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This video has been around for a few years, but the first time I saw this I was shocked and disturbed.

Got talent goes horribly wrong archer [not safe for work]

I have looked online and have found competing information being claimed that the video was a marketing campaign, and other videos claiming this is not true and that it is in fact real.

Snopes further claims that this is Undetermined

Can anybody verify if the video is real and if so, can it be confirmed if the man indeed died? It certainly appears like he did.

MarianD
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maple_shaft
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1 Answers1

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It's obviously not real. At very first glance it looks like a parody. But since you want some "hard evidence", here it goes.

  • Whole setup is very, very amateur, too amateur to be considered from a show on national TV in Russia (or Ukraine for that matter)
  • TV station logo is: TVД, yet in Cyrillic alphabet there is no V, obviously no TVД station exist
  • It's allegedly Russian show, yet show logo says "Talent" in Latin alphabet
  • Actual Russian "Got Talent" franchise is called Минута славы
  • Caption's second line says "Киева", which would point to Ukraine, rather than Russia
  • But than again, Ukraine Got Talent (Україна має талант) has completely different logo, is show on a different TV station and fully professional setup
  • Caption says "Удивительный братьями ", which is supposed to mean "Amazing brothers", however it's grammatically incorrect (singular adjective instead of plural, and noun in wrong case - instrumental instead of nominative). Same goes for second line, it's also ungrammatical, should either read "з Киева" or just "Киев"
  • No one in the whole video speaks a single word, further showing that whoever made that video had no knowledge of Russian nor Ukrainian
  • The arrow nocking changes color midflight
  • The "victim" falls politely to the ground like he's about to make a snow angel - there's no pain on display, frantic flailing, etc
warren
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vartec
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    `whole setup is very, very amateur, too amateur to be considered from a show on national TV in Russia (or Ukraine for that matter).` I have heard the argument that this was auditions to get on the show, the lack of professional stage setup can be explained by this. I do admit though that if I was a camera man and I witnessed someone take an arrow to the head, my first reaction would not be to cue to the judges to capture their reaction. – maple_shaft May 04 '12 at 11:54
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    @maple_shaft: looks to lame even for an audition. Also in real audition they would say who they are, and what they are gonna perform. – vartec May 04 '12 at 12:05
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    Mixing English and Russian/Ukranian sounds half-way plausible to me, but I did a search for "TVД" and the main hits were for this video, and no hits for it exist within wikipedia.org. – Andrew Grimm May 04 '12 at 13:28
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    Why is the use of the Latin alphabet in branding surprising though? – Mechanical snail Aug 09 '12 at 11:00
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    @Mechanicalsnail: Because a) "talent show" is kind of generic name, not a brand, b) branded talent show formats, like eg. Got Talent or Idol have their local variants with their names translated to local language. – vartec Aug 09 '12 at 21:31
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    @vartec: not always true. In Italy the show is called *Italia's got talent*. On the other hand the French have *La France a un incroyable talent*. Guess it goes down to marketing (having an English title is quite cool in Italy, it would be considered almost preposterous in France) – nico Sep 16 '12 at 08:17
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    [Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/russiantalent.asp) concur, and suggest it is a promotion for cola. – Oddthinking Oct 13 '13 at 01:35
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    Another argument would be the lack of blood. As far as my archery experience goes, an arrow can easily penetrate a human skull, yet there is no drop of blood anywhere. Besides, the background music sound more like chesp pornography than a nationalwide TV show. – MechMK1 Oct 14 '13 at 21:35
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    @DavidStockinger, how many human skulls you penetrated? – MarianD Dec 17 '18 at 15:21
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    Most of your arguments are extremely subjective. Apart from clearly broken grammar, everything else is just a speculation. I.e., TVД is absolutely a plausible channel name, borrowed English word can be mixed up with Russian, nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's obviously a comedy sketch, but "obviously" is hardly a proof. – sashkello Dec 18 '18 at 23:30
  • @sashkello, _TVД_ is really untypical channel name for Russia/Ukraine (though theoretically possible). On the other hand, (in this resolution) I don't see _TVД_ there, I see a stylized _TVA_ (which is [a really existing Ukrainian channel](https://tva.ua/onair/) but still seems to have another logo and not to be a broadcaster of Ukraine's Got Talent or similar shows). A comment [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St6ysh0EIrA&lc=UgzB2s23mfFgyvidG6B4AaABAg) describes some goofs in the video itself. – Sasha Jun 21 '20 at 10:45