image_get_intermediate_size always returns false

Whenever media is uploaded, the media gets run through wp_generate_attachment_metadata(). The image_get_intermediate_size() function relies on wp_get_attachment_metadata() to ensure it has some kind of size data to work with.

If the image metadata is modified by either customizations or plugins and is missing the thumbnail image size, image_get_intermediate_size() will return false for that image size as the default returned size is thumbnail.