In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes that same rib twice in succession yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we, to believe that this is some sort of a, a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.

That water pollution is neon green goo, air pollution is thick black smoke, or radioactive waste is only in drums.

Most of it is invisible and you don’t know about it until it’s too late.

Basically any time someone playing a chef or cook on TV picks up a knife I fly into a rage.

The Dark Knight trilogy really wanted to be a realistic, grounded take on the Batman mythos, so they dropped the more fantastical elements of some characters’ backstories. Ra’s Al Ghul was no longer immortal, Bane didn’t have super steroids, the Joker wasn’t permanently bleached by chemicals…then there’s Two-Face.

I guess they thought acid burns were too unrealistic, so they gave him regular burns…apparently without knowing that burns that severe would be so painful that he wouldn’t even be able to remain conscious, much less run around the city on a killing spree. I mean, you can see exposed muscle in some places. There’s a line where Gordon says he’s rejecting skin grafts, and I remember thinking, “WTF are you talking about? He should be in a medically induced coma, not making healthcare decisions.” Half of his body was an open wound; I’m amazed he didn’t die of infection 15 minutes after he left the hospital.

First time I saw the Jurassic park I thought no way would intelligent people just run around a huge and therefore dangerous Brachiosaurus or jump out of the car and run right to the ill Triceratops. That would be Darwin’s award kind of madness.

Then I studied biology, got to know some zoologists and paleontologists, and yeah, this is exactly what would happen.

In action films, serious injuries heal with just a few hours’ sleep, no recovery needed.

I love scenes where a character hotwires a car by:

• reaching under the steering wheel and pulling a panel off. It isn’t held on by fasteners or anything, it’s just like wedged in place.

• A bunch of loosely coiled wires tumbles out. In front are two thicker wires that are cut, stripped and tinned.

• The character strikes these two wires against each other like attempting to strike a match, mostly to make sparks.

• The sound of a car engine turning over plays.

• Climb in, shut the door, put it in gear and drive off.

One of the GIJoe movies ends with an underwater arctic base being crushed by ice that is dislodged from a bomb blast on the ice shelf above. Neat except ice doesn’t sink. I’m sure there are all manner of inaccuracy in those movies but that one really stuck with me.

When the computer hacker character clicks 8 keystrokes and says, “I’m in!”

Holy moly this thread got a lot of comments! Is Lemmy growing up? Are we big now?

or when someone runs through airport security in seconds to catch a flight. In real life, security lines, tickets, and checkpoints would definitely slow that down

All of this stuff makes me wonder how hard it would be to make a fully pedantic story.

I’ve seen books where the hero was on the verge of winning but gets randomly concussed by a piece of shrapnel. Disoriented, hospital.

Another where the hero had hearing loss issues from solo pistol badassing too much, sans ear protection. (Forgot the titles of these stories).

But what would it take to meet everything? Imagine Superman. Now he has to mind his acceleration to save people. He also has to mind distribution of force, since he can’t lift a plane without puncturing it. (Maybe he can make a little energy net under the plane somehow to distribute pressure?) And then he has to mind the Law of Conservation of Energy unless he splits apart matter somehow. And then this and that…

Will adherently realistic changes downrank most stories? I for one laugh my ass off when The Rock flexes his broken arm cast off in F&F.

Space Flight.

I walked in on my roommate watching “Don’t Look Up” right during the space shuttle launch scene. Literally every single thing was wrong. The trajectory the shuttle took off the launch pad. It flying RIGHT SIDE UP as it did the gravity turn like a fucking airplane. The fact 50 other rockets were in formation with it despite that being stupidly dangerous, them all having different TWR ratios, there not being nearly enough launchpads anywhere in the world to do that, etc. Just everything.

We have existing video footage of shuttle launches. It’s not some crazy mystery. This isn’t Gravity where they add a window that doesn’t exist on the ISS for dramatic tension. It’s not Star Wars where the X-Wings behave more like airplanes than spacecraft for visual appeal. This was deliberate negligence.

A very common one is spacecraft seem to always launch in a direct line away from the planet. They just go straight up. That’s the least efficient way to get into space. But I usually let it slide because explaining orbital mechanics and Hoffman transfers isn’t necessary for good story telling.

“We got their hard drive!” *Holds up a power supply.

And even if it was a hard drive, what were you going to do with it? You went in there guns blazing with no warrant after you knocked on the wrong door. The evidentiary chain is well and truly broken at this point. Nothing from that scene would be able to be entered into evidence.

Recently, I’ve been mindful of how long fights are in movies.

Sword fight? Fanning at each other, crossing and smacking swords. Maybe even walking around each other. I don’t think that’s how a real sword fight would look.

Fights where it’s mostly talking. Talking and talking. Nobody would fight like that.

Fist fights without a smack and dead. It’s fancy movement - only because of the shaky camera and cuts of course. Give me back Jackie Chan or smack them once and they fall over.

I also dislike noticing the wire-guided movements. Fast acceleration and you can see them balancing in the air lifted by wires. Wires removed after-the-fact, but it’s such unnatural movement.

And of course, the classic gunfight where nobody hits anything.

Or any monster chase or fight. If a giant monster chases you it’s faster and instant-kills you. But not in movies.

It’s certainly prevalent.