That was so fun and a great prank whether true or not. Like you, I've seen enough oddities to think it's possible. I'm going to challenge two hardware guys I know... one an expert on esoteric stuff. to come up with a way to make that happen. Maybe I'll do it to a RaspPI at a maker space near MIT to screw with them. ;)
Real programmers was the funniest shit I've read in a while. Even had jokes embedded in the references like the Lucasfilms one. I needed that laugh. :)
The fact that Polish language has 2 keyboard layouts installed by default probably costed humanity millions of dollars in wasted time, helpdesk calls, etc.
You see - the "typist layout" (the one nobody uses) has "z" and "y" switched. And by default both layouts are enabled, and the shortcut to switch between them is Alt+Space (or Ctrl+Space - I think it changed at some point?). So when you have "z" or "y" in your password and you accidently pressed "alt+space" - your password "stops working". But you won't see why - because it's all stars. So you try 3 times and you have to call helpdesk.
Always Mount a Scratch Monkey http://edp.org/monkey.htm
The Magic Switch https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/magic.html
Quake3's Fast InvSqrt() https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/8/
The Battle Chess Duck http://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/ (#5)
and of course, The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html
edit to add: Ford and the $10,000 chalk mark (Ctrl+F Ford) http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinm...