Common Gaffes in Movies and TV

From The Catalog of Cool (Warner Books, 1982), ed. by Gene Sculatti, pg. 214:

“(to) Kojack (verb): To find a usually unavailable parking space. ‘I can’t believe it; a spot right in front of the hotel. I Kojacked!’”

When a person is shown talking on the (non-smart) phone and the other person hangs up on this one, this one looks into the phone, every time.

Or in Texas.

No, that’s a perfect description. Similar to seeing the magnified image letterboxed by a crude binoculars shape silhouette.

In an action film, our hero sneaks up on one of the henchmen, usually the furthest from the action. Knocks him out, maybe immediately, maybe after some hand-to-hand combat, takes his weapon and whatever else might be useful, and now he’s in the game. So why doesn’t that first guy ever call for backup?

And thus the Evil Overlord List was born.

Similarly, if its at night in a city, it’s always just rained, regardless of location or time of year, so you can get all the cool reflections from the streetlights and neon signs in the puddles.

Racking a pump shotgun or rifle
. Excellent articled titled: Guns for Beginners: Don’t Rack a Shotgun to Ward-Off Bad Guys

These are related to the giving my position away to the bad guy mentioned the link above. Grenades making a hissing sound or emitting smoke when thrown, people standing outside a door or doorway then racking the slide on an automatic or pulling back the hammer of a revolver.

Cocking the hammer on a double action revolver or pistol. Yes, it will make the first shot easier fractionally quicker since the trigger pull will be lighter, but may throw off the second shot since more trigger force is required.

Lasers making any type of sound.

Explosions in space not only making noise, but ignoring the fact that you better be far, far, far away since with in a vacuum, those flying bits of the other spacecraft will keep going with the same velocity it started with for a long, long, long time/distance.

Sticking the barrel of your gun into the doorway so the other person can grab it, knock it out of your hands.

The sound of a bullet ricocheting off almost any surface or causing a spark on metal. Unless itʻs steel jacketed, a copper alloy jacketed or full lead bullet wonʻt make a sound, only deform and a lead bullet definitely wonʻt spark.

Hats, boxes, papers flying when hit bullet. The flying hat was tested on Mythbusters and busted. Even the infamous .50 caliber is still only 1/2" compared to a much, much larger surface area.

Another Mythbusters episode busted the violently flying backwards when shot. Turns [out] the old time Westerns where people just dropped straight down where they were was closer to the truth.

Iʻve always wondered about this one. On police shows, when someone is shot, they quickly announce “Heʻs dead” or just shake their head. Seems to me youʻd ALWAYS immediately call for an ambulance since people have recovered from supposedly fatal injuries.

I once was watching an episode of Agents of SHIELD where a SWAT team is preparing to breach a door where on the other side armed bad guys are waiting. They breach the door and fan out, only for the heroes in ordinary clothes to run ahead of them and start engaging the armed bad guys in hand-to-hand combat. What was the point of the SWAT team anyway?

Images on the computer taking forever to delete with the images shown slowly being broken up or fading away.

Hackers ALWAYS leaving a message saying “Youʻve been hacked!”. Yes, ransomware does it, but most viruses and especially malware doesnʻt what you to know theyʻre there.

Live video streams being impossible to trace because theyʻre routed through multiple proxies and/or VPNs. Yep, no lag at all when sending data through multiple (usually overseas) servers!

Every gunshot sounding the same. At least Dirty Harryʻs magnums had a distinctive sound.

I see this a lot on the shows like *Law and Order SVU *and Criminal Minds. The SWAT team is fully suited up and the detectives are just wearing bulletproof vests and theyʻre always in the front when it comes to the showdown.

Or in Ukraine.

Provided courtesy of the “Making Streets Look Like It Just Rained Company.” :smiley:

I was present at the storming of the Russian White House in 1993. I can assure you that rounds fired from AK-47s do indeed make a “BEOWWWWWW!” sound when they ricochet. They also make a “SHWOOOP!” noise when they pass overhead. You can hear them spinning from the rifling in the gun barrel.

I think you underestimate the power of a .50 caliber round. An M2 machine gun is a virtual autocannon that can demolish aircraft and light armored vehicles.

I can also testify to people who are shot dropping like a puppet whose strings are cut. I saw someone sniped in 1993, and that’s exactly what happened.

As an aside, I was amazed when Jean-Luc was knocked backward from that huge explosion in the pilot episode of ***Picard ***and survived. The shock wave from a blast like that at close range would turn your insides into jelly.

A search turned up these sponsors:

*In all his incarnations, The Cisco Kid engendered a lot of collectible memorabilia, though much of it dates to the 1950s. Much of it bore the name of various sponsors, such as Tip-Top Bread paper masks and puzzles, Wrigley’s Cisco Kid Signal Arrowhead, Eddy’s Bread Humming Lariat, Arden Milk black bandana, Dolly Madison Ice Cream plastic reflective mask, Kern’s Bread ‘Triple S Club’ clothing transfer, Butter-Nut Bread portrait photos, Leatherwood Dairy plastic tumblers, Nolde’s Bread store posters, Dr. Swetts Cardboard Clicker Gun, and many other similar products. *

I too was born too late to have seen the Kid and Pancho in their original run. :frowning: It was many years before I understood the “Oho, Pancho!”/“Oho, Cisco!” reference at the end of a Rocky & Bullwinkle adventure.

The dramatic reenactments in documentaries like the ones they show on the History and H2 channels are the worst offenders. I would be a better technical advisor than the ones they have now.

Roughly the same scenario was played out on Doc Martin the other night. The Doc had to stop Louisa from getting on a plane before a blood vessel broke in her brain, so he got the local police officer to drive him to the airport. The whole time I was yelling “YOU HAVE A MOBILE! JUST PHONE THE AIRPORT POLICE AND HAVE THEM DETAIN HER!”

I was once in the SCA, and armor does indeed make a lot of noise when the wearer moves. Modern soldiers, however, do not.

COROLLARY: A bunch of astronauts has landed on the Moon or another planet. At some point, we’re bound to hear something like “Night up here is two weeks long!”/“The atmosphere outside is poisonous!”/“The surface temperature is cold/hot enough to freeze/melt ____!”/ and so on. Then everybody frowns and nods thoughtfully.

Just once, I’d like someone to say “What?!? Forget that I’m a trained professional with a PhD!!! Why the hell did nobody tell me that before I volunteered for this mission?!?”

In the SCA, I heard a fighter trotting in full scale mail. It sounded like a canning factory in full operation.