It's amazing, astonishing, and in a certain way a bit scary, that sometimes well-known historical "facts" turn out to be completely unfounded, and when the origin of these "facts" is traced back, they can sometimes be attributed to one single person who, for one reason or another, pretty much essentially invented said "fact" out of thin cloth (or, at a very minimum, used an unknown source that pretty much invented it out of thin cloth.)
As an example, for the longest time it was generally accepted that when Rome defeated Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War (in 146 BC), the Romans proceeded to "salt the earth" of Carthage, ie. spread salt all over the arable land of Carthage in order to make it infertile and cause a famine.
More recently this story has been put into doubt for several reasons and is currently considered completely fictitious. For starters, there is no evidence whatsoever that Rome did this to anybody, especially since it would have been prohibitively expensive (salt was very valuable at that time, so much so that it was even used as salary for Roman soldiers).
Secondly, and most importantly, the origin of this claim can be traced to an article by one Bertrand Hallward published in the 1930 edition of the book Cambridge Ancient History. The article provides no references, citations or sources for the claim, and no older sources have ever been found. Quite egregiously, Hallward wasn't even a historian or any sort of history scholar, so it's mind-boggling how his article was ever accepted for that publication, and how his claims became so widely accepted.
Another similar controversy has arisen recently, mostly thanks to the inadvertent attention that such an example has gotten due to a major triple-A video game being heavily based on these alleged "historical facts". Namely, the somewhat infamous Assassin's Creed Shadows by Ubisoft, which prominently features an allegedly historical African samurai in feudal Japan.
Ubisoft originally announced that the character was based on a well-known well-established historical character named Yasuke, who was extremely unusual in that he was a black person from Africa who not only became a full-fledged Samurai, but also played an important role in Japan's history.
This has caused controversy, but not primarily for the reason you might think (ie. because of its clear far-leftist SJW connotations.) It has caused controversy because of the objections, even minor outrage, of Japanese historians, scholars and some officials, because of its utter historical inaccuracies.
There is some evidence that such a person did exist. However, there is no solid evidence that he was actually a samurai at all, or did anything that he is claimed to have done.
And, like with the "salting of Carthage" above, also this mostly fictitious biography of the man can be easily traced to one single person: One Thomas Lockley, who has published a book and several articles about Yasuke. Most scholars and historians consider these publications to be mostly historical fiction because they are not based on any credible sources (or any sources at all, other than Lockley's own imagination.)
If you go to Yasuke's Wikipedia page, you'll find most of those claims being repeated there (at least as of writing this blog post). Unsurprisingly, most of the source citations point to Lockley's own writings on the subject. When people have researched a bit about who the main editor of the Wikipedia article is, it has turned out to be Thomas Lockley himself.
In other words, he is the main author of the Wikipedia article, and he is using his own publications as citations. None of these publications have gone through any peer reviewing process. Lockley is self-published. This is, in fact, against the rules of Wikipedia. That's because citing your own works as sources is unreliable, as those sources are unverified and not independent. Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own original work, especially when that work has not been peer reviewed by independent sources.
This also makes Ubisoft's game culturally insensitive, as they are pretty much essentially inserting this fictitious history into Japan's actual history, quite clearly for virtue-signaling purposes. (This is, in fact, the first game in the Assassin's Creed series where the protagonist is not a local to the lands or countries where the events are happening.)
Ubisoft has more recently made a statement acknowledging that perhaps the character is not that accurate to actual history, and it should just be considered historical fiction. However, it's not like they are going to change the game in any way, because they won't, and the damage has already been, and will still be done. Most people aren't going to see Ubisoft's vague response posted on some random website.
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