I always thought that the reason zfs did its extensive CRC checks was primarily to detect data corruption while it was in RAM or over the network, with a side effect that in the rare cares that data on disk got corrupted without the drive detecting it because the CRC was still valid, it'd also be spotted.

But anyway, it might be worth testing by replacing some of the disk images with actually truncated ones so that there are holes when reading, so that it returns an actual read error rather than junk data.

God the intensity is tiresome. Whether or not it's AI slop, it's also bad writing. Things can be fun or interesting or worthwhile without being a harrowing battle of discovery!