By the time Snopes started fact-checking the internet in 1995, "Star Wars" fandom had already redefined pop culture.
The original trilogy — "Episode IV: A New Hope" (1977), "Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), and "Episode VI: Return of the Jedi" (1983) — were successes that entranced sci-fi-loving baby boomers and members of Generation X.
Then, still in the infancy stage of Snopes' work sorting fact from fiction online, the franchise released its first film of the prequel trilogy, "Episode I: The Phantom Menace," in 1999.
Flash forward 27 years — adding dozens of other movies, TV shows, books, video games and other types of media to the "Star Wars" canon — and the Snopes newsroom continues, in 2022, to field rumors about the fictional universe and the real-life actors who portrayed the characters who lived in it. Below is a sampling of our reporting.
