Factual error: Military characters who deliver incorrect or inaccurate salutes to each other. Real military personnel know how to deliver a proper salute.
Common movie and TV mistakes - page 5
This is a list of mistakes, things done wrong, etc. that happen so frequently onscreen we barely notice any more. 'Movie logic', stupid behaviours, and everything related.
Factual error: People are often watching or staring at the explosion of a nuclear bomb as it goes off, and witness the mushroom cloud form. In reality, the flash from this explosion would be so bright that it would cause instant, and usually permanent blindness. True Lies is a notable exception to this rule where Arnie specifically protects their eyes as the bomb goes off.
Character mistake: Police officers or people with similar training never securing weapons that are on the floor or lying motionless, especially lying next to a fatally wounded character.
Factual error: Hearing a dial tone after someone hangs up a phone - that wouldn't be heard unless you hang up and pick it back up yourself.
Other mistake: During a car chase, both vehicles are going flat out, but somehow there's always a higher gear they can shift to.
Factual error: Movies where a truck or train is uncontrolled and the brake lines have been cut. The whole point of those brake lines is that they keep the brakes from closing - cut them and the brakes apply automatically, for safety reasons - that's the whole point.
Deliberate mistake: Particularly in space-fantasy and science-fiction movies and television series, electronic control panels and components erupt in a shower of sparks when overloaded (as during space battles, collisions and technological failure scenes). Such furious sparking has been used in numerous futuristic films and TV shows dating from the mid-20th Century right up to the present. Of course, this sparking effect is intended to add "gee whiz" action and spectacle to otherwise mundane shots. But the implication is that advanced, futuristic technology idiotically neglects to incorporate electrical fuses or circuit breakers, which are designed to prevent equipment sparking and meltdown during power overloads. In reality, all of these control panels and electronic components should instantly and safely go dark and stop functioning as soon as the breakers are quietly tripped or the fuses are quietly blown.
Factual error: When someone has a limb or other body part sliced off or the person is bisected, and there is a dramatic delay in the body part falling off as if to cast doubt on whether or not they were actually sliced. Notable examples include "Equilibrium," "Skinned Deep," "Resident Evil," "Ghost Ship," and "Final Destination 2."
Factual error: Wild animals are depicted to be much more violent and vicious than in reality. Truth be told, most wild animals will avoid and run from humans. Even wolf packs, snakes, and jungle cats will avoid humans out of fear.
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Suggested correction: This is only a common mistake if this always happens in a situation where there is absolutely no way the animal can be aggressive. It can happen, especially with a wolf or snake, so in that movie it just happened. Not a common mistake then.
Deliberate mistake: Characters who are being pursued on foot frequently hide in plain sight of their pursuers. You see characters (typically the "good guys") duck around the corner of a building, or a tree, or some other obstacle, where they freeze and glance over their shoulders to watch their oblivious pursuers (typically the "bad guys") wander past just a few feet in the background. Nevermind the fact that the good guy's body is only partially concealed by said obstacle, or not concealed at all. This is an old film-making trick intended to heighten audience tension, even though it is totally illogical.
Character mistake: People almost never say goodbye when hanging up phones, even at times any normal person would 'sign off' in some way.
Character mistake: Mainly in Old West films, actors who are portraying barbers very frequently sharpen their straight-razors the wrong way, flipping the blade with its sharp edge against the strop. This would instantly dull and damage the razor's edge. No real barber would make such a clumsy mistake, but it's a common movie error.
Plot hole: An easily-explainable misunderstanding where one person storms off without even giving the other person the opportunity to clarify what's happened. "A pair of woman's underwear in your apartment?! You're cheating on me, we're done forever, don't ever call me!" But his sister came over to do some laundry that day, if she'd only bothered talking about it for a second.
Deliberate mistake: When food is served, little (if any) is eaten - even if people are starving. Instead, the diners play with their food, pretend to be cutting it or getting it onto a fork/spoon, and might raise food to their mouth but not actually put any in (which might be followed by "fake chewing"). Frequently, ONE bite is taken out of a sandwich or slice of pizza and the rest goes uneaten. As a variation, when the family is just about ready to "dig into" a holiday feast, there's an emergency = no-one eats.
Factual error: After waking up from a coma or being knocked out for several days, people in films often get up and proceed to wander around or have a conversation before moving on. But the body continues to function during this comatose state. When someone gets up after sleeping for 3 days straight, they would immediately need to head to the bathroom to relieve themselves. That, or they would smell very horribly to others around them and need to be cleaned up if they were not already taken care of when asleep by the other people.
Factual error: In almost every movie when a landmine is involved, dramatic tension builds when the character steps on it, inevitably hearing a click. That's it, you and everyone else realise that you triggered the mine, and it will explode the moment you try to step away. It's time to say farewell to your friends surrendering to your fate, or hold very still until someone thinks of something extremely clever and bold to save you. In the real world, though, you'd already been maimed, since mines are made to explode with the initial pressure, not the release. Example; the legendary ending of Double Team, or the movie Mine, which is...literally all based on this.
Factual error: Regular, unmodified weapons firing blank rounds. Real weapons use large and obvious attachments to block most of the propellant gases from going out of the barrel, which cycles the weapon. Hollywood weapons have blockages or mechanisms hidden in the barrel to do the same thing (or they have other effects like CGI or a gas flame), but those would make them unable to fire actual bullets. Also, real blanks are dangerous when fired close to people because they can still fire out debris. Die Hard 2 is a good example, with the bad guys swapping back and forth between blank and live ammunition in the same weapons.
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Suggested correction: Technically incorrect. You can get very high powered blanks called 4 in 1's that can cycle a weapon without the weapon being modified or having a blank firing adaptor. The reason they are not used commonly is because of how loud they are.
Factual error: Trains that do not stop, but crash through objects on railroad tracks. Train engineers will hit the brakes of the train when they see anything or anyone on the tracks, and if they come in contact with said objects, will stop to investigate what they hit, and cooperate with local and Federal authorities. Two examples are "Back To the Future, Part III" and "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry."
Other mistake: Characters that are on the run from the law or otherwise go into hiding, and they cut their hair themselves and it looks like it was done by a professional stylist. Examples include "The Fugitive," "Gone Girl," and even "The Outsiders" showed two youngsters cutting each others' hair with a knife but having a decent end result.
Factual error: Any time characters are underwater with no eye protection, they still always seem to have clear and perfect vision to see the world around them, other people and even small objects submerged with them. But to anybody who has ever tried opening their eyes under water, you know this isn't true. It's all a massively blurry mess where you can only make out fuzzy shapes and colors at best.
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