Factual error: Most ventilation ducts are not large enough for a person to crawl around in, and any duct large enough for an adult to fit in wouldn't be able to support the person's weight. In the rare event that a company could afford a large ventilation system that could support a person's weight, they would likely forgo it anyway, as it would pose a security risk.
Common movie and TV mistakes since 21 Dec '18, 00:00
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.
Character mistake: In almost every film or TV show, if the villain actually bothered to kill the hero as soon as they met face to face instead of just talking about their plans, the villain would actually succeed in his or her plans. Instead, the villain letting the hero live becomes their real downfall.
Factual error: Airbags which deploy and stay inflated. That's not how airbags work, they deflate immediately.
Factual error: Snipers using a laser mounted to their rifle to line up their target. Snipers in real life don't use lasers in this manner. For one thing, it gives away their position, and additionally because lasers won't line up a target accurately at a long range, as the bullet is affected by gravity, the rotation of the Earth, and other factors.
Character mistake: People who run after cars when they drive away expecting to catch up with it on foot.
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Suggested correction: Generally, people aren't thinking too forwardly or rationally when someone they're pursuing is about to get away. Their lizard-brain just thinks "getting away -> chase," not considering how unlikely (though not impossible) it is for them to either catch up with the car before it fully accelerates or when it makes a turn, then either pull the driver out of the car or jump on the car.
Character mistake: In many space-based action sequences, all the craft involved act like space isn't 3D. Ships fly at each other head on, surround other vessels in a circle, not a sphere, attack with a pincer movement from the left and right, rather than above/below, etc. Most of the time the action is all broadly on one plane. Makes things easier to understand from an audience perspective, makes zero sense tactically speaking.
Factual error: People taking cover behind very small / flimsy things, like car doors or wardrobes, dozens of bullets being fired at them, but they emerge unscathed.
Factual error: In many films and TV series that feature passwords being cracked by a "brute-force" attack, individual characters of a password are found independently of each other. (See Ocean's Eight, Under Siege 2, various episodes of Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei, or Person of Interest.) In reality, this is impossible; most of the times the password itself is not stored anywhere. Rather, an irreversible cryptographic hash of the password is stored, and the typed password's hash is compared with that. Either the whole thing is right or no access is granted.
Factual error: All sprinklers going off at the same time in a fire or when an alarm is triggered - they actually go off individually and only when exposed to enough heat.
Deliberate mistake: You don't automatically get "one phone call" when you're arrested in the USA. Depends on the state, for a start. You're always entitled to access to a lawyer regardless, but not always making the call yourself. If you make a call with no-one answering, you've not "wasted" your call either. Plenty of states allow multiple calls, within reason. It's a plot device, not based in reality.
Deliberate mistake: Strip clubs in non-adult-rated movies/TV shows where every woman dancing onstage is fully clothed.
Other mistake: When someone is working on a car or changing a wheel they always manage to keep their hands clean.
Factual error: When a police officer finds a suspicious powder he or she puts some on his or her tongue and knows straight away what drug it is, in reality the powder would need a lab test to analyse it.
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Suggested correction: Not true. Generally they are tasting it to see how pure the drug is. Hard drugs are often diluted with milk sugar, so they make a bigger profit. The higher the sweet taste, the less pure the drug is.
First, law enforcement officers don't ever taste drugs, it's a good way to die if you don't know what you're ingesting. But second, the mistake isn't saying they are tasting drugs to know it's strength or purity. The mistake is explicitly about a cop tasting a drug and positively identifying what it is based on taste, which happens a lot in cop movies. Such as when the cop says "that's cocaine", not "that's half pure cocaine."
Other mistake: A common error for Batman films, despite Gotham City being a large and heavily populated city akin to New York or Chicago, Batman never gets stuck in traffic. In fact, whenever Batman is shown driving through the streets of Gotham, there is little to no traffic at all.
Deliberate mistake: Characters who are being confined in an area (typically inside cages, prisons cells, et cetera) that provides enough space for the character to escape, but they still consider themselves stuck (e.g. the iron bars of a cage/prison cell having enough distance between each other to allow the character to squeeze through between them). This is more common in cartoons and animated films.
Factual error: An oft-repeated myth in movies, usually in the science fiction genre, is that humans only use 10% of their brains. The truth is that humans use all of their brains, even when asleep.
Revealing mistake: People playing video games in a movie or TV show will often mash the button in a way that doesn't match what is going on in the game.
Character mistake: The victim will wait for the antagonist to finish a speech or villain song, rather than attempt to kill them while their guard is down. It's only the hero unexpectantly bursting in that won't wait for them to be done.
Other mistake: Characters swapping clothes with others suddenly (strangers, police officers, females, etc) always get their size and the clothes fit perfectly.
Factual error: IP addresses are 4 groups of up to 3 numbers each, maxing out at 255 - it's a fundamental limitation of the technology. But IP addresses in movies are often shown as something like 564.100.432.165, which is impossible. This isn't like movie phone numbers all starting with 555, because that's still a feasible phone number, just with a "movie" area code.
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