The part about how people "copied an existing init script or thought ... that init scripts needed LSB headers that looked like this" sounded like it to me.
I didn't initially manage to follow the right sequence of links to find the example[1], but now that I have, the context seems to be that "System V init ignores all of these" (the parts people copied without understanding), so the description still looks applicable to that example. (They serve no purpose at the point in time when they're added by cargo-cultists but cause problems much later when someone/something assumes that they are actually meaningful.)
I didn't initially manage to follow the right sequence of links to find the example[1], but now that I have, the context seems to be that "System V init ignores all of these" (the parts people copied without understanding), so the description still looks applicable to that example. (They serve no purpose at the point in time when they're added by cargo-cultists but cause problems much later when someone/something assumes that they are actually meaningful.)
[1] http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/linux/SystemdAndSysV...