# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/121 "2012-10-16T05:58:50Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > 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.) And quarks can’t really have colors, they’re far to small to reflect visible light. And electrons are point particles, they can’t really spin. Physics is full of similar terms where more mundane physical concepts are used as labels for things they are only superficially similar to. The event horizon is a surface, its hardly implausible (at least by sci-fi standards) that it would have a shape that future scientists might refer to as a “crack”. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/122 "2012-10-16T06:16:02Z")
> [@Bakhesh](#): > > 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 That’s not so much an error in the film as a sign that that interpretation is wrong. Ridley Scott didn’t seem to want to make direct connections so much as tell a story in a similar world. It might not even be the same universe. There are numerous contradictions in the existing Alien/Predator canon, with some ingenious attempts at reconciliation out there as well. This one wouldn’t even be that hard to explain. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/123 "2012-10-16T06:22:17Z")
I was watching season 1 of the show Alias, which is about a female spy working for the CIA. Several times an episode will involve a lot of plane travel across the world, and improbably the episode will end the same day it began. One episode in particular involved travel to Moscow from LA, and back to LA AGAIN all in one day! Each leg of the trip would take something like twelve hours! It bugged me. I don’t see the problem with Armageddon, I don’t think anyone ever said the Earth was going to be 100% safe, they were just making sure to take out the main asteroid. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/124 "2012-10-16T06:25:39Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > This one wouldn’t even be that hard to explain. Producing an “alien” is a known end result of infection with the black goo, it doesn’t even necessarily have to take the multi-species path we saw on screen, that was just that particular infection. You could infect a room full of cats with black goo and eventually a face hugger and “alien” would result is what I mean. Why was there an existing depiction? Because the movie is not even close to the first time this has happened. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/125 "2012-10-16T06:32:49Z")
> [@Waenara](#): > > Another example of “that’s not how sprinklers work” was in the first Daniel Craig Bond movie, _Casino Royale_. When chasing the bad guy to the airport where he going to commit some kind of terrorist act, Bond gets every one to evacuate the airport. He does this by getting into a back room somewhere that has a switch on the wall that’s the “sprinkler override control” - and activating it causes _every sprinkler in the airport_ to go off. Well, in _Aliens_, Ripley sets off a sprinkler in one of the medlab rooms, which activates other sprinklers in that room, but since it didn’t go any further than that, I’m okay with it. For recent James Bond, though, I was mystified by literally everything in the hydrogen-powered hotel going kablammo at the end of _Quantum of Solace_. A place like that, you don’t want to walk across any carpets in your socks or a stray spark of static electricity will create an instant Hindenberg. ---
**Author:** ![Feyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/fbc32d/32.png) [@Feyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feyrat)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/126 "2012-10-16T06:44:27Z")
Ok, I’m sure no one else will find this “glaring,” but my girlfriend and I (she’s a vet tech and I breed rats and have lots of veterinary experience) were driven CRAZY by this… I’m sure other people in the medical field were bothered by this too. At the end of _I Am Legend_, Will Smith gives Random Christian Lady a vial of the vampire/zombie girl’s blood as the cure, just before he blows up the house. The vial he gives her has a RED CAP. > **[Vacutainer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacutainer)** > > A vacutainer blood collection tube is a sterile glass or plastic test tube with a colored rubber stopper creating a vacuum seal inside of the tube, facilitating the drawing of a predetermined volume of liquid. Vacutainer tubes may contain additives designed to stabilize and preserve the specimen prior to analytical testing. Tubes are available with a safety-engineered stopper, with a variety of labeling options and draw volumes. The color of the top indicates the additives in the vial. > Vacutaine... Red-capped vials contain clotting agents. The cap SHOULD have been green or pink. And yet, when she arrives at the safe camp, the blood in the vial is still a shiny liquid. Seriously, that would have taken what, 10 seconds of research to get right? ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/127 "2012-10-16T17:54:03Z")
Meh, maybe he ran out of green and pink caps. A _real_ glaring error … at least to birders … is that the bird outside Bill Murray’s prison cell is not a pygmy nuthatch (as identified by one of the Angels), doesn’t sound like a pygmy nuthatch, and pygmy nuthatches are pretty common over a widespread area and so couldn’t be used as a magic-GPS to find exactly where Bill was. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/128 "2012-10-16T18:17:26Z")
Big Lebowski. It’s NOT a “marmot”, it’s a ferret. Completely different critters that aren’t even that similar. I assume the gag is that Dude is making the misidentification. But still. ---
**Author:** ![GreedySmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a698b9/32.png) [@GreedySmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreedySmurf)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/129 "2012-10-17T02:30:00Z")
I only just saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. I happily accept a lot of stuff from that sort of movie, as it’s effectively science fiction in a lot of ways. But when the Nuke gets fired, it’s an ICBM. The ‘B’ standing for Ballistic, as in it follows a ballistic trajectory, it does not activate a second stage and power itself to it’s target. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/130 "2012-10-17T02:36:16Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > The event horizon is a surface, its hardly implausible (at least by sci-fi standards) that it would have a shape that future scientists might refer to as a “crack”. No it is not a surface. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/131 "2012-10-17T03:46:02Z")
John McClane in _Die Hard 2_: **That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. Dosen’t show up on your airport X-ray machines, here, and it cost more than you make in a month.** There is no Glock 7, Glocks are manufactured in Austria and a gun made of porcelain is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/132 "2012-10-17T03:55:42Z")
> [@Morbo](#): > > Speaking of gold, boy is its weight ignored in movies. **Die Hard With A Vengeance** , they carry them around one handed, tossing them to each other. Plus I don’t think those fully laded dump trucks would even move. **Italian Job** , I don’t care how much reinforcement was added to those Minis - same problem. **Tower Heist** , let’s not even go there. _The Italian Job_ was especially egregious, as the weight of the gold was a plot point - Marky Mark & Co. figured out which armored car held the gold by spotting the car with the lowest suspension. Funny how those shocks on the Minis didn’t budge when they carried the gold. Good movie, though. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/133 "2012-10-17T04:44:28Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > No mention of the circa 1990s Windows GUI based “UNIX system” the litle girl hacked into in Jurassic Park? I saw that movie on opening night with a friend of mine. When that scene came up, he leaned over and whispered “that’s UNIX.” Just a couple seconds later, the girl on screen said the same thing. It wasn’t the operating environment that gave it away, it was the directories; /bin, /home, /etc, etc. Now, whether she could navigate her way around to do anything useful is an open question, but I will forever defend that it could be identified as UNIX. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/134 "2012-10-17T05:16:22Z")
> [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > “Our satellite fell into a crack in the geosynchronous orbit!” > > I think that’s what AT&T said during the last outage. Sounds about right. Seriously, though, a granite quarry in _Iowa_? Is it supposed to have used up all its topsoil in the future? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/135 "2012-10-17T06:01:13Z")
I just saw a cheap cable TV movie about a zombie outbreak on a 747, where one of the characters opened one of the plane doors (to the outside) while in flight. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/136 "2012-10-17T06:04:51Z")
> [@well\_he\_s\_back](#): > > Isn’t there an old film titled “Krakatoa, East of Java” - When actually Krakatoa was West of Java. Maybe it was a really big eruption. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2012, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/137 "2012-10-17T11:33:44Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Sounds about right. > > Seriously, though, a granite quarry in _Iowa_? Is it supposed to have used up all its topsoil in the future? We see it was a quarry. Or an open strip mine for a vein of some rare handwavium isotope that the Federation needed two hundred years from now. I can accept that there might be any number of unexplained changes made between now and then. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/138 "2012-10-18T19:30:12Z")
Just another location error. The film shows the elevated train running in south Philly. In reality, the el runs in north and central Philly. In fact, the last time I was in south Philly I got lost and had to ask passers by ‘How do I get back to the el?’. The universal response was ‘That’s a long way away.’ ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2012, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/139 "2012-10-18T23:32:41Z")
> [@Morbo](#): > > Speaking of gold, boy is its weight ignored in movies. **Die Hard With A Vengeance** , they carry them around one handed, tossing them to each other. Plus I don’t think those fully laded dump trucks would even move. **Italian Job** , I don’t care how much reinforcement was added to those Minis - same problem. **Tower Heist** , let’s not even go there. Also in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indie is holding a bag of sand to replace the gold statue. The bag is smaller to start with than the statue and he still dumps some sand out. ---
**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 19, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422/140 "2012-10-19T00:14:27Z")
> [@rsat3acr](#): > > Also in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indie is holding a bag of sand to replace the gold statue. The bag is smaller to start with than the statue and he still dumps some sand out. Well, it didn’t work. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-shows-with-glaring-errors/637422.md?page=8)