title: JSON_ERROR_CTRL_CHAR while using json_decode, none of the classic solutions work
body: <p>I've been trying to fix this thing for an entire day already and couldn't get it to work. Something which is supposed to be easy.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is, I do a GET request to this URL: <a href="http://api.champion.gg/stats?api_key=851a15d4f271849f3beee664ea03db3b" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://api.champion.gg/stats?api_key=851a15d4f271849f3beee664ea03db3b</a></p>
  
  <p>Then, I try to convert the result to a JSON format using the PHP function json_decode. I do it like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$httpResponse = drupal_http_request('http://api.champion.gg/stats?api_key=851a15d4f271849f3beee664ea03db3b');
  $data = $httpResponse-&gt;data;
  $datas = json_decode($data);
  var_export($datas);
  $error = json_last_error_msg();
  echo "Error = $error";
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And the error message returns "Control character error, possibly incorrectly encoded"</p>
  
  <p>I have already tried using stripslashes, deleting BOM, html_entities, deleting some initial characters and none of them have worked.</p>