That’s not so much a “get wrong” thing as a “technological prediction failure.” And hard SF writers committed worse errors in that regard all the time.
The way railroads and trains operate must be a mystery to TV and movie writers.
Passenger cars are not mixed into the same train as freight equipment. Well, since about 1900 anyway.
Cutting or disconnecting the air hose between cars causes the brakes to automatically slam ON, instead of disabling the brakes as TV would have you believe.
Also, the meme of putting something heavy onto the pedal so the train runs unattended. Un-uh, doesn’t work that way. You have to monitor alarms or the train will go into full shutdown.
They often portray trains stations with equipment that would not be there. Such as a full Union Pacific passenger train pulling into the station in Miami, for instance.
All the characters are from Venice (or Belmont), but we wouldn’t expect them to speak English with an Italian accent. (Though maybe on the stage of the Globe they did exactly that, who knows?)
In all fairness it USED to be like this. I worked in hotels my whole life and as late as 1994 I still worked in hotles that you gave out info UNLESS TOLD NOT TO. This is the opposite of what is done today.
Again not I’ve worked with small hotels that aren’t at all computerized. Some smaller franchises still use sign in and ledgers to post. There’s no need for an computer in a 100 room or less hotel. I do realize there are free POS and free hotel systems, but some owners just don’t want them
This happens today, and it happened in the old days. I was a night auditor and to make budget I’d leave the front desk and go clean a room to resell it. I wouldn’t be gone long. I’d lock the cash in the back safe and go for about 15 minutes at a time.
I agree with this poster as a general rule in modern day hotels, but there are still many small hotels (under 100 rooms) that don’t use computers (a ledger system IS really just as simple) and it did used to be that way
It’s not a prediction failure – it’s a Looks Cool, which always trumps reason and common sense.
If you go to the site I link to in entry #17, you’ll see that they are still using those banks of flashing lights from the SAGE computer in TV and movies today.
“Ship will self-destruct in T minus five minutes.”
I blame Riddley Scott for this one – or at least, the earliest instance I can think of is in Alien.
No, you stupid ship’s computer. The ship will blow up in five minutes. “T minus five minutes” is a description of what time it is now. At the moment the ship blows up, the time will be T. Five minutes after that, the time will be T plus five minutes.
I’ve seen (or rather heard) this same stupid error in countless movies and tv shows since then. “Core explosion in T minus sixty seconds.” What the fuck do they think “T minus” means?
And how could a generation that grew up watching NASA rocket launches have failed to grasp this simple concept?
But at least that would be more internally consistent than having Shylock speaking like a Polish Jew when everyone was un-accented! Let them all have Italian accents or none at all. But it was- he’s Jewish and old- must have a Yiddisher accent!
Sleazy drug lords, third world warlords, and mafia dons prefer to deal personally with the tough cop or vigilante that has been a thorn in his side.
Thugs readily gang up on relatively helpless victims, but tend to encircle someone with real fighting skills and attempt to take him on one at a time instead of overpowering him with sheer numbers.
Women always orgasm every time they have sex unless it’s required to show how unsatisfied they are with their current husband/lover.
Military vets, especially special forces vets, will snap at any time and start killing people in random and creative ways.
A corollary to the “animals always make noises” one: whenever any terrestrial predator is about to strike, they growl or roar dramatically even if they are ambush predators like crocodiles or lions, which luckily does not seem to alert their prey so they can escape. This carries over to reconstructions of dinosaurs; Tyrannosaurus rex spends time stealthily stalking prey at the watering hole whilst hiding on the edge of the forest clearing, then roars loudly before darting out at the herd of hadrosaurs or triceratops.
High flashy spin kicks are the most effective and efficient way to fight other highly-trained combatants.
If cops aren’t the main characters, they’re either corrupt or totally incompetent. If they are the main characters (and assuming it’s not a comedy) then the cops are vigilantes who achieve justice at any cost.
You can create an effective zip line with a long rope, a bow and arrow, and a belt, and you can shoot the arrow with rope attached to it with perfect accuracy.
One of the most over-used cliches in SF film. It’s obviously supposed to be the equivalent of “scuttling” a ship – but, of course, you can’t pry up the stops at the bottom of your space ship hull and expect it to sink.
The first time this was used, it was used correctly – Robinson Crusoe on Mars from 1964 has the hero destructing his orbiting but unreachable space ship so that the aliens can’t use it to help locate him, just as Daniel DeFoe’s hero gets rid of the hulk of his wrecked ship so as not to give a landmark for the pirates. The space ship disappeared in a distant blip of light, unspectacularly.
In the 1960s, Star Trek introduced the idea of a self-destruct in space ships to visual SF. Although they threatened to use it, I think the only time they actually did was The Doomsday Machine. It served a useful plot point.
But then, as you say, Ridley Scott’s Alien gave us a ship with self-destruct built into it, and the now-requisite spectacular explosion. It wasn’t even really needed, strictly speaking – once Ripley was off the ship, the expectation would be that the creature was unable to hurt her. In a universe devoid of sequels, it would’ve starved.
After that, the damned things proliferated. Finally, the TV movie Something is Out There made appropriate fun of the idea:
Earth Guy: Don’t you have a Self-Destruct on this ship?
Alien Babe: No!! Why would anyone have anything like that?
A diversion is needed, more often than not in a police station, so someone holds a match to an overhead sprinkler, causing all the sprinklers, the entire system, to spray out water and create havoc. My understanding is only the sprinkler(s) feeling the heat will spray water, not every single one in a building or on a floor. Insurance companies would go berserk at all the needless water damage.
It doesn’t come up often, but whenever something related to automobile problems and repairs is depicted, it’s laughably wrong.
In Angels: An Endangered Species bu Malcolm Godwin, he works out that a 6’ male angel of standard “human” proportions would need a minimum 36’ wing span to fly. And a bone spur of about 4’ jutting from his sternum to anchor the additional muscles.
Sooo many things. All of the things mentioned here, plus these, which I know everyone else has noticed too:
- Getting DNA results in mere hours instead of the weeks it usually takes.
- Getting drug test results on deceased persons in hours instead of the weeks or months it takes.
- Getting AFIS results (fingerprint matches) in minutes. This can take days IRL.
- Florida errors, although there have been fewer of these lately with the popularity of Florida-filmed shows. These include seeing mountains in the background and front license plates on cars. We’ve got no mountains here and no state-issued front license plates.
- Drivers having conversations with passengers and taking their eyes off the road for many seconds at a time to talk to them.
- The rear-view mirror being removed from the windshield in cars. Makes for fewer obstructions–I get that. But still.
- On CSI: Miami, which I’ve stopped watching, every home in which a crime has taken place is sunny and modern and spotless, except for the crime remains (blood spots or what have you). In reality, most homes in the Miami area are smallish stucco homes, many with bars on the windows, and if you go into any home in the U.S. you will see a variety of furnishings, jackets thrown over the backs of chairs, dishes in the sink, shoes strewn around.
- There are so many more, but this list is getting long!
I can do it. I pole dance. I bet I could hang on to a rope for a good 2 minutes. I could easily climb one in two minutes. 
I am female, 5’ 2" and weigh all of 110 lbs. soaking wet with my hooker heels on.
:: flexes pole grip hand ::
What movies get wrong about the military could fill a book. The main characters’ haircuts are rarely regulation. Sure, special ops typically have relaxed grooming standards, but a sould patch is not a relaxed grooming standard.
You don’t salute indoors unless you’re reporting to an officer. The cover (hat, beret, helmet, whatever’s on your head) comes off when you go indoors, unless you’re armed. All generals are apparently grizzled and angry and ready to stage a coup at the drop of a hat.
Movies typically overestimate the lifting power of helium, often by at least an order of magnitude.
Many examples, but the worst may be in The Mummy Returns, featuring a dirigible with an envelope barely larger than its sturdy wooden gondola. If something like that would actually fly, you’d see them all over the place.
Not a movie, but playing the video game Infamous makes my arms hurt.
One of my husband’s favorite things to do is take the dude up to the top of the ‘trash pile’ and jump off it and try to catch-hang on a first-floor ledge below.
(If you’re not familiar with the game, the main character is essentially a cross between Spiderman, Batman, and Magneto (if Magneto also shot lightning) and the trash heap is this tall-ass (100 floors? maybe more?) structure built out of industrial refuse and shitloads of cargo containers.)
As for TV and movies, one that always gets me is the “instant perfect Google search” which can be seen most offensively in Twilight, but it shows up everywhere. It’s such a cheap and lazy fix for an info-dump, and I hate to break it to you, but most of the sites on the net (especially those turned up with a general Google search) aren’t that image heavy and are certainly not quality information about the restricted/specific focus of whatever the producers needed.
It really depends on the exact size of the place, doesn’t it? I’ve stayed in a B&B where there were zero employees, just the two owners. There was a maid service, but it was contracted out. They weren’t there around the clock.
Light boxes don’t exist any more? I could have sworn I’ve seen them around in my doctors’ offices.
It’s actually a reality failure – reality failing to look as cool as it should.
To be fair, they’re not showing you every time these women have sex, only the times that the sex is good. And this might be a generational thing, but anecdotally I have found that most women usually expect to climax.
Maybe they’re faking it. 
Certainly there is no shortage of Jews can imitate someone from the Old Country even if they’ve never been there.
He’s in Venice. I don’t think we know where he’s from.
Kidding aside, yes, that’s stereotypical and ridiculous. I can see giving only Shylock an accent to help set him apart. We did Merchant of Venice when I was in high school and that’s how we did it. It would have sounded ridiculous if 20 kids were trying to do Shakespeare with Italian accents; having Shylock do a restrained but credible accent made sense. (Our Shylock did an Israeli accent. His parents were Israeli and he had that one down cold.) Making Shylock sound like a Mel Brooks character would just be distracting.
So true, even at parties and in other groups of people. One shout of “listen up” and the room falls silent too.