In regards to the "glitch" in the mural... I'm aware this is kind of old hat at this point, so sorry for re-litigating it, but yeah. I feel like condensing my thoughts into a post several hundred words long once again, so if you'd like to hear them, hop on!
I don't completely buy it being a coincidence (it's literally right there. Isaac, in the leak, ends exactly where Little Mac is cut off) but I also don't really buy the argument that it necessarily confirms anything (considering the logical way to handle changes to the banner for one, and the structure of the mural having a seam at that exact spot.)
So... what, exactly? Let's presume this is a fake. Is this something that the faker intended for people to pick up on? I noticed the tear myself back around then, but didn't really pay it much mind. It took a pretty long time to surface in the conversation considering how seemingly material it is. I've heard people saying that, should this be a fake, it's entirely possible the culprit is out among the community, "suggesting" things with just the right timing... Wouldn't that be a thriller?
But leaving that aside for the moment, are we to assume that this glitch in the mural was discovered by the leaker and used to fabricate a narrative about Isaac and the delayed Direct? It's... actually crazy. There's been so much stuff with this leak that just seems completely outrageously attentive. The more of it that surfaces, the harder I find it to believe that the culprit wouldn't have known about that blank mural. If this is fake, this was researched rigorously and thoroughly. I mean, I can't stress how Isaac literally ends EXACTLY there. You can give me an explanation for it, and I can understand that explanation logically and believe that explanation in my head, but it's just... absurd. So what's the other explanation?
The faker... lucked out? They happened to put Isaac in the EXACT spot where this takes place, accounting for any possible distortion in the photographing method? And that is, of course, all assuming the leak catches enough fire in the first place for someone to zoom this far in on the picture in the first place and use it for comparisons. It's an ENORMOUS coincidence. Yes, all of the individual renders would be on layers. Yes, the mural always cut there. But it's INCREDIBLY suspicious even so. What if there's a flaw in the assumption of how the mural is being handled? I find the idea that they might be doing something different with how they handle the renders much easier to swallow than the idea that this guy managed to line up this stuff THAT perfectly, or just happened to dumb luck his or her way into such an exact match.
But okay, let's go with the idea that it's a coincidence. In some ways, it COULD be more reasonable.. The idea that Nintendo is so low tech as to require themselves to crop out an entire character due to a delay seems very unlikely to me. Well then, what about our mystery item? The faker cannot possibly have involvement with that, or know that it was going to happen. Of all the potential items to have accidentally been shown, it happened to be one that pointed once again to Isaac, and even has a basis in the render of him considering the vines. But is it even that? Did the faker luck out again somehow, that this item just so happened to show up when it did and just so happened to give his meticulously planned narrative, which, mind you, the community had to piece together itself, a boost?
It's just too much for me. I can't buy the sheer number of coincidences piling on top of each other. The item, certainly, cannot be faked. That item exists, and is in the game, we know that for a fact. We do NOT know that it's Growth, but it certainly looks like it could be. But for Isaac to be in exactly that place on the mural, literally the only spot on the whole picture that could have produced the evidence it did, I do not believe that to be something that is simply a coincidence. It's the small, seemingly realistic movements of the characters on the banner that were one of the initially compelling pieces of evidence in favor of it. Characters were placed meticulously on the thing - if something was out of place, it could compromise the whole thing. And yet Isaac is there. It has to be for a reason.
And as I've said, Isaac's placement spawned a whole lot of the stuff that we went through today. When that shoe dropped, it shifted a lot of people's perceptions. Personal friends of mine saw it, and were shocked. Thought it was like a smoking gun for the thing. I saw plenty of posts on here about that shifting people over to the vaunted #teamreal. And of course, when alternative possible explanations surfaced, things cooled down - people didn't take it as nearly as strong of evidence. Or even evidence at all.
But the effect of the thing! It was palpable. Could someone have really set those pins up in order to, five days into the discussion, knock them down? Or could someone really have gotten lucky enough that, without them intending it, the placement of the ONE character who this narrative could surface around happened to be in the ONE spot that could make people think it's true? Honestly, NEITHER of these scenarios sound even remotely feasible to me. But neither does the roster this leak purports to reveal. This, to me, is what stands out about this leak and makes it a true piece of brilliance: it feels that it is equally impossible for this to be real, as it is for it to be fake.
Oh, and as for the green pixel thing... I think that was just silly.
