Because of movies like Bambi, The Lion King and Tarzan I grew up believing that animals hear each other speak English and the reason we can’t hear animals speak English is because our ears aren’t as sharp as theirs, and that if someone were raised by animals they would be able to hear animals speak English. I was pretty anthropocentric and ethnocentric and it didn’t occur to me that it doesn’t make any sense for animals in the jungles of Africa to be speaking English.
This trope may be more based in reality than a movie, but I had always thought parents objected to their (adult) children getting in a relationship or getting married, because of how many movies/fiction show parents vehemently objecting to such, (and also some such behavior from my own parents.) I was really, really, confused and mixed-up to find parents who were genuinely happy that their adult sons or daughters had a significant other and/or were getting married.
Not really a trope, I guess, but when I was little, I thought that all dogs were boys and all cats were girls.
A little later, I was sure that my pets would tattle on me to my parents if they saw me doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing. Now, I knew that animals couldn’t speak, but I’d seen enough TV to know that parents knew all kinds of wacky stuff.
A little older still, and I thought that there were secret passages everywhere, and one could find them easily enough if only one had the mind to look. In basements, in the school restroom, on gnarled old trees, just everywhere. I did actually find one. It was in an old barn and it led down to what today I would guess was a root cellar. Somebody had boarded the door up and stacked a bunch of stuff in front of it. Couldn’t get down there, but it was probably full of snakes, anyway.
When I was young, we had a short sidewalk by the house. One day I was playing and pulled up the grass that was growing over the top. It lifted up like a carpet. Imagine my surprise, thinking “wait, these cartoons are right? What else from cartoons is true??”
I thought quicksand was deadly.
When I was younger, I assumed if you shoot someone in the head or heart area, it was instantly fatal (you might get out some poignant last words or a clue to the secret plans or whatever). Shooting someone in the midsection will eventually be fatal if you don’t get medical attention (which could be just wrapping them in a bandage). A shot to the shoulder or an extremity might sting for a bit.
You can make someone go to sleep for a pre-determined amount of time with no lasting effects by bonking them on the head or punching them in the face.
Fortunately never actually tried any of this IRL.
Not directly, but you will drown if the tide comes in.
This much is not entirely false.
It is. It’s not as common as people think, but not as rare either.
A comedian has a bit like this— “I thought as a kid that quicksand would be much more of a problem than it’s turned out to be.”
I’m thinking John Mulaney …? I hear it in my head being said in his voice.
The opposite: Trope I thought was just a cartoon trope until I found out it was real: I thought Albert Einstein was just a general-purpose cartoon trope of a genius “mad scientist”, as occasionally seen in some Saturday morning kid-vid cartoons.
It wasn’t until rather later that I learned that he was a for-real genius scientist (although not necessarily mad).
I still don’t know what getting electrocuted actually looks like. I assume it doesn’t look like a blinding flash of lighting arc where you can see a person’s skeleton.
One or more bright arcs, a little smoke maybe, but you don’t see the bones. There’s this one website…
Nevermind.
A lot of people probably think that if you crash into or otherwise smash a fire hydrant, it starts geysering. Nope. The shutoff valve is way down at the source pipe, with a long shaft down to there from the top nut, so firefighters can turn it on.
Not really a trope, but when I was a wee one, I remember something hitting the back left side window of our car and completely shattering the glass. Dad replaced it with a sheet of cardboard until one day it was glass again. I didn’t know there was such a thing as window restoration, and thought cardboard would turn into glass when exposed to the sun. So, I saved toilet paper tubes and put them in the windowsill, thinking the sun would turn them into glass tubes. One day they were gone, so I guess mom found them and tossed them away.
The Martin Sheen horror movie “The Believers” had what I always thought must be a pretty realistic electrocution scene. It seemed so real and situationally plausible to me, it was the scariest, most harrowing scene in a horror movie:
There is enough charge in a non-GFCI kitchen wall outlet to cause heart fibrillation and death, but her standing there jiggling like that is not realistic: she wasn’t grasping anything that the voltage would cause muscle constriction.
No. I recall one time I accidently closed the circuit between a plugs prongs with my finger. I imagine the wife’s reaction to grabbing the coffee pot would be similar to mine. Mostly swearing and jerking your arm away after feeling an intense burning/ shock sensation.
Also just because you are standing in a liquid doesn’t mean instant electro-death.
I do recall in school the local power company gave a safety presentation on electricity. One of the slides they showed us was a monkey that had escaped from a zoo and climbed up on some high voltage tower. The next slide showed it grabbing both leads and effectively exploding in a blinding flash of light as it closed the connection.
There was a disturbing youtube of a suicidal man on the roof of a Indian railway train. The sort with an electrical wire above the train and a pantograph to transfer the power to the train.
After some nervous pacing the fellow grabs the pantograph, there’s a brief flash and he crumples to the roof of the train inert. I can’t now recall whether he stays there or tumbles off the roof to the ground.
In any case it was just about instant and nothing real dramatic was visible. His life just left him instamagically.
Related: Maybe I spent too much time watching family tv sit-coms in the past, the kind where the parents were loving, wise, forgiving and would hug you when they came across you crying your eyes out in your room after Dave or Ron in middle school dumped you. Fathers would say, ‘it’ll be ok, princess, things will work out.’ Mothers would hold your hand and say, ‘he wasn’t good enough for you, there will be lots of other, better boys in your life.’ …imagine my distress when my mother spat, ‘oh, stop that blubbering, you idiot, at least that azzwipe isn’t around to try to knock you up.’ (I was 14!) …my father had ignored my very existence since I was born, so no succor there…Nor did I get any acknowledgement of landmarks: no sweet 16 birthday party, no graduation party, no engagement dinner, and I eloped to avoid anything wedding-related with those losers.