# Movies/Shows with glaring errors. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 11, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422 "2012-10-11T15:17:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Alka\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c89c15/32.png) [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/101 "2012-10-14T12:08:35Z")
_Independence Day_ taught us fireballs can’t turn corners and can be outrun by dogs. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/102 "2012-10-14T13:09:26Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Meh, its pretend physics from the 24th century. They don’t have to explain it, they just have to say that’s the way it works and then remain consistent. I agree with **lemur** , its not an error in the sense of the OP. I disagree _vehemently_. 🙂 Warp Drive may be fictional, but an event horizon is a real physics concept. It can’t have a crack because it’s not a physical thing. It makes just as little sense as saying a planet has a “crack in its equator”. (The equator being, of course, just an imaginary line on a map.) If I read a comic book where the Flash and Superman raced around the world, and Superman won because Flash tripped on a crack in the equator, I’d call bullshit no matter how fictional Flash, Superman, and their super speed may be. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/103 "2012-10-14T15:53:50Z")
> [@Rich\_Mann](#): > > There was some made-for-cable, sci-fi-esque movie series that my daughter used to watch. I think it was called ‘Xenon’ or something like that. One show took place on the Moon. Me and my then 9yo daughter both groaned when it turned out that the villain had set as a deadline: _ **when the earth rises!** _ > > We didn’t need to see any more after that. Actually, this isn’t necessarily wrong. True, the Moon has a side that always faces towards Earth, and a side that always faces away from Earth. But on the border between these hemispheres, you would see the Earth rise and set. I only know this because it was a key point in an Isaac Asimov story. I trust that he knew what he was talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/104 "2012-10-14T16:00:27Z")
> [@edwards\_beard](#): > > In the movie Pearl Harbor…didn’t he board a train in New York to go to London? During the attack on Pearl Harbor, one character says that World War II just started. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/105 "2012-10-14T16:31:38Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > During the attack on Pearl Harbor, one character says that World War II just started. :rolleyes: US-centric, but I gather that was a common attitude at the time, that at least for the US, the war didn’t begin in any sense that mattered to the general US population until Pearl Harbor. ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/106 "2012-10-14T17:37:40Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Transformers 2 called your “glaring errors” bet and raised it to “retarded mistakes”. Of special note was the sequence where Shia and Megan are in downtown Washington, DC and enter the Smithsonian Air and Space museum whereupon they find that one of the planes is a Transformer. Nitpick - the particular museum they go to in the movie is the Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, which is actually in Fairfax County, Va., not downtown Washington. Still, your point stands that there shouldn’t be mountains or an airplane graveyard anywhere in sight (though Dulles airport is right next door). ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/107 "2012-10-14T19:38:45Z")
In _Splash_, the mermaid tells Tom Hanks that she only has 6 days to spend in NY until the moon becomes full. Then they keep showing a waning moon instead of a waxing moon. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/108 "2012-10-14T20:06:52Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > These threads always make me think of that movie where somebody is trying to save the outmoded cavalry horses by driving them up to Canada or something instead of them being put to death. Anyway, he has to shoot a bunch of them, so he pulls out what is clearly a 1911A1 (45 auto), jacks a round into the chamber and BAM! shoots the first horse. Then he jacks the slide _again_ and shoots the next horse, and so on down the line until all seven are dead. Problem is, the gun would have been empty by horse number four and he’d have had several live cartridges lying on the ground. No problem, it’s probably one of those special _ **non-automatic** _ 1911A1’s made for the California market. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2012, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/109 "2012-10-14T21:09:43Z")
> [@Rollo\_Tomasi](#): > > **Atonement** opens in 1935, and then four years later (as we’re told on-screen), a character is in Dunkirk as the British Army is retreating. But the Battle of Dunkirk was actually in 1940. Admittedly that movie never had my full attention, but I think the pre-Dunkirk action in that mvoie took up several months. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/110 "2012-10-15T01:06:36Z")
In Armageddon, Our Heroes use a single nuclear device to split an asteroid the size of Texas in half so the two halves will get blown apart from each other and pass harmlessly on either side of the earth. Even assuming the device was powerful enough to split the asteroid, said device does not actually instead turn the asteroid into a cloud of rubble the size of Texas, with some of the rubble being chunks the size of, say, Vermont. Also ignoring the fact that in order to get to the asteroid, they had to fly through a cloud of rubble. With some of the aforementioned Vermont-sized chunks. Nothing is said about what happens when the other eight bajillion hunks of rock enter the atmosphere, because nobody blew THEM up. ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/111 "2012-10-15T11:19:12Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > In Armageddon, Our Heroes use a single nuclear device to split an asteroid the size of Texas in half so the two halves will get blown apart from each other and pass harmlessly on either side of the earth. > > Even assuming the device was powerful enough to split the asteroid, said device does not actually instead turn the asteroid into a cloud of rubble the size of Texas, with some of the rubble being chunks the size of, say, Vermont. > > Also ignoring the fact that in order to get to the asteroid, they had to fly through a cloud of rubble. With some of the aforementioned Vermont-sized chunks. Nothing is said about what happens when the other eight bajillion hunks of rock enter the atmosphere, because nobody blew THEM up. This sounds like an untrue rumor, but I heard that during filming Ben Affleck asked Michael Bay why they didn’t just train astronauts how to drill, rather than train drillers how to be astronauts. Allegedly, Bay told him to shut up. ---
**Author:** ![Bakhesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3da27b/32.png) [@Bakhesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bakhesh)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/112 "2012-10-15T12:07:30Z")
I think there is already a whole thread about Prometheus, but the one that really stood out to me was… At the very end of the film, we see the creation of the original Alien creature, caused by a convoluted series of infections, implantations, and impregnations. Fine, except when the explorers originally found the Engineers base, there was a big carving of an Alien on the wall. [The camera lingers on it for quite a while, so that we can get a good look at it](http://cdn1.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/prometheus-xenomorph-carving.jpg) Either the whole origin of the Aliens predates the movies, or the explorers have accidentally stumbled on H R Giger’s house ---
**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:** [October 15, 2012, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/113 "2012-10-15T12:59:33Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > “Our satellite fell into a crack in the geosynchronous orbit!” I think that’s what AT&T said during the last outage. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/114 "2012-10-15T14:42:52Z")
> [@Dr.Colossus](#): > > In episode 2F09 when Itchy plays Scratchy’s skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib twice in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic xylophone or something? Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder. Look again. If you strike the rib closer to the vertebrae, it produces a deeper note. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/115 "2012-10-15T15:00:03Z")
> [@oft\_wears\_hats](#): > > This sounds like an untrue rumor, but I heard that during filming Ben Affleck asked Michael Bay why they didn’t just train astronauts how to drill, rather than train drillers how to be astronauts. Allegedly, Bay told him to shut up. It seems to me as mission specialists, there is very little for the drillers to “do” as “astronauts” other than sit there and survive the trip. Plus IIRC, this was actually covered in the film. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/116 "2012-10-15T15:01:18Z")
No mention of the circa 1990s Windows GUI based “UNIX system” the litle girl hacked into in Jurassic Park? ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/117 "2012-10-15T15:12:48Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > I had a really hard time swallowing the nuke going off six miles away from New York City in the latest Batman movie, but everybody being okay with that because it was “outside the blast radius.” > > Actually, I had a hard time swallowing a _lot_ of that movie, but that was the biggest one for me. That’s recent enough so that a spoiler box would have been nice, thank you very much. ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/118 "2012-10-15T15:28:44Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No mention of the circa 1990s Windows GUI based “UNIX system” the litle girl hacked into in Jurassic Park? Ohhhhh yeah. What the hell school is this where they teach 6th graders about computers by providing SGI workstations running Fusion on IRIX?! What did the driver’s ed class use - Bentleys? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/119 "2012-10-15T15:34:50Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No mention of the circa 1990s Windows GUI based “UNIX system” the litle girl hacked into in Jurassic Park? That was FSN running under Silicon Graphics’ IREX, which is indeed a UNIX system. ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/120 "2012-10-16T05:22:18Z")
Just caught the first few scenes of tonight’s episode of _The Mentalist_. The opening scene is set as “outside Auburn, CA”. The camera pans out to show the Sacramento County Coroners Van. Auburn is the county seat of Placer County. They have their own coroner. It’s an hour outside of Sacramento. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422.md?page=7)