I pay more attention to license plates than is probably healthy, so I’ve gotten to know the patterns that most states follow. I would recognize a license plate that’s out of sequence, which does happen sometimes. Sometimes this is due to someone’s request for a personalized plate, but more often than not it’s because that plate is on a car in a movie.
Movies seem to go out of their way to get plate patterns wrong—but not always. They do get the colors exact and the fonts are usually exact or close to it. However, it seems that movie producers like to do something completely wrong on a plate, something that you couldn’t get at the state DMV unless you specifically requested it. I notice this all the time, but for whatever reason, I can’t come up with a whole lot of examples off the top of my head. One that I remember is the plate on a car in Groundhog Day, which had a Q in what looked like a random pattern. Pennsylvania doesn’t ever use Qs (or Os and Is, for that matter.) Otherwise it was a regular blue-and-orange plate that was used at the time. I remember seeing a van and a fake police car with fake New York plates parked on the street in Manhattan. The van’s plate began A2Q, which is wrong in two different ways. I wondered if I should report it, but then I saw the movie crew around the corner and cooled my jets.
For whatever reason, California plates tend to be genuine. They don’t fake 'em up for some reason. This makes me wonder: is there some sort of law that most states have requiring fake plates in movies? Or is it that since most movies are shot in California no one feels the need to bother to make fake California plates? I’ve seen French movies and they don’t bother faking them, either.