There have been a lot of myths and rumours in this fandom that are founded on misconceptions or lack of accessible information. Since misinformation is my mortal enemy, I’m going to dedicate a post to going through the ones I encounter most frequently. If you’ve been around the fandom for a while, there will probably be no news for you, but who knows.

If I somehow wrote something factually inaccurate myself, please point it out to me so I can edit the post as soon as possible!

So from fundamental DN rules to color schemes to presumed pop culture influences…. I’ve tried to go through what I can. Enjoy?

1. The Death Note contains a full ruleset - FALSE!  This one is entirely the fault of official merchandise. The notes you can buy irl all contain each and every rule. This is not the case for Light’s Death Note. As you may remember, Ryuk doesn’t even know all the rules - and he wrote those in Light’s note.

The only rules written inside Light’s Death Note are the first page. They are written on the backside of the cover instead of actual notebook pages. So even if you as a reader are aware of rules existing, this may not apply to the characters in the series. There’s been a lot of questions in the fandom as to ‘why doesn’t xy make use of xy rule??’ and the answer is pretty much always ‘they didn’t know that rule existed’.

2. Light becomes a shinigami - FALSE*! This is one that I expect is more prominent with people who have only watched the anime. The statement that humans who used the Death Note can neither go to heaven or hell has been widely taken to mean that heaven and hell exist alongside a third place - potentially being the shinigami realm. This is untrue.

Tonight’s doddle that was completely caused by this particular post.