The four-part docuseries “Quiet on the Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” put Nickelodeon in the spotlight with its allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct at the children’s television network. Now, some social media users say the network’s logo also represents something dark.
Multiple social media posts compared Nickelodeon’s famous orange “splat” logo to aerial images of Little St. James, a 75-acre island in the U.S. Virgin Islands once owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The Nickelodeon logo is ACTUALLY Epstein island,” read a March 24 Facebook post. “They always put the truth in plain sight.”
We found numerous social media posts connecting the logo to the island’s shape.
The logo bears a passing resemblance to aerial photos of Little St. James, such as this one captured by a Reuters photographer in 2019 and this Google Earth image. But there’s no evidence that the logo’s designers had Epstein’s island in mind when creating the new logo.
The Facebook posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
(Screenshot/Facebook)
The Nickelodeon logo is part of a 2023 rebrand for the network that harked back to a previous logo, known as the “splat,” variations of which were used from the 1980s until 2009.
In trade publication articles about Nickelodeon’s rebranding, Sabrina Caluori, a Nickelodeon executive, said research showed strong feelings for the network’s legacy identity, so it was a way to target nostalgic parents who watch TV with their children. The “core DNA” of the brand also resonated with children, Caluori told Ad Week.
The Los Angeles-based branding and design agency Roger worked with Nickelodeon’s design team on the logo.
Roger, on a webpage, said Nickelodeon’s rebrand reimagined the splat logo by seeking to simplify the shape and “establish it as the starting point for the rest of the graphic language built around it.”
The agency used a circular grid “inspired by the construction of the I from the” Nickelodeon text logo, which has a circle dotting the letter. The grid would allow for additional “splat” shapes that would fit the brand identity. The website showed different examples of the splat shape used across Nickelodeon products. It did not mention Epstein, nor his island.
“Quiet on the Set” has been in the news since it premiered March 17 on Investigation Discovery (all episodes are now streaming on Max). The documentary focuses on an allegedly toxic working environment created by producer Dan Schneider, who produced several hit shows on Nickelodeon that helped launch the careers of actors such as Amanda Bynes and Ariana Grande.
The documentary also highlights two Nickelodeon employees who were convicted of child sexual crimes. Former child actor Drake Bell was a victim in one case. He came forward publicly in the documentary as a victim of dialogue coach Brian Peck, who pleaded guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to 16 months in prison. A production assistant and an animator who worked at Nickelodeon also were convicted of sex crimes involving children, The New York Times reported. We have found no connection between Schneider and Epstein in searches of Google and Nexis, a news database.
The claim that the Nickelodeon logo was designed to mimic Epstein’s private island has no merit. The claim is False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
