Something somewhere was touched because code doesn't just break without someone touching it somewhere. Has the $metadata[$field]['value'] been editied recently

Could this possibly be related to the implementation of the new Commons description/Wikidata template?

I think a good example we could build off of would be https://status.discordapp.com/ as it has the basics and explains why an issue happens. We could easily expand something like this to fit the needs of Wikimedia. Discord uses an external provider, however the look of the page itself is quite easy to understand.