Factual error: Women didn't start routinely shaving their legs until the 1920s, but in films and TVs shows set before then, women's legs are always hair free.
Common movie and TV mistakes since 21 Dec '18, 00:00 - page 4
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: An especially stupid but common blunder in film and TV over the decades involves a character picking up a random object from nearby and bashing a heavy padlock and steel chain a few times until the lock and chain break and fall away. Of course, steel chain and heavy padlocks are designed to withstand tons of stress that a human being couldn't possibly exert through striking alone.
Deliberate mistake: When a man and woman have sex in a movie scene, after the sex is over the woman covers her breasts with the blanket/sheet and the man covers up from the waist down. Also, if the woman gets up off the bed, she drags the bed-sheet with her to cover up. You just had sex, why would you all of a sudden have modesty? Also, they always have sex under the covers. Who has sex under the covers?
Deliberate mistake: Trains should stop when the engineer is killed or otherwise incapacitated because of a switch known as a "Dead man's" which is used in these events to stop the train. This mistake is often done purposely to keep the action going and for plot purposes. This is especially common in action films.
Deliberate mistake: Modern cars crashing without airbags going off. Probably a deliberate mistake for safety (trained stunt drivers can create the scene safely with the airbags removed) and visibility (deflated airbags would obscure the actors and getting past them would slow down the action).
Factual error: In movies where people are fighting with bows and arrows, whenever someone gets hit by an arrow, they flinch in pain and die on the spot. In most cases, the arrow injury is insufficient to cause a person's immediate death. Or they may die from the arrow wound, but only after they bleed to death, which takes time.
Factual error: Films depicting criminal trials in American courtrooms frequently show the defendant receiving their sentence right after their guilty verdict is rendered. In real life, people found guilty will have a separate hearing to receive their sentence several weeks later.
Factual error: Every time somebody pulls out a Glock handgun a click can be heard. Glocks are striker fired, they have no external safeties that can be manipulated. Glock did make a version with a flip up/down safety for the military procurement trials but Glock lost the bid, and commercially made Glock's have no external safeties which would make a clicking sound.
Revealing mistake: In many in-car scenes, the background shown outside the windows either doesn't change or is the same scene used over and over.
Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.
Suggested correction: I don't think I've ever seen this outside of animation. It certainly isn't a common error. Can you cite some specific examples?
What is more common in driving scenes, especially in crowded cities, is drivers never having to stop for street lights or make turns. They continue driving through the city in a straight line as the characters talk.
Factual error: Military uniforms are often wrong. When it comes to ribbons, medals, rank, or branch; very few TV shows/movies have no uniform mistakes. Hiring a military advisor from the branch in question would alleviate all of these issues. And no, it's not illegal for Hollywood to portray uniforms correctly.
Audio problem: When someone is holding a gun, you often hear the sound of a hammer being pulled to the rear and locked even when the gun (usually a Glock) doesn't have a hammer to pull.
Revealing mistake: Whenever people drive in cars at night, lights angled upward are used so the characters' faces can be seen.
Other mistake: People gaining access to a computer system they've never seen or used before, but manage to figure out exactly how to do the thing they need to do, often in a very limited timeframe. No clicking around trying to find the right area or the right command.
Other mistake: Bullets pass through people, but don't shatter any glass windows behind them. Likewise bottles in bars without hitting mirrors behind the bar.
Factual error: Computers, security keypads, cellular devices, etc. that make loud beeps with each button press or mouse click and every image popping up on the device screen accompanied by a loud sound effect. Working in an office where computers make as much noise as they do in films and TV would drive the average person mad.
Character mistake: When kids/teenagers have something urgent or important to tell adults (especially parents), the adults say "uh-huh" but aren't really listening OR do not believe the kids even though they are telling the truth. Adults might view the alleged event as a joke ("The Chumscrubber"), too far-fetched ("Eight-Legged Freaks" and "Dog Gone"), an emotional reaction ("Good Boys"), or due to an overactive imagination, often attributed to watching scary movies ("Home Alone III" and "Diary of a Wimpy Kid").
Plot hole: Despite there being hundreds of witnesses, a villain who assaults someone or commits some other crime are not arrested or sued and are free to just walk away and live their daily lives as if nothing ever happened.
Audio problem: A real-life band will be giving a live performance, but the audio is of the studio recording, such as Rammstein performing "Feuer Frei!" in xXx or Alice Cooper performing "Feed My Frankenstein" in Wayne's World.
Plot hole: Minuscule towns where you'd expect even a robbery at the local diner would be big news and horrify the local community for months, somehow end up having a crime rate worse than a Mad Max dystopia. Examples; Cabot Cove, Maine (where Jessica Fletcher lives), or the "This is the police" videogame series, where a small town in the mountains ends up having in just a couple months hostage situations, bomb threats, several murders, armed robberies and about half a dozen of violent crimes every day.
Deliberate mistake: Rather than gradually exploring character backgrounds as the story unfolds, characters in cheesier movies awkwardly rush to reveal whole biographies in just a couple of lines, right at the beginning of the film. Such an unlikely conversation might go like this: "I'm the luckiest girl in the world, married to the lead developer and system analyst of NASA's most ambitious interplanetary program ever"; and the husband replies, "Well, it helped that your father created the program and took a chance on me after that Wall Street computer-hacking scandal six years ago." There's no subtlety at all, it's just fast-food character development.
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