Some of their greatest past hits include:

With a track record like that it is clear that you shouldn't take anything posted on the site seriously and you definitely shouldn't confuse it with real news.

We wrote about babylonbee.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion