Weird Issue With Gas Filler Tube...

A few months ago I went to fill up the truck and my gas cap fell apart into 2 pieces as I was taking it off (the white part separated from the black part). I thought it was strange because I never did anything to break it, never turned it past the “1 click”, never dropped it, etc... and I’m the only one who’s ever filled the truck up except for the initial full tank from the dealership.

Since the cap was messed up (the 2 pieces wouldn’t stay together anymore) and I didn’t know how it even happened, I bought a locking cap (a

$17 Stant 10504 Stant Regular Locking Fuel Cap, black

Stant 10504, which has worked good for months now). After this happened I also started to notice that my fuel filler tube was shaky and moved around about a .5” in every direction. I thought it was weird, but sort of forgot about it... Until yesterday I watched someone’s video on here where they filled up at the beginning and I noticed that their filler tube didn’t have any space around it and it didn’t move at all when they put the nozzle in, so I realized something wasn’t right with mine. I went out to the truck and sure enough I realized that the “collar” was pushed down about .5” under the faceplate (or whatever you’d call it). So I removed the 4 screws and took the plate off, pulled the collar back up into place, and realized that it does snap into the faceplate.

I put the screws back in the plate and the filler tube is nice and snug again. The only thing I can think of is someone must have smacked the cap with something when I was parked somewhere, breaking it and shoving the collar down below the plate. I have no idea why anyone would do that... to me personally, or what they stood to gain from it. Seems weird if someone would choose to do this if they were just vandalizing (as opposed to keying the paint or kicking a dent in the door, etc...). There’s no other damage to the truck and everything seems to be working fine (no evap or any other trouble codes). I’m hoping in pushing the collar down that it didn’t break any seals or anything (1 of 3 tubes goes directly into the collar, which looks like some sort of small canister around the fuller tube). But I figure I would get a code if there was any air leaks or anything. I wonder why Toyota decided to do away with locking fuel doors (my 3rd gen 4runner has a locking door). Anyway, just a strange thing to happen.