Vic Mignogna Controversies

[Light Lucario]

Breaking news. An interview with Vic on the Dragonball Super Broly Blu Ray was removed from the actual release.

That's a relief. I thought that maybe development for the DVDs/Blu Ray was too far along for them to remove it, but keeping an interview of a voice actor that they basically fired definitely wouldn't be good PR for Funimation, especially when this is still a hot issue all things considered. News has cooled down fortunately, but I'll still hear about some of his defenders harassing people over this, so this interview would have just been more problematic than helpful to their sales.

 

[PicardMan]

That's a relief. I thought that maybe development for the DVDs/Blu Ray was too far along for them to remove it, but keeping an interview of a voice actor that they basically fired definitely wouldn't be good PR for Funimation, especially when this is still a hot issue all things considered. News has cooled down fortunately, but I'll still hear about some of his defenders harassing people over this, so this interview would have just been more problematic than helpful to their sales.

I wouldn't be too surprised if there are tons of Vic fans hating on Funimation for this. It's hard to tell how the split is between the factions of the Vic controversy, but I believe that casual anime fans might not even know this is going on. Considering that this is Dragonball, it will be guaranteed as the best selling anime Blu Ray and the casuals won't care about the controversy.

 

[Light Lucario]

I wouldn't be too surprised if there are tons of Vic fans hating on Funimation for this. It's hard to tell how the split is between the factions of the Vic controversy, but I believe that casual anime fans might not even know this is going on. Considering that this is Dragonball, it will be guaranteed as the best selling anime Blu Ray and the casuals won't care about the controversy.

Oh I'm sure plenty of his fans are upset about it and I can understand it to a degree if they wanted to learn more about the movie from his perspective, but it just wouldn't be good to keep the interview from a PR perspective. Granted, I think Funimation would have gotten some hate whether or not they kept the interview, but I think leaving it in after they cut ties with him would have been worse, or at least created a strange mix message.

I'm sure that the movie will sell well. I hear nothing but praise for the movie and buying it doesn't really contribute to the controversy itself. People can still buy dubs Vic was in without supporting him as a person. I don't know how much attention this controversy has gotten outside of the anime circles. There were a couple of articles written outside of anime devoted sites, so it might have gotten some attention over the past few months. It still might not be noticeable enough for more casual anime fans though.

 

[Terror of Death]

Funimation also pre-disabled the comments section for the youtube video promoting the home video release.
Vic at the con:

 

[PicardMan]

Big turn of events. Vic's lawsuit just dropped. Funimation, Monica Rial, and Jamie Marchi are defendants.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Way to be SUPER SMART <a href="https://twitter.com/shane_holmberg?ref_src=twsrc^tfw">@shane_holmberg</a> <a href="https://t.co/XOuPVnw0rS">pic.twitter.com/XOuPVnw0rS</a></p>&mdash; Rekieta Law: Speech is Free, but Lawyers Aren&#39;t (@NickRekieta) <a href="">April 18, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Light Lucario]

I'm still amazed that he filed a lawsuit. I just do not think he has a legal leg to stand on here and considering this lawsuit is coming from the same person who started that gofundme campaign for Vic, I doubt that he's going to handle it any better. Honestly, that does make me question how legit his law firm is and by extension his lawsuit.

Assuming that this lawsuit is legit and actually does end up going to court, I still don't understand what Vic reasonably expects to get out of this. Even if by some long shot he wins a court case, I don't think that Funimation could be legally forced to hire him. He is a freelance voice actor who can work for different studios. There wasn't some inside job at Funimation to get rid of Vic. This started off by fans just talking about their experiences with him and these allegations took place over the course of ten years. Vic's reputation has been pretty infamous well before these stories started to get more attention, so the idea that there's some conspiracy within Funimation to get rid of Vic is both ridiculous and false.

Not to mention I don't think taking the matter to court is going to fix Vic's reputation. If anything, it might make more studios not want to hire him. Trying to sue his former employers and co workers does not make him look like the ideal person that studios want to associate with. The most he could probably get out of this would be some money, but I don't know if it would be worth it, especially when that's already a pretty long shot at best.

I do worry about Monica Rial and Jamie Marchi if this does end up going to court. They've already gotten so much harassment, especially Monica, and I'd be worried if that keeps happening due to this potential lawsuit. Vic has plenty of fans who will defend him, but too many people have already harassed the women who spoke out against him and that is deeply concerning to me.

 

[Terror of Death]

Interesting, I'm no lawyer but I'm assuming Vic can win by somehow showing evidence of Funimation lying about some promise in their contract such as the amount of payment or lack thereof, getting unfairly treated by coworkers and higher ups, or being a model employee for years and suddenly getting terminated over unverifiable claims. Funimation can win by showing evidence that Vic was a bad employee (theft, lying, lateness), he posed a credible threat to the well being of their staff, the way he conducted himself in public went against their code of effects, or they verified at least one of the allegations against him was true.

Ultimately, none of that really matters if the judge isn't unbiased. Innocent people lose and guilty people win all the time with or without evidence. I have a feeling Funimation and Vic will decide to settle out of court but I wouldn't be surprised if they fought to the bitter end.

 

[Light Lucario]

Interesting, I'm no lawyer but I'm assuming Vic can win by somehow showing evidence of Funimation lying about some promise in their contract such as the amount of payment or lack thereof, getting unfairly treated by coworkers and higher ups, or being a model employee for years and suddenly getting terminated over unverifiable claims. Funimation can win by showing evidence that Vic was a bad employee (theft, lying, lateness), he posed a credible threat to the well being of their staff, the way he conducted himself in public went against their code of effects, or they verified at least one of the allegations against him was true.

I really don't know how Vic could prove being treated unfairly or especially that these claims are unverifiable. Funimation did an internal investigation, so they would have to have enough evidence to justify firing him. They wouldn't just rely on Twitter comments to make a decision like that one, especially when he was one of their more recognizable/popular voice actors. Maybe there could be some contract issue involved. I don't know if being removed from one of their simulcast dubs would make things more complicated, but I don't think he could claim that he was wrongfully terminated, especially when he wasn't an employee technically given that he's a freelance worker.

He's apparently suing for defamation and wants one million dollars in damages. This is extremely ridiculous and he so not getting that much money out of this. He'd have to prove that all of these claims are untrue and were done specifically to ruin his reputation. I don't think he can do that, especially when his reputation wasn't that great to begin with. It's also pretty pathetic that the lawsuit claims that Monica's fiance is either a Funimation employee or agent. I'm pretty sure he doesn't work at Funimation, or at least I've never heard of him before this conspiracy came out, so it just seems to be feeding into the notion that this was all an inside job to get rid of Vic.

If Funimation reveals the results of their internal investigations for the courts, then I doubt that anything Vic could do or say would help his case. His apologizes were already hallow and empty, but this desperate attempt to salvage his reputation and career is just awful. Everything he does and says just makes me regret ever being one of his fans even more. It would almost be amazing if it wasn't terrible and more than a little sad.

Ultimately, none of that really matters if the judge isn't unbiased. Innocent people lose and guilty people win all the time with or without evidence. I have a feeling Funimation and Vic will decide to settle out of court but I wouldn't be surprised if they fought to the bitter end.

Settling the matter out of court would probably one of the easier ways to resolve this, but I don't know if Funimation would want to give Vic any money after this. Not to mention I'd worry if his fans would take even settling the matter outside of court as proof that he didn't do anything wrong. Granted, he could lose a court case and some of his fans would still claim that he was innocent, so that might happen regardless.

 

[doomrider7]

To explain why Vic is doing this, martyrdom. He literally has absolutely NOTHING to lose here and LOTS to gain. He wins the case, he'll be exonerated of all past and future accusations. He loses, he'll be just another "innocent" victim of a corrupt systems setup to punish good Christian men like him that was setup by a shadowy cabal of people who want to steal roles from him. That's the entire narrative going on. Even settling out of court would be a massive win since it would be as close to a full exoneration in people's eyes. It's all about both ego and knowledge that even if he loses the suit, he has an easy fallback in grifting edgelord incels and other at-right trash.

 

[PicardMan]

This incident has been big enough that sources that usually never cover anime, like Variety, are on this story. There's even the official court document to prove that stuff is going down,Vic Mignogna Sues Funimation, Other Voice Actors for Defamation. As for leaked information related to the investigation, the jelly bean incident has gone viral. The story relates to Monica Rial signing a jelly bean, Vic eating it and joking that he ate Monica Rial. Some Internet people claim that only this incident led to him getting fired. The anti-Monica people have been going crazy and supposedly doing unto Monica what she did unto Vic, using pictures of her hugging fans as proof of her being evil. A few fans have defended her and said it was consensual.

 

[Light Lucario]

To explain why Vic is doing this, martyrdom. He literally has absolutely NOTHING to lose here and LOTS to gain. He wins the case, he'll be exonerated of all past and future accusations. He loses, he'll be just another "innocent" victim of a corrupt systems setup to punish good Christian men like him that was setup by a shadowy cabal of people who want to steal roles from him. That's the entire narrative going on. Even settling out of court would be a massive win since it would be as close to a full exoneration in people's eyes. It's all about both ego and knowledge that even if he loses the suit, he has an easy fallback in grifting edgelord incels and other at-right trash.

That is sadly a pretty good possibility on why he's doing this. Based on the information from this lawsuit, there's no way Vic could win. Defamation is a difficult thing to prove, especially when Vic would have to prove that the people involve deliberately spread misinformation about him in the hopes of ruining his reputation and getting him removed from Funimation. I don't think he can prove that. He's also made a couple of public apologies. He completely denies or ignores some of the more serious allegations and the apologies definitely come off as insincere, but since he did apologize, that might be a big problem for his case. In another article, he actually admits that certain events happened, but he just remembers them differently, so that might be an issue for this as well.

A lot of people would think that he's innocent even if the courts ruled against him, so it would definitely feed into the poor Christian man image that some of his fans have believed in from the start. Admittedly, it still seems like this lawsuit is going to do more harm than good for him. I don't think he has a legal leg to stand on here and the best outcome for him would be settling the matter outside of court. That might be his goal, but I don't know how much money he could reasonably expect to get out of this, especially when getting a lawyer and filing a lawsuit is expensive. It's not going to make Funimation take him back or fix his reputation. Funimation might settle out of court just so that they don't have to deal with courtroom nonsense and a part of me wouldn't blame them if it does come down to that. Another part of me hopes that they can just get the lawsuit thrown out or something since after everything the voice actresses have gone through during the past few months, I wouldn't want them to deal with more harassment if Vic could get any money out of them or Funimation.

I've seen some reactions where people are excited for this lawsuit and see it as a chance for Vic to finally win against these allegations. I see this as an extremely petty and last ditched effort for Vic to gain some money out of his voice acting career. His career is basically over, or at the very least damaged beyond repair, and this just makes me think he wants to get some more money before being forced to do something else. It's just really awful and I keep wondering to myself how I could have fallen for his nice guy act in the first place.

This incident has been big enough that sources that usually never cover anime, like Variety, are on this story. There's even the official court document to prove that stuff is going down,Vic Mignogna Sues Funimation, Other Voice Actors for Defamation. As for leaked information related to the investigation, the jelly bean incident has gone viral. The story relates to Monica Rial signing a jelly bean, Vic eating it and joking that he ate Monica Rial. Some Internet people claim that only this incident led to him getting fired. The anti-Monica people have been going crazy and supposedly doing unto Monica what she did unto Vic, using pictures of her hugging fans as proof of her being evil. A few fans have defended her and said it was consensual.

I've been hearing about that jelly bean incident. I didn't know it was leaked information from the investigation though. It's almost amazing that people really think that this one incident got him fired. He might have thought of it as just a joke, but it was still a pretty creepy and inappropriate joke to make. They were co-workers and depending on when he made the joke, they both could have been in relationships at the time. It probably wouldn't be enough to get someone fired, but it was still inappropriate and a clear indication of Vic's behavior.

I'm sadly not surprised that people are trying to make Monica look like the bad person here. It is apparently much easier for them to believe that this was all an inside job or that the voice actresses are trying to steal his roles than it is that Vic did anything wrong. Of course they'd target Monica Rial and paint her as the true villain mastermind behind this conspiracy. If they really think that inappropriate hugs were the only reason why Vic was removed from two studios, then they're really missing the point here. Vic hugging people wasn't the problem. He was being inappropriate towards his underage fans and touching them inappropriately, which can include being hugged, was a part of that behavior. The allegations against Vic go far beyond just giving inappropriate hugs too, but I guess that they don't quite understand that or care to understand it.

 

[ToonJay723]

As for leaked information related to the investigation, the jelly bean incident has gone viral. The story relates to Monica Rial signing a jelly bean, Vic eating it and joking that he ate Monica Rial. Some Internet people claim that only this incident led to him getting fired. The anti-Monica people have been going crazy and supposedly doing unto Monica what she did unto Vic, using pictures of her hugging fans as proof of her being evil. A few fans have defended her and said it was consensual.

Well, because the jelly bean story got out Monica said she knows exactly who leaked the investigation and is and has reported them to Sony.

 

[doomrider7]

That is sadly a pretty good possibility on why he's doing this. Based on the information from this lawsuit, there's no way Vic could win. Defamation is a difficult thing to prove, especially when Vic would have to prove that the people involve deliberately spread misinformation about him in the hopes of ruining his reputation and getting him removed from Funimation. I don't think he can prove that. He's also made a couple of public apologies. He completely denies or ignores some of the more serious allegations and the apologies definitely come off as insincere, but since he did apologize, that might be a big problem for his case. In another article, he actually admits that certain events happened, but he just remembers them differently, so that might be an issue for this as well.

A lot of people would think that he's innocent even if the courts ruled against him, so it would definitely feed into the poor Christian man image that some of his fans have believed in from the start. Admittedly, it still seems like this lawsuit is going to do more harm than good for him. I don't think he has a legal leg to stand on here and the best outcome for him would be settling the matter outside of court. That might be his goal, but I don't know how much money he could reasonably expect to get out of this, especially when getting a lawyer and filing a lawsuit is expensive. It's not going to make Funimation take him back or fix his reputation. Funimation might settle out of court just so that they don't have to deal with courtroom nonsense and a part of me wouldn't blame them if it does come down to that. Another part of me hopes that they can just get the lawsuit thrown out or something since after everything the voice actresses have gone through during the past few months, I wouldn't want them to deal with more harassment if Vic could get any money out of them or Funimation.

I've seen some reactions where people are excited for this lawsuit and see it as a chance for Vic to finally win against these allegations. I see this as an extremely petty and last ditched effort for Vic to gain some money out of his voice acting career. His career is basically over, or at the very least damaged beyond repair, and this just makes me think he wants to get some more money before being forced to do something else. It's just really awful and I keep wondering to myself how I could have fallen for his nice guy act in the first place.



I've been hearing about that jelly bean incident. I didn't know it was leaked information from the investigation though. It's almost amazing that people really think that this one incident got him fired. He might have thought of it as just a joke, but it was still a pretty creepy and inappropriate joke to make. They were co-workers and depending on when he made the joke, they both could have been in relationships at the time. It probably wouldn't be enough to get someone fired, but it was still inappropriate and a clear indication of Vic's behavior.

I'm sadly not surprised that people are trying to make Monica look like the bad person here. It is apparently much easier for them to believe that this was all an inside job or that the voice actresses are trying to steal his roles than it is that Vic did anything wrong. Of course they'd target Monica Rial and paint her as the true villain mastermind behind this conspiracy. If they really think that inappropriate hugs were the only reason why Vic was removed from two studios, then they're really missing the point here. Vic hugging people wasn't the problem. He was being inappropriate towards his underage fans and touching them inappropriately, which can include being hugged, was a part of that behavior. The allegations against Vic go far beyond just giving inappropriate hugs too, but I guess that they don't quite understand that or care to understand it.

He's not trying to salvage his VA career. That's over and done. He's trying to build a narrative and angle of persecuted Christian White Man at the hands of the evil feminazi sjw horde to cash in on an alt-right gruff fandom all the while forcing his victims to have to come forward for his horde of..."people" to further victimize and dox.

 

[Fone Bone]

He's not trying to salvage his VA career. That's over and done. He's trying to build a narrative and angle of persecuted Christian White Man at the hands of the evil feminazi sjw horde to cash in on an alt-right gruff fandom all the while forcing his victims to have to come forward for his horde of..."people" to further victimize and dox.

I think this is right. He seems more on a religious crusade than anything else. If anything suing people he worked with would make him LESS likely to be hired by anyone in the future. But this doesn't seem to be about that. It's about punishing women for standing up against his perversions in the name of everything Godly. It's sick stuff.

 

[PicardMan]

It seems that "redneck" convention Bubbafest in Tennessee has embraced him along with NASCAR drivers and the like (hope he doesn't do anything to other guest Pamela Anderson) and talked smack to Monica Rial on Twitter. I'm shocked that Tokyo in Tulsa and Wichita Anime Festival didn't pick him up considering the reputation of my neck of the world.

 

[doomrider7]

I think this is right. He seems more on a religious crusade than anything else. If anything suing people he worked with would make him LESS likely to be hired by anyone in the future. But this doesn't seem to be about that. It's about punishing women for standing up against his perversions in the name of everything Godly. It's sick stuff.

He has a good grift going with scamming alt-right chuds and incels. Anything less than a courtroom beating is a COLOSSAL win for him since it would exonerate him in the eyes of his cult followers and the alt-right. Him getting shellacked in court will just result in them building some nonsense narrative about this going so deep as to have been done by Sony or something or other. This is about damaging those that stood against him as much as he possibly can and parts of the anime fandom are more than happy to oblige him in this.

Edit: Just in case anyone is curious why this is getting so much traction and fervor in the fandom is due to a high profile ongoing anime about a "good honest man" who has his life ruined by a lying woman who accused him of sexual assault and her blind white knight followers called Rising of the Shield Hero. Yes people have made this connection including both fan art and petitions for Vic to voice the titular Shield Hero.

 

[Light Lucario]

Well, because the jelly bean story got out Monica said she knows exactly who leaked the investigation and is and has reported them to Sony.

I really hope that whoever was leaking the investigation gets into some serious trouble. All that does is put more of the victims in danger, especially when Monica was already one of the prime target for harassment during this whole situation. Hopefully they'll be dealt with and can avoid more details from the investigation being leaked out to those YouTube conspiracy channels.

He's not trying to salvage his VA career. That's over and done. He's trying to build a narrative and angle of persecuted Christian White Man at the hands of the evil feminazi sjw horde to cash in on an alt-right gruff fandom all the while forcing his victims to have to come forward for his horde of..."people" to further victimize and dox.

That sadly seems likely. Vic claimed that he is doing this to salvage his reputation and to continue working in this career, but I should have known better to take his words at face value at this point. Considering the people who are siding with him and all of the alt-right following he's been developing, painting himself as the poor Christian white man would fit on multiple levels. It's also rather telling that the main people he's targeting specifically are the ones who have probably dealt with the most online harassment too. I can recall at least a couple of male voice actors who spoke out against Vic, but they aren't getting sued. Part of it could be that they don't work at Funimation, but it still definitely gives this lawsuit another awful sexist layer to it.

It seems that "redneck" convention Bubbafest in Tennessee has embraced him along with NASCAR drivers and the like (hope he doesn't do anything to other guest Pamela Anderson) and talked smack to Monica Rial on Twitter. I'm shocked that Tokyo in Tulsa and Wichita Anime Festival didn't pick him up considering the reputation of my neck of the world.

I've heard a bit about the Bubbafest comments. If these are the kind of conventions that openly welcome Vic while insulting Monica and anyone who doesn't like Vic in the process, then that doesn't really help Vic's case as far as I'm concerned. Most of the cons I've heard who still want to offer invites for Vic at any time are small time conventions or ones that are already pretty infamous with stuff like sexual harassment.

He has a good grift going with scamming alt-right chuds and incels. Anything less than a courtroom beating is a COLOSSAL win for him since it would exonerate him in the eyes of his cult followers and the alt-right. Him getting shellacked in court will just result in them building some nonsense narrative about this going so deep as to have been done by Sony or something or other. This is about damaging those that stood against him as much as he possibly can and parts of the anime fandom are more than happy to oblige him in this.

This really makes me hope that the courts rule against him even more. Admittedly, there are plenty of people who would still be on his bandwagon regardless of the courts outcome. There could be video evidence of Vic punching kittens and his fanbase would still worship the ground he walks on. But going this far to get some more money out of this situation only to come out with nothing would be kind of satisfying after seeing just how absolutely toxic and vile some of his fans/supporters can be.

 

[Fone Bone]

He has a good grift going with scamming alt-right chuds and incels. Anything less than a courtroom beating is a COLOSSAL win for him since it would exonerate him in the eyes of his cult followers and the alt-right. Him getting shellacked in court will just result in them building some nonsense narrative about this going so deep as to have been done by Sony or something or other. This is about damaging those that stood against him as much as he possibly can and parts of the anime fandom are more than happy to oblige him in this.

Edit: Just in case anyone is curious why this is getting so much traction and fervor in the fandom is due to a high profile ongoing anime about a "good honest man" who has his life ruined by a lying woman who accused him of sexual assault and her blind white knight followers called Rising of the Shield Hero. Yes people have made this connection including both fan art and petitions for Vic to voice the titular Shield Hero.

If anything says how sick our society has gotten, it's the Alt-Right rushing to the defense of this scumbag. Even four years ago, this behavior would be indefensible. Now there is a whole online movement actively supporting it. Your Family Values at work, ladies and gentlemen.

 

[AdrenalineRush1996]

I do worry about Monica Rial and Jamie Marchi if this does end up going to court. They've already gotten so much harassment, especially Monica, and I'd be worried if that keeps happening due to this potential lawsuit. Vic has plenty of fans who will defend him, but too many people have already harassed the women who spoke out against him and that is deeply concerning to me.

I know right? And I've seen more tweets from IStandWithVic than from KickVic on Twitter.

I'm sadly not surprised that people are trying to make Monica look like the bad person here. It is apparently much easier for them to believe that this was all an inside job or that the voice actresses are trying to steal his roles than it is that Vic did anything wrong. Of course they'd target Monica Rial and paint her as the true villain mastermind behind this conspiracy.

Sadly true.

But going this far to get some more money out of this situation only to come out with nothing would be kind of satisfying after seeing just how absolutely toxic and vile some of his fans/supporters can be.

It also doesn't help that they try paint themselves as the ones who are in the right and call out the KickVic movement for their actions, when they too have done similar actions as well.

 

[Light Lucario]

I know right? And I've seen more tweets from IStandWithVic than from KickVic on Twitter.

That's not too surprising. The atmosphere has gotten so toxic on Twitter that I think a lot of the KickVic supporters stopped using it once Vic was fired from Funimation. At least that's what I can tell since I just lurk around on Twitter and most of the anti-Vic people I read about were just tired of dealing with his supporters.

It also doesn't help that they try paint themselves as the ones who are in the right and call out the KickVic movement for their actions, when they too have done similar actions as well.

Most of the harassment and death threats I've seen thrown around are from Vic supporters. To be clear, I don't think that everyone who supports Vic is doing stuff like that or are terrible people. I'm positive that there have been anti-Vic people who have said terrible things too. I just think one side as a whole is clearly than the other. Vic's large fanbase is a reason why some of his victims didn't want to be identified in the first place.