People getting physical in a bar and not being thrown out. (Bars and nightclubs in movies are like free-for-all battle zones where all rules of conduct are suspended, instead of business establishments with liability issues and managers and security.)
People smoking weed with plastic bongs. (I have never encountered anyone who didn’t use real glass. Even pot smokers who are totally broke and live in shitholes will have hundred-dollar glass.)
Twentysomething/early thirtysomething hipsters having some living room or den in their house that’s ridiculously cool-looking, like that room that Michael Cera’s character goes into in Superbad when he gets confronted by a bunch of scary guys doing cocaine. There’s wood paneling, a bunch of really eccentric, weird artifacts hanging on the walls, tapestries and very dim, but warm, lighting. You run across rooms like that occasionally, but that one is really staged-looking.
Likewise with kids’ rooms in movies that are just INSANELY cool, the kind of rooms that you really wish you had when you’re a kid. This is especially a feature of 80s and early 90s kids’ movies. Like, the coolest posters in the world all over the walls, some insane TV setup with huge speakers, a desk with a computer and a bunch of scientific gear that would cost thousands of dollars, and some really elaborate bed with shelves and little hollows in the walls where more kool stuff is stashed away. There are always weird architectural features, like an eccentric ceiling or a loft-type thing; you never have a kid’s room that’s just a plain rectangle.
Fully-automatic weapons like Uzis and M16s, that would cost thousands of dollars, in the hands of petty criminals.
High-school and middle-school bullies who are savagely cruel in the most open and blatant manner, and never get in trouble. In all of my time in school as a kid, I never witnessed bullying that was anywhere near what is depicted in Hollywood films.
High school sports practices in movies seem to always be scrimmages. You rarely see them doing endless running and conditioning drills (which were what composed probably 75% of my sports practices in high school.)
A woman on TV never wears a leather skirt unless she is posing as (or actually is) a prostitute. Friends was a notable exception as Monica and Rachel both wore leather skirts from time to time without any connotation attached. But on every other show leather skirt = hooker.
No one has mentioned the amazing computer zoom technology that can turn a single blurry pixel into the answer to that episode’s mystery. Just press “Enhance!” and like magic that blurry pixel will become clear as day!
I always love it when a person opens their kitchen cupboard and the products are all strategically placed so that none of the labels are facing forward.
On TV, if you need to plead with your love to prevent them from getting on a plane, you are welcome to rush up to their departure gate. In real life, you won’t get past security without a ticket and the more of a hurry you are in the less likely you are to get through. Airport security screeners (whom you never see on TV anyway) are not romantics!
Pretty much everything to do with computers - using the keyboard instead of the mouse, super advanced GUIs, being able to easily hack into and access databases and controls for everything imaginable, viruses that affect not only the software but also physically damage the computer or make the screen image ‘melt’.
And of course video camera footage that is magically zoomable with amazing powers of face recognition.
Not to mention computers that constantly beep and bloop and blip and whirr and make other assorted R2-D2 noises whenever they are being operated. Those must be made by the same firm that produces the pistols that automatically make a “CHH-CHH” sound whenever they are pointed at someone.
Someone talking on the phone - something surprising is said. The person takes the receiver away from their ear & stares at it. I’ve never seen anyone do this in real life.
Since the many TV Shows/Movies are filmed or at least created in California, you see a lot of things that are common around here that said creators may not really realize are different elsewhere. I always see characters in other parts of the country drinking from the semi-obscured bottles of California microbrews.
Stuff I find common where I live (San Francisco area):
-Pink bakery boxes
-Craftsman bungalows all over
-Cube Chinese cartons for all your food
-Houses without screens. I found this REALLY bizarre when I moved out from the east coast, but in the windy coastal places, we have very few bugs.
-A whole boatload of Macs. Least in the Bay Area. Pick a Starbucks or Peets anywhere from SF to San Jose, and I swear 1/2 the computers in there are MacBook Pros or Airs.
I haven’t read the whole thread, so maybe it was mentioned, but I’ve never seen a person get tackled in the middle of the street because they were about to get run over by a car.
That must be an American thing, in Australia anyone can go right up to the departure gate without a ticket unless it’s an international flight.
One thing I’ve never done or seen is people waking up from a nightmare or trauma going to a sink and splashing cold water on their face. Who does that?
I’m a little bit suprised about people commenting how buying fresh veges and cutting them up while cooking is weird. Where I live the pre-cut pre-bagged vege option is the strange one.
Yeah, it makes me sigh and shake my head for whoever posted that. You don’t have a knife and you love spending twice the money for vegetables you didn’t even get to pick that somebody else cut up in whatever way they think you need? Yes, pretty much all my dinner prep starts with chopping, say, an onion.
I’ve woken up from a nightmare and gone to the bathroom, turned the lights on, maybe splashed some water, when I’m scared if I go back to sleep I’ll be in the same nightmare.
Maybe I grew up in the lower classes, but I have never once in my life had a friend who had one of those well-dressed, affluent, tipsy, country-club luncheon- going WASP ladies who are such a hideous EMBARRASSMENT to their yuppie daughters. The WASP mother calls them ‘Dear’ and pries into their business. The yuppie daughter is annoyed and embarrassed - “Mooootthhhheerrrrr!!! Please!” (example: Maggie’s mother on Northern Exposure.) Corrollary: the WASP father can do no wrong, and the daughter is Daddy’s Little Princesss… I know they exist, I know they are out there, and I know money and ‘breeding’ have nothing to do with parent/child love. It’s just that they’re such cliches.
This is accurate for anything set before the fall of 2001. I was going to college out of state at the time, and prior to 9/11 my family used to wait with me at the gate when I was heading back to school after breaks.
Hey, it’s 3Am, I didn’t want to be woken up by my bladder, but since I was, why should I wake all the way up to maintian balance and aim? So I plop my butt down and let it go.
I have actually seen this one. It was at summer camp when I was 15 and there were several pairs of people who’d never met who bore strong resemblances to one another (including a girl who looked so much like me that even I could see it!), but there were two guys who literally looked like twins. Same face, hairstyle, body build, height–it was really astonishing. One of them had a sister there who could hardly tell the two apart. You couldn’t even try the old “call out one’s name and see which one responds” to tell them apart–they even had the same first name!
Yeah, I apparently attended the same college as my exact double. And not only that, we had the exact same full name. I never would have known, but one day I had to stop by the bursar’s office to take car of something on my tuition bill and as I’m walking up to the counter, the clerk asks me if I forgot something. I explain about the bill and then she just keeps going on and on about how I must have a twin because he was just here and he has the same name as you and… Oh… My… God!
