# Creative works with factual errors that so easily could have been checked and corrected **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 26, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051 "2010-07-26T15:01:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Promethea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Promethea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Promethea)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/21 "2010-07-27T07:12:22Z")
> [@simster](#): > > On the new FX show “Justified” - the scene was set in Lexington, Kentucky, on a bridge over a river - > > “East of I-75, on Tates Creek Road.” > > 1.) Lexington sits entirely West of I-75, > 2.) Unless somethings changed, there is no bridge over the River on Tates Creek - it still requires a ferry ride to cross it. Reminds me of one I’ve mentioned in a similar thread and always drives me mad - Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing #46 “Revelations” in which Moore describes Sister Ann-Marie boarding a train at Leicester Square and going north through Camden Town station and then to Mornington Crescent. Camden Town is the station _after_ Mornington Crescent! I will happily accept all the rest of the nuttiness in that story which includes stations and trains full of people somehow not noticing an evil warrior whose head faces the wrong way, Exocrcist style, but this won’t stand. Drives me nuts especially because Moore claims to be so hot on the research for the Louisiana locale of his Swamp Thing stories yet here he presumably couldn’t be bothered to look in the back of a diary to look at a copy of the London tube map. ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/22 "2010-07-27T08:58:28Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > To be fair, _Guys and Dolls_ got it wrong first; having never been to Biloxi, I never would even assume that it didn’t rhyme with Roxie, since that exact rhyme features so prominently in that piece of American culture. And [m-w.com](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biloxi) lists both pronunciations. Back in the '80s, or maybe even in the '70s, the band Sparks had a song called “Upstairs” that dealt humorously with the functions of the brain. When you want the art to start You cue the left side and the art will Start to flow and flow and flow And leave a stain on all your carpets When you want the intellect You cue the right side and you can Collect the Nobel Prize in person Or have someone mail it to you Apparently the rhyming parts of their brains weren’t working, and neither were the research centers. ---
**Author:** ![sco3tt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@sco3tt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sco3tt)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/23 "2010-07-27T10:26:12Z")
I watched the film Black Dynamite a month or so ago (and thanks to whomever it was on the SDMB who turned me on to that). Aside from a few anachronistic phrases in the dialogue, it was very easy to suspend my disbelief and imagine I was watching a forgotten 1970’s film. That is, until the exposition of a plot point depended on the area code of Topeka, KS being 785. Back in the 70’s Topeka was still in the 913 area code. It didn’t get assigned 785 until twenty years later. They got so much right in that film, I was disappointed they got something so simple so wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/24 "2010-07-27T10:29:02Z")
Not sure if it’s considered a “creative work”, but _Who Wants To Be A Millionaire_ had a question asking “Which **U.S. body of water** was formerly known as the Sea of Cortez?” The correct answer is the Gulf of California, except that it’s completely in Mexico. The guy got it wrong, probably by eliminating the correct answer due to it not being in the U.S., and left without a word of protest. A page runner in one of Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers states “The jugular vein is actually an artery”. Uh, no, it’s a vein. The carotid artery, which runs more or less parallel to it, is an artery. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/25 "2010-07-27T12:03:25Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > I recall reading [this](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/6232148/The-Lost-Symbol-and-The-Da-Vinci-Code-author-Dan-Brown-50-factual-errors.html) a while ago - a list of 50 factual errors in Dan Brown’s _The Lost Symbol_ and _The Da Vinci Code_. I was gonna say Dan Brown’s account of the origins, history & general purpose of the Illuminati in ANGELS AND DEMONS. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/26 "2010-07-27T12:11:03Z")
I don’t know why this one has always bothered me, because the show is beneath criticizing, but on _The Facts of Life_ there was an episode where Charlotte Rae decided to take a class on Shakespeare. One of the students, asked to role-play Juliet as a way to understand the character, says, “Well, I take poison!” How could _nobody_ in the whole production of the sit-com - writers, actors, directors, editors - not know that Juliet doesn’t take poison in _Romeo and Juliet_? ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/27 "2010-07-27T13:16:00Z")
Whenever I hear QUIN-cee, Massachusetts, I cringe. There is no such place. It is, and always has bee, zwin-ZEE. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/28 "2010-07-27T14:01:07Z")
> [@Kolga](#): > > > [@OpalCat](#): > > > > Some urban fantasy book that I read had the main character (a witch) use a spell that turned her into “any rodent” as long as she had a piece of its fur. She turned into a mink. And kept referring to herself as a rodent. I can’t believe the editors didn’t catch that one. It pissed me off (it was a recurring thing in the book and a major plot point) so much that it ruined the book for me. It basically made me think the author was an idiot, and so I lost respect for the writing. > > I think that would be _Dead Witch Walking_, by Kim Harrison. Or if not that particular book, one of the others in the series (don’t have them with me to check). And not that you don’t have a point, but in a book series that involves vampires, werewolves, elves, demons, and gargoyles, I’m able to overlook small things like factual inaccuracies 😃 Bingo! I can overlook factual inaccuracies that are intentionally included for the sake of the story, but this was just sloppy ignorance and so it pissed me off and ruined the book. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/29 "2010-07-27T14:08:07Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Whenever I hear QUIN-cee, Massachusetts, I cringe. There is no such place. It is, and always has bee, zwin-ZEE. Well, but there should be a special exception clause for placenames in Massachusetts. I mean none of them are pronounced how any sane person would pronounce them upon just seeing them written down. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/30 "2010-07-27T14:10:41Z")
In the end-of-the-world movie Deep Impact, a body (comet, I think?) is coming to land in the Atlantic, and the Eastern Seaboard of the US is “evacuated” to higher ground. This is what I-66 was built for – originally it was intended to be a straight evacuation route from DC to the mountains. But it’s a commuter road now. In the movie, one zillion cars are packed bumper-to-bumper, waiting to die (in other words, it looks like a normal rush hour with no comet). The protagonists can’t wait – so they _pull over onto the shoulder and drive off down the shoulder to safety_. If for some unimaginable reason everyone else was being polite and not _already_ crammed on the shoulder, there would be chaos as everyone deliberately pulled onto the shoulder to block our heroine (Tea Leoni) from getting ahead of them. More to the point, due to conflict over previous agreements not to widen the highway, parts of 66 _have no shoulder_ because the shoulder has been turned into a commuter lane during rush hour – which would certainly apply during mass evacuation as well. I don’t expect filmmakers to understand every city’s HOV rules and peculiarities, although any local consultant would have laughed at this scene. But it’s just plain counter to human nature to posit everyone sitting nicely in traffic waiting to die so that one selfish rulebreaking car can run ahead. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/31 "2010-07-27T14:50:58Z")
I was once watching [this movie](http://www.amazon.com/Boa-Dean-Cain/dp/B0000640SF) about a giant prehistoric snake that was terrorizing a maximum-security prison in Antarctica. They made a big deal out of the fact that the protagonist was super smart and well-respected, with a Ph.D. in Advanced Sciences. Not only that, but our professor of Advanced Sciences had years ago written his dissertation about this prehistoric snake, even though by his own admission there was no evidence supporting his theory. It was a beautiful film. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/32 "2010-07-27T15:46:29Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > They made a big deal out of the fact that the protagonist was super smart and well-respected, with a Ph.D. in Advanced Sciences. As long as they literally said his Ph.D. was in _Advanced Sciences_, that makes everything else OK. ---
**Author:** ![Dogzilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/33 "2010-07-27T16:24:11Z")
At the end of Tommy Boy (I know), Chris Farley’s character calls his girlfriend in Cleveland and tells her that he’s at the Sandusky airport and will be home (in Cleveland) in a couple of hours. OR maybe it’s the other way around (he’s in Cleveland but headed to Sandusky). It doesn’t matter because: A. There is no airport in Sandusky. B. Sandusky is approximately 1.5 hours from Cleveland, only an hour from the western suburbs. He could have driven there faster than he could have flown, even if there _was_ an airport. It took me approximately 3 second to verify that there is still no airport in Sandusky. Not even a little landing strip. ---
**Author:** ![Tanbarkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@Tanbarkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tanbarkie)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/34 "2010-07-27T16:40:04Z")
The vaporization device in “Batman Begins” was an eye-rolller for me. You mean you’re going to use the _giant microwave_ to flash-vaporize water throughout an entire city… without simultaneously cooking all the inhabitants? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Stephe96](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Stephe96](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stephe96)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/35 "2010-07-27T16:43:00Z")
An infamous one. U2’s "Pride (In the Name of Love) “Early morning, April 4 Shot rings out in the Memphis sky…” Oops. MLK was assassinated at 6:00 p.m., of course. I’ve heard that Bono sings altered lyrics in concert. ---
**Author:** ![crazyjoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f14d63/32.png) [@crazyjoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crazyjoe)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/36 "2010-07-27T17:00:41Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > In the end-of-the-world movie Deep Impact, a body (comet, I think?) is coming to land in the Atlantic, and the Eastern Seaboard of the US is “evacuated” to higher ground. > > This is what I-66 was built for – originally it was intended to be a straight evacuation route from DC to the mountains. But it’s a commuter road now. > > In the movie, one zillion cars are packed bumper-to-bumper, waiting to die (in other words, it looks like a normal rush hour with no comet). The protagonists can’t wait – so they _pull over onto the shoulder and drive off down the shoulder to safety_. > > If for some unimaginable reason everyone else was being polite and not _already_ crammed on the shoulder, there would be chaos as everyone deliberately pulled onto the shoulder to block our heroine (Tea Leoni) from getting ahead of them. > > More to the point, due to conflict over previous agreements not to widen the highway, parts of 66 _have no shoulder_ because the shoulder has been turned into a commuter lane during rush hour – which would certainly apply during mass evacuation as well. > > I don’t expect filmmakers to understand every city’s HOV rules and peculiarities, although any local consultant would have laughed at this scene. But it’s just plain counter to human nature to posit everyone sitting nicely in traffic waiting to die so that one selfish rulebreaking car can run ahead. IIRC, she drives onto the shoulder and turns around, heading back to the coast and her eventual demise. She doesn’t go around anyone. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/37 "2010-07-27T17:12:42Z")
I’m being yelled at to get off the computer, but I really wanted to reply to this one. Search “Young and the Restless” and “Ottawa” on google. The writers at CBS couldn’t be bothered to figure out that there’s no such thing as the WATERFRONT DISTRICT in Ottawa, and that getting to Quebec by boat is pretty much the **most** conspicuous way to travel. ---
**Author:** ![spacemandave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@spacemandave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spacemandave)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2010, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/38 "2010-07-27T21:49:49Z")
The Alastair Reynolds novel Century Rain has a character from, for all intents and purposes, the future, who is visiting an alternate version of 1950s Earth. As part of his cover story he claims that he is from a state called “Dakota.” At first, I thought this was a deliberate plot point, and that some other character would call him on his ignorance and out him as some kind of spy. But, the other American characters in the novel never did, so I started to wonder if for some bizarre reason the Dakotas had merged in this alternate history version of Earth, and I spent much of the book speculating about what that might mean. It turns out that Reynolds, who is Welsh, just didn’t realize that North and South Dakota were two different states. ---
**Author:** ![cuberdon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/45deac/32.png) [@cuberdon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cuberdon)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/39 "2010-07-28T03:36:10Z")
In a detective novel I read a few years back, the protagonist talks about the another character erasing the information from a computer. She talks in great detail about how he dabs acid here and there on the circuit boards and how they sizzle and peel apart. Except that’s not how you do it. It’s much simpler and takes a screwdriver. You remove the hard drive. Could they not afford a fact checker? They don’t have some geeky 14 year old nephew or neighbor? ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051/40 "2010-07-28T04:00:53Z")
John Sandford, _Winter Prey._ A plot point hangs on looking at a newspaper photograph (in other words, a halftone) under magnification to pull out a crucial detail. Know what you see when you magnify a halftone? DOTS. Come on! Has Sandford never looked at a newspaper? I won’t read any more of his books, if that’s his idea of plot development. (I wonder if the copyeditor caught it but was stetted; I know that’s happened to me at least once when an egregious historical error that I caught was allowed to stand because it would have wrecked a character’s motivation to fix it.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-works-with-factual-errors-that-so-easily-could-have-been-checked-and-corrected/548051.md?page=3)