# Minor Details that Annoy You in Fiction
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 3, 2013, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016 "2013-06-03T09:13:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 9
### Author:  [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2013, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/161 "2013-06-08T04:05:56Z")
> [@Victor\_Charlie](#):
>
> Sure, but movies that are SPECIFICALLY about newscasts should at least get the small details right. If you did a movie about plumbers it would be pretty dumb if he was using an axe to fix a toilet leak.
My father once did something similar.
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#):
>
> In Hollywood, all Christians are Catholics. Unless you’re black, in which case you’re Baptist.
That really bothered me in an episode of **The Walking Dead** where the characters visited a church in rural Georgia, explicitly identified as _Baptist_ on it’s signage, that had a _crucifix_ on the altar. :smack: And the show is actually filmed in Georgia too.
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#):
>
> …The official doctrine was indeed that men were always fertile, and that a woman could control her fertility to at least some degree by being pious and obedient. Unofficially, both Offred’s doctor and Fred’s wife acknowledged that there was a good chance that good old Fred was shooting blanks. The doctor offered his services as a stud, and Fred’s wife suggested a liaison with the chauffeur/assistant…
It always thought it was really telling that the Gileadean authorities allow male gynaecologists to be alone with the Handmaids; the Aunt chaperone sits in the waiting room. It’s obvious that as long as a Handmaid is very discrete and manages to give birth to a healthy baby nobody really cares how she did it.
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### Author:  [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2013, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/162 "2013-06-08T09:35:39Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> In the film [Skin Game](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067763/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2)
> In an episode of Frasier where Daphne’s mother visits from England, the mother makes a comment about dying and being placed in her casket. That is a purely American usage. An English woman would call it a coffin.
She could possibly have been highly on-the-ball about linguistic usage; and thus chose to use the American word, to fit in with her American hosts…?
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### Author:  [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2013, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/163 "2013-06-08T10:57:22Z")
> [@Marley23](#):
>
> Grand Central Terminal is the official name, so that would be a mistake if an omniscient narrator or maybe a train expert is speaking. I’ve never heard anyone call it that. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone other than a train conductor called it Grand Central Station- it’s usually just “Grand Central.”
Grand Central Station is the name of the post office next door to Grand Central Terminal. But I agree, everyone just says “Grand Central.”
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/164 "2013-06-08T23:58:39Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#):
>
> He does, and trust me, you DON’T want to know what his current origin is.He has DNA composed of three strands (not three sets of chromosomes, mind you, three strands, as in a triple helix), one from each of the three people he was cloned from. (Wouldn’t mixing DNA from more than one person be more like _in vitro_ fertilization than like cloning, anyway? But it’s a major point that he’s a clone because on Krypton, clones were _eeeevil_!) Oh, and who are the three people? Despite early clues that Lex Luthor was one, it turns out his clone-parents are Superman, Lois Lane, and their son from an alternate/possible future.Next time I tell you you don’t want to know something, you’ll listen, won’t you?
Wow, I wish I hadn’t clicked on those spoiler boxes.:smack::smack::smack:
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/165 "2013-06-09T00:17:39Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> In an episode of Frasier where Daphne’s mother visits from England, the mother makes a comment about dying and being placed in her casket. That is a purely American usage. An English woman would call it a coffin.
A casket and a coffin are two different things. Coffins have 6 sides that widen toward the torso, then narrow towards the feet (sometimes morticians call them “toe pinchers”). Caskets have 4 sides, rectangular.
Not saying that you’re wrong about what an English woman would say, just pointing out the terms aren’t completely interchangeable.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/166 "2013-06-09T00:31:53Z")
> [@TBG](#):
>
> Wow, I wish I hadn’t clicked on those spoiler boxes.:smack::smack::smack:
Don’t sweat it, they’ll retcon it again in a few years. 😛
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### Author:  [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/167 "2013-06-09T02:16:10Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#):
>
> How does he evaluate the strength of the masonry he’s swinging his grappling hooks from on the fly like that?
Suddenly that summer job I had in 1988 where I went around taking samples of masonry for Wayne Corp makes sense. We were told it was something to do with testing an experimental chemical for retarding pollution related breakdown of building materials in historic architectural features. Good paying gig, if you didn’t mind heights.
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### Author:  [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/168 "2013-06-09T08:44:05Z")
> [@TBG](#):
>
> A casket and a coffin are two different things. Coffins have 6 sides that widen toward the torso, then narrow towards the feet (sometimes morticians call them “toe pinchers”). Caskets have 4 sides, rectangular.
>
> Not saying that you’re wrong about what an English woman would say, just pointing out the terms aren’t completely interchangeable.
They aren’t in the US, but if the distinction exists in the UK, it’s restricted to the funeral director community: as Peter Morris says, it’s not a word likely to come up in conversation.
In any case, my experience is that the “toe pincher” style is by far the most common here, so even if Daphne’s mother was aware of the distinction, she’d be much more likely to imagine herself in a coffin than a casket.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/169 "2013-06-09T09:17:24Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#):
>
> He does, and trust me, you DON’T want to know what his current origin is.He has DNA composed of three strands (not three sets of chromosomes, mind you, three strands, as in a triple helix), one from each of the three people he was cloned from. (Wouldn’t mixing DNA from more than one person be more like _in vitro_ fertilization than like cloning, anyway?
Not quite. IIRC, when gametes (sperm or eggs) are created, their chromosome pairs are broken into lengths of DNA and the lengths switched randomly between the paired chromosomes, then only one of the pair is kept and used. This is why different gametes produce genetically different offspring, instead of every brother or sister being genetically identical, born of identical sperm & eggs.
So the process you describe is kind of in-between true cloning and normal sexual reproduction. There’s more than one parent, but the genes haven’t been scrambled like they normally are.
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### Author:  [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/170 "2013-06-09T09:30:02Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#):
>
> In the comics, as I understand it (I wasn’t reading comic books at the time), when Gwen Stacy got tossed off a bridge and Spider-Man caught her by shooting a web line at her, Peter later realized that he may have killed her just as dead as she’d have been had she hit the ground. That is, he realized her neck probably snapped when he stopped her fall.
>
> After that incident, he switched up his technique and started catching falling people in web nets instead of trying to snag them with a web line.
>
> So the writers were actually thinking about that kind of thing.
Close.
Gwen Stacy didn’t **almost** die, that’s actually just **how she died**.
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### Author:  [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/171 "2013-06-09T21:58:01Z")
> [@Trans Fat Og](#):
>
> There was a TV program about half a dozen years back with scientists commenting on the science, or lack thereof, in modern movies. One claimed that “Superman wouldn’t have been doing her any favor…” in the initial rescue scene. Perhaps he hadn’t heard of the theory of extended inertial fields.
_The Big Bang Theory_
https://www.youtube.com/embed/BeheaUjXWpM?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque
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### Author:  [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2013, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/172 "2013-06-09T22:21:20Z")
The episode of Family Guy where Peter becomes a football player. Then he gets fired, and ends up playing for a British team. I don’t mind that the British are represented as sissies who spontaneously break out in Gilbert & Sullivan routines. Rule of funny, they don’t intend that to be realistic. No, I object to the notion that American rules football is a thing over here. We have Ruby, which is similar, except the players don’t dress up in helmets and padding.
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### Author:  [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/173 "2013-06-10T00:45:44Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> The episode of Family Guy where Peter becomes a football player. Then he gets fired, and ends up playing for a British team. I don’t mind that the British are represented as sissies who spontaneously break out in Gilbert & Sullivan routines. Rule of funny, they don’t intend that to be realistic. No, I object to the notion that American rules football is a thing over here. We have Ruby, which is similar, except the players don’t dress up in helmets and padding.
[London Monarchs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Monarchs)
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [June 10, 2013, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/174 "2013-06-10T22:43:27Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#):
>
> Grand Central Station is the name of the post office next door to Grand Central Terminal. But I agree, everyone just says “Grand Central.”
Was it Grand Central Station when Weird Al wrote “One More Minute With You”?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2013, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/minor-details-that-annoy-you-in-fiction/660016/175 "2013-06-11T02:12:56Z")
> [@SCAdian](#):
>
> 😕
>
> How else would an American refer to a pack of cigarettes, if not as “a pack of cigarettes”?
Now that it’s been cleared up, I hope we can declare a, um, “packs Americana.”…
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