Spies like James Bond or Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible that can fly and drive anything, do all sorts of fighting, shoot any gun, kill people and do parkour… That's the standard pop-culture spy and yet they never existed and will never exist.

No one ever carried a sword on their back and drew it in a fight because they're too long to pull, the hilt gets in the way and they fall out when you bend over. This is especially true for European swords. We have some limited art showing samurai wearing swords on their backs but that's probably only for transport and nothing else.

Ninjas never wore black cool looking outfits.

Dolphins never make the classic clucking/laughing noise (that's a kookaburra sped up), bears don't roar like they do in movies and TV (that's a tiger), Eagles don't scream (that's red-tailed hawk).

Fights in reality are fast, boring to watch, and the participants always look dorky and embarrassingly laughable. It doesn't mater how skilled or built they are. And yet fights in popculture are cool and heroic and last for ages XD

Apparently cowboys who draw and fired from the hip or fanned their guns always died fast and never killed anyone, according to Wyat Erp. They also never used two guns at the same time firing simultaneously. The closest they came was alternating one shot each or using one gun and then then other or simply swapping it to the dominant hand when the first gun was out of ammo.

Guns never blow people off their feet so that they launch in the air. Even a gigantic 30mm bushmaster cannon doesn't do that- it will definitely knock a person down but not off their feet and won't launch them, they'll just be splattered.

People spraying wildly with a sub machine gun will in reality hit almost nothing beyond close range, the same with people firing pistols, unlike in the movies where those shots magically kill everyone in front of them. The scenes from Starwars with the storm troopers hitting nothing are actually some of the more accurately portrayed gun battles in movies. The Stirling sub machine guns those blasters are based on would be very unlikely to hit anything at range and with rapid fire- which isn't the point of that action anyway, It's to control where the enemy can go, not necessarily to kill them as is believed by most people.

That's all I can think of for now haha. Feel free to add to it :)

Cats never hiss, growl and spit when hunting, they're silent.
They don't even do that during a surprise attack on a person as is always shown in horror films. Never. Hissing and growling is part of a threat to hopefully avoid attack and if it can't be avoided then it happens, it's pointless and ridiculous if it's all part of a fast attack. That behaviour is part of a long run-up to an attack and usually always involves them being provoked first.

Bunnies aren't obsessed with carrots like Bugs has stigmatized, they're more partial to leafy greens, but what they really love? Bananas. Yep; bunnies love bananas. But they can't eat too much of it; if you were to feed a bunny a whole banana, that'd be like feeding a human child an entire candy store.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Bunnies aren't obsessed with carrots like Bugs has stigmatized,

YUP
I was so disappointed by that when I had rabbits. Mine would go through fads… One day bamboo leaves would be like heroine to them, an absolute addiction, then they'd HATE bamboo leaves and wouldn't touch them. The same story with everything- celery, pellets, cabbage etc.
Never tried bananas so I don't know. But carrots were never a fave.


New ones:

Mice don't really like cheese. Cats love cheese, mice don't care very much.

It's true that some cats love milk and will happily lap it up from saucers, but many cats don't like it or it will make them vomit.

Bulldogs really aren't these tough customers that the media always portrays them as . . . honestly, they're just big ol' softies. Well okay, I know a lot of it has to do with how they were raised and the types of owners they have, but I have yet to come across a bulldog that was actually like a viscious mongrel that would rip your face off like they, they all just want cuddles and huggles (and to sniff your shoes).

And you know how whenever a character ends up getting wet, like if they got caught out in the rain or something, they always end up immediately catching a cold? Has that ever happened in real life?

Australia (just kidding).

Let's just say I'm glad movies never inspired me to pursue a career in law or hacking, because courtroom dramas and “hack harder” 1 minute later: “I'm in” scenarios are nothing like how it goes irl.

Silencers don't make gunshots barely audible.

Perfect teeth, no matter how long you were imprisoned, homeless, survived in a jungle, no matter how much you were beaten up, etc. The whitest set of pearls. The only time they deviate from that is probably when they show a crack user. No wonder people grow up thinking they'll only need dental surgery once they're old.

Here's a Mandela effect one:
I always thought the TV show Combathad all the mistakes with machine gun bursts and explosions and the infamous bane of all radio users “over and out”
But upon rewatching it now? It doesn't. Count the rounds in a machine gun “burp” and it's three to five unless obviously spraying for suppression fire. Guys throwing out automatic fire will shoot numerous times before actually hitting, not one spray and everyone dies.

But there are plenty of other shows that get it totally wrong going way back.

(Warning: graphic description of combat follows)

BTW, you can almost always see the effects of the wire rig used to jerk someone back from an explosion. They fly back from the waist? That's because that is where the wire harness is. People blown up are literally blown up not back exactly like Black Adder says when he describes how you react to a land mine. You fly into the air six feet and scatter yourself in all directions. That is stepping on an explosion. An explosion in front can literally blow up and away everything and just leave the boots and come back down as a spray of red mist and bits.

A projectile will knock someone back from the force of impact, not the explosion. It's mass at high speed hitting something stationary. But if the projectile is going fast enough and is dart shaped it can go right on through and the target barely flinch. A fifty caliber musket ball is slow enough and heavy enough to cause a stumble backwards. A fifty caliber armor piercing round will go through you and the solid oak tree behind you.

A lot of the guy being thrown or jerked backwards (springboard and wire effects) is actually for the safety of the stunt man. He's propelled backwards so he doesn't get caught in the middle of the pyrotechnics. Explosion and the guy standing still is a dangerous stunt.

The firebomb in the gas tank. Any gasoline powered anything blows up in a fireball on any kind of impact. Even just flying off a cliff it explodes in a fireball. A good parody had a lawn mower run into something and it suddenly explodes in a fireball.
Total fiction. A car can burn and not be a fireball with the fuel exploding. But special effects pyrotechnics are beautiful in color. Looking back in movies this is mostly an effect in color movies. Tons of old black and white movies had cars running off cliffs and hitting trees with realistic impact damage and some smoke. Wasn't until color that there started being fireballs. ;)

I always get a good chuckle when I see skydivers chasing each other all over the sky for a long time, especially when they've jumped from a plane flying at a relatively low altitude. If you exit an aircraft at 14,500 feet altitude, you have about 60 seconds before you need to pull your chute. And doing all sorts of aerobatic maneuvers in freefall will shorten that time a lot.

How video games are shown on TV, especially sitcoms.

Once I caught “the neighborhood” because mom was waiting for Bob love Abashola and it showed the son in this weird VR headset, having around controllers and such in such a stupid manner I just couldn't watch any more.

I compared it to saying you are going to listen to music by shoving a reel to reel on a Walkman without any kind of speakers but still getting crystal clear sound.

Another one is any time animation or the field of cartooning shows up in a sitcom, that crap just causes my teeth to grind.

Furwerk studio wrote:
How video games are shown on TV, especially sitcoms.

Another one is any time animation or the field of cartooning shows up in a sitcom, that crap just causes my teeth to grind.

So true. About the only depictions of comic creators that comes close are the Kevin Smith films. But then he's written comics, has a reality TV show about them and a great comic book store in Red Bank NJ.
I'm an inker.
No, you're a tracer! All you do is trace!
😆 lol

If we're getting into technical aspects, it always has dumbfounded me how so inaccurately technology has been depicted in many kids shows over the years.

For example, on ARTHUR, emailing and instant messaging were usually depicted as the same thing: characters would send each other emails, but they were delivered and responded to in real-time like IM chats. On ALVINNN!!! AND THE CHIPMUNKS (the current CGI series on Nickelodeon) whenever any of the characters post a video online, apparently a like is the same thing as a view.

As far as live action shows and movies are concerned, how is it that security footage is not only always so crystal clear, but even when they zoom in on the footage, said zoomed-in footage is enhanced so perfectly there's absolutely no distortion whatsoever?

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Bulldogs really aren't these tough customers that the media always portrays them as . . . honestly, they're just big ol' softies.

I think you mean “pitbulls”.
“Bulldogs” are indeed portrayed as brutal big monsters in Loony Toon cartoons, but real bulldogs are short, fat, ugly small things with an underbite… ugly mutants with many health issues that make their lives painful and pathetic. They couldn't harm a flea. :(
The American Bulldog is tougher and better made, but not the version portrayed in Loony Toons. XD

And you know how whenever a character ends up getting wet, like if they got caught out in the rain or something, they always end up immediately catching a cold? Has that ever happened in real life?

YES! And people believe this OMG
Maybe you can get an immune reaction from being wet and cold- (cold and flu symptoms are immune reactions afterall) which can make someone think they have a cold but it will only be very temporary and fleeting.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
Silencers don't make gunshots barely audible.

This is quite nuanced actually XD
Silencers CAN make a gunshot pretty silent with only the action being the loudest noise BUT those are NOT the sort of silencer you can quickly screw on a pistol. They're big, heavy, specially made and filled with rubber washers that act as baffles and because of that they lose effectiveness after they fire enough shots to wear out the washers (maybe 10). You also have to fire sub-sonic ammunition with them so they don't make a supersonic “crack”.

People who don't feel pain or people who don't feel fear are like superheroes and can be amazing fighters and awesome at physical things.

The complete opposite is true. Lepers get infections and lose bodyparts because they lose feeling. Pain is ESSENTIAL. Without pain we die. A person without pain or a high pain tolerance isn't a superhero, they're a victim and damaged. The less pain you feel the more injury you can get without realising.

Not feeling fear is a severe issue. It's a problem, not an advantage, in every sense. It's incredibly dangerous.
I have personal experience with this issue, as I've gotten older I've lost a lot of my natural fear for things like heights, dangerous animals, sharp things, dangerous situations. This can lead to death or injury.

There's an old saying: “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
For me now I'm genuinely afriad of NOT feeling fear for things.

There are cases of how someone's body mass, adrenaline level or sheer force of will let's them shrug off injury that normally would leave them incapacitated. That's real. They blow it all out of proportion in movies. Kenneth Lucas of the 24th infantry division was wounded three times and by his own admission didn't feel it because he was so focused on helping the other guys in the hot landing zone. There are plenty of other documented cases but I knew Luke. There were some pretty nasty scars.
Pain can also be channeled. Any number of CMOH and VC accounts document that. But it's nothing like it is in most movies unless it's one about one of those incidents like Hacksaw Ridge.

And pantophobia and generalized anxiety disorder are quite real as are the cognitive coping mechanisms taught to minimize fear and use it as a way to get through the agony and absolute blind terror. But for all that I still have a physical reaction to heights. The phobia remains no matter what I may tell myself.

bravo1102 wrote:
There are cases of how someone's body mass, adrenaline level or sheer force of will let's them shrug off injury that normally would leave them incapacitated. That's real.

Not feeling pain is something that's very common in fights and accidents (till afterwards). It can be useful to a limited extent for a short time so you can finish the fight despite injury, get out of a bad situation in an accident, or handle it like your mate did, but if that lack of pain went on longer than those desperate instances then it could lead to terrible injury or death

Ozoneocean wrote:

bravo1102 wrote:
There are cases of how someone's body mass, adrenaline level or sheer force of will let's them shrug off injury that normally would leave them incapacitated. That's real.

Not feeling pain is something that's very common in fights and accidents (till afterwards). It can be useful to a limited extent for a short time so you can finish the fight despite injury, get out of a bad situation in an accident, or handle it like your mate did, but if that lack of pain went on longer than those desperate instances then it could lead to terrible injury or death

Precisely. That's why so many CMOH and VC awards are posthumous. Those that survive often do so because they suddenly realized how much pain they were in. A really good way to research the limits of human endurance is to read the awards citations. A lot of incredible things have been done but not by one crew in one day like that horrible movie Fury

Many of the events in the movie happened. But to many different crews from June of 1944 to May of 1945. Not all in one day.

fallopiancrusader wrote:
I always get a good chuckle when I see skydivers chasing each other all over the sky for a long time, especially when they've jumped from a plane flying at a relatively low altitude. If you exit an aircraft at 14,500 feet altitude, you have about 60 seconds before you need to pull your chute. And doing all sorts of aerobatic maneuvers in freefall will shorten that time a lot.

They flit and fly around like hummingbirds haha!

One thing that's really fictional is the depiction of war in almost every movie.
@Bravo- you can weigh in on this because my knowledge is all 3rd hand ^_^

War in movies is just all go-go-go!!!! 100% action ALL the time.
War in reality is waaaaaaaaiiiiit… do nothing. Dig holes, eat, kick rocks… FULL ON ACTION for an hour or two more or less, then nothing for hours again.
Even when it's action time often it's just people laying about and waiting or travelling somewhere while you hear shots in the distance.

-All 3rd hand knowledge.

Even ancient war with swords and spears was much the same. And they never charged in and clashed like they do in Braveheart Haha

Oz, you're watching the wrong war movies. There are plenty that go into the “hurry up and wait” of the hours of pure mind splitting dullness that is punctuated by the few minutes of the most intense everything ever.
But plenty do try to compress too much into too short a time like Fury A lot of movies compress hours even days and weeks of work and waiting into one brief montage or just a couple of barked orders and then suddenly it's hours or even a full day later just in time for the enemy attack.

You didn't see the hours frantically spent digging in and humping ammo. Almost never do you see battlefield clean up. Not too many show the hours of maintenance many things require. Remember Flying Leathernecks where the pilot lands and the ground crew get to work and the full twelve hours they spent fixing the plane is alluded to with “Thanks guys for working all night getting the plane ready”

And then firefights that only took thirty seconds to two minutes are stretched out and slowed down with camera work showing every little thing every participant does. Things have to be made clear for the audience that would just be a few seconds of rat-tat-tat and WTF for the guys shooting. Then there are movies like T-34 that break down a three second tank engagement into five minutes with slow motion and CGI to show all the cause and effect in detail.

Metatron among others on Youtube does a magnificent job of breaking down premodern warfare and how it's done wrong in nearly every movie ever.

Here's another one: how are people able to keep their eyes wide open under water?

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Here's another one: how are people able to keep their eyes wide open under water?

True!!!

——-

Here's a thing: in most depictions in pop-culture when people go to a club or a concert they have conversations at normal volume and can ear each other normally XD
SOMETIMES they actually show it how it really is with people shouting at each other and not hearing each other but most of the time they just talk normally…

Because surprise surprise on set there is zero sound and they ARE talking normally because the effects and music are added afterwards.

Apparently a skilled sound engineer can manipulate their sound board so that people CAN hear each other talk in clubs and concerts just by changing the levels and frequencies that are amplified. I believe it but I've rarely seen that… But then most sound people at concerts and clubs are not skilled or educated.

Another thing-
In popculture when people get shot, if they survive they get the bullet taken out and they magically start to get better right away XD

In reality taking out the bullet can often do MORE damage. You don't necessarily need to remove it unless it's causing bad issues in there like getting in the way of nerves, bones, or stuck in an organ…
I dunno, obviously I'm not a doctor but I know that taking a bullet out doesn't do much to heal a bullet wound!

While in all popculture taking a bullet out either almost INSTANTLY cures things or helps a person turn the corner and start to recover.

They treat it like removing a splinter, but the issue isn't the little chunk of metal inside you, it's the hole it ripped THROUGH you to get IN there!

And they wound in different ways… A slow pistol bullet will usually stay inside the body and zigzag a bit on the way in, making a nasty wound. It can even break up in there, causing more wounding.

A high speed bullet from a rifle will usually go right through unless it hits a bone- but it doesn't just drill a straight hole: because it's going so fast it blasts big caverns around it because of the shock-waves it makes. The inside of the body is flexible so it absorbs a bit of that damage but not all. They can mash you up on the way through.

An “assault rifle” is in between a pistol and full rifle typically. The rounds are smaller and less powerful than rifle bullets, but bigger and faster than a pistol. They travel at high speeds but start to tumble and break up, so they're very effective at wounding.

Taking them out won't fix the wound :(


—Forgive the morbidity XD
I'm not even particularly interested in this subject, but I just picked up the info along the way.

Bullets tear people up. In real life catching a burst of automatic fire in the belly may not leave a whole lot of belly, not neat holes with a little ring of blood around them. However so long as it doesn't hit vital organs it won't necessarily incapacitate someone especially someone with high body mass.

Movies often forget collateral damage. That neat bullet in the shoulder in reality often dislocates or breaks the shoulder. That wound in the side someone shrugs off? Broke some ribs. Yes, you can stumble on bleeding and even hide it for awhile. That is documented. But not days.

I looked this stuff up for Attack_of_the_Robofemoids because I wanted to know what kind of damage humans can take and how it could be minimized through some high tech transformation.

And let's talk about high caliber automatic weapons like a .50 caliber machine gun. Watch Men of the Yamato to see what strafing people with six .50 caliber machine guns does. It literally shreds them to pieces. That's why tank crews laugh at the zombie apocalypse. With that .50 caliber machine gun up top those zombies won't get anywhere close and that's before opening up with the two 7.62mm machine guns.

One of the only aversions I can think of to this was an old Samuel L. Jackson movie, in which he played a rogue undercover cop who was involved in a sting operation to catch the perp who killed his former partner, while Eugene Levy ends up caught in the mix as his unwilling new partner. Towards the end of the movie, Jackson took a bullet in the butt that not only knocks him down in the moment, but later as he sees Levy off at the airport, he's limping, on a cane, and even when security runs the metal detector over the lower half of his body, it goes off when it reaches his rear; when asked if he has something in his pocket, he tells them plainly that he has a bullet in his ass . . . and the security agents actually go and get their rubber gloves like they think they're going to get it out that way.

Do actual college professors dress in caps and robes like graduates do?

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Do actual college professors dress in caps and robes like graduates do?

I've never seen that but I think it was once a tradition for some many decades ago. They probably stopped doing in in the 50s?

In Britain even the teachers wore robes and a hat back in the day. XD

Speaking of outfits-
Layers and judges depicted with robes and 18th century wigs etc.
In most of the world that has unfortunately ceased in reality. But about 16 years or so ago I was lucky to do jury duty here and see the Lawyers and judge all wearing powdered wigs and dressed in elaborate 18th century inspired outfits. I was very impressed.
They don't do that anymore unfortunately and I think that's abhorrent.

OK- more popculture myths:

-You can't hide behind a car door, wooden table, house door or even a wall in some cases and be protected from bullets.
They will go right through most of that stuff and kill you.
Hiding is still a good idea because it makes you harder to hit and those obstacles will at least slow smaller pistol/sub machine gun rounds.

-Helmets can't stop bullets unless they're special Russian custom steel armour things. and hen they can barely stop assault rifle sized bullets. Motorbike helmets will not protect you at all from bullets.

-The purpose of army helmets is to protect you from shrapnel, not direct hits from bullets.
The myth is that deaths in war and battle are all from direct fire and the purpose of weapons is to kill by direct fire. This isn't true- the purpose of weapons is to exert power and control, having the potential to kill helps in that. On a battlefield there can be all sorts of destructive events happening- bombs dropping, artillery chewing up the ground or smashing buildings etc. Helmets protect you like they do on a construction project.

-Cars can't do huge jumps and exciting stunts and keep going at high speed afterwards as if they're ok. A good example of that was the Dukes of Hazard General Lee. In reality that show absolutely destroyed so many cars… I think it was probably close to 50?

Ozoneocean wrote:
But about 16 years or so ago I was lucky to do jury duty here

Lucky? Hmm. Here in America, being summoned to do jury duty seems to be held by adults in the same regard as kids who are sent to detention after school for like a month.

I love the furniture and doors protecting against bullets one. There is cover and there is concealment. Cover is something that can keep you from getting hurt and concealment is just hiding.

There have been a bunch of movies lately showing higher powered weapons killing through walls and doors. A solid wooden door or table may deflect rounds but won't stop them, but it will stop shrapnel. It all depends on the power and size of the round and range. As far as walls go there's always the hope that the bullet will hit the frame and not just the drywall. But it varies so much. Something like Rambo or The Expendables are absurd whereas the old TV show Combat is reasonably accurate.

But then a lot of it is servicing the plot and not depicting reality. That drywall didn't stop the bullet, it was the plot armor. 😉 ;)

J_Scarbrough wrote:
Lucky? Hmm. Here in America, being summoned to do jury duty seems to be held by adults in the same regard as kids who are sent to detention after school for like a month.

It DOES suck, but I was at least lucky to see the pomp and circumstance of the whole thing while it still existed :)

bravo1102 wrote:
But then a lot of it is servicing the plot and not depicting reality. That drywall didn't stop the bullet, it was the plot armor. 😉 ;)

The weird thing is that in Australia when we saw that internal walls stopping bullets made perfect sense to us because internal walls were all brick traditionally, so very tough. And external walls were always double brick- so it seemed to make sense ^_^

More recent houses here built in the last 20 years though go the American way and use that drywall method instead.
Some even have thin external walls like Californian houses now O_O
So definitely NOT bullet stoppers!