You might be laughing, but a scary majority of the trivia sections are composed of this sort of nonsense. Thanks to its ill-defined, "anything fits in" nature and the low barrier of entry, Trivia has been a fertile breeding ground for insanely obvious statements, tortured associations, random "facts" the editor didn't know where to fit in the main text and insane bullshit. It's the perfect section for "contributing" to the wiki without actually adding anything meaningful.
Trivia sections arent actually supposed to exist, or at least nowhere near as much as they are now. The Manual of style discourages using them and tell to fit the information in the main body whenever possible. But of course, nobody reads boring guidelines pages.
So yeah, trivia needs a serious cleanup and that is going to take a very (very very very) large combined effort to do that. To participate, simply check the trivia section for any article you are reading and clean it accordingly, and/or patrol the recent changes for any recently added trivia info. If you are not sure if a Trivia entry is valid or where to fit the information in the body, dont hesitate to post in this thread. And be sure to share any BJAODN-worthy stupidity you may find, eheheheh.
Articles tagged with this category are especially in need of a good cleanup.
What Trivia is for:
Its really a You know it when you see it thing. There are a few instances where a relevant/interesting information cannot be integrated elegantly anywhere in the main text. In those cases, trivia sections are acceptable.
What Trivia isn't for:
*Explaining extremely obvious puns or naming conventions (The Fire Skeleton is named as such because it's a skeleton on fire? You don't say.). Puns on figures of speech are generally exempt from being "too obvious" as non-native speakers are largely guaranteed to not be familiar with them.
*Dubious, strained "links" between two elements (Ex: "Mario having three segments of health in Super Mario Galaxy is a reference to how he can take three hits in Super Mario Bros 3. if you use a powerup).
*Loose "patterns" don't have any meaning beyond "this doesnt happen/this happens rarely/this happens more than once". (Ex: "In each Paper Mario games, someone is told to "still their tongue" by someone whose name's start with B". Okay, and..?)
*Speculation. If any trivia entry claims that something is "unconfirmed", it has a 99.2% chance of being worthless bullshit,
*Random facts that could easily be inserted in the main text. If the Red Chomp enemy has blue teeth, it would be much better to write The Red Chomp is a chain-chomp with red skin and blue teeth in the main body rather than sticking It has blue teeth randomly somewhere near the end.
