# What is extremely common in TV or movies but almost never happens in real life? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 6, 2021, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311 "2021-02-06T04:16:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 37
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/721 "2021-02-28T22:31:15Z")
I was driving across Ontario in the summer of '88 on what I guess was Highway 401. There was a little red sports convertible (probably an MG) about a half mile ahead of me. With absolutely no warning, his left front _wheel_ came off and went bouncing merrily down the road. (Fortunately, there were no other cars in the immediate vicinity.) We both slowed down considerably, but the convertible didn’t lose control… It just coasted off the road and onto the shoulder. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/722 "2021-02-28T22:51:26Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > the convertible didn’t lose control… It just coasted off the road and onto the shoulder. That was **lucky**. MGs are weird. The wheels fit on with a spindle device instead of nuts, and you use a mallet to take it on or off. It would be very easy for a tire tech with no experience with an MG to strip it, or to be so worried about stripping it that it would be put on to loosely. And it has no fail-safe, the way cars have 4-6 nuts. There’s one spindle. If it fails, that’s it. However, MGs, IIRC, have drums all around. It’s easier to coast on a drum than a rotor. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/723 "2021-02-28T23:03:44Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I think it was also more common in the past even among non-rich people. When women’s career prospects were more restricted, a man with a steady job had a better chance to land a pretty wife, It was common in the 20s and 30s, because so many young men had died during WWI, and because boy teens worked outside the home much more often than girls, that they were disproportionately killed in the flu pandemic; women greatly outnumbered men. It was also that there was economic depression (the lower classes weren’t doing well even before the stock market crash). Men could be hold out for women “out of their league,” so to speak, and older men, who were financially stable, could successfully find women who were much younger, so older men, particularly widowers with children, could “start over,” instead of marrying widows their own age. Even divorced older men could find younger women to start over with. However, another factor was that couples where the man was more than just a couple of years older than the woman were always more acceptable than the reverse. It seems that recently, couples where the man is more than about 4 years older are more rare. So you got couples who didn’t look odd when they married, but when the women was still a fairly youthful 40, and the man was 50, and had gained a lot of weight since the wedding, and he had gray hair and she didn’t, suddenly it was noticeable. Let me get pictures of my parents at their wedding, and 10 years before my father died. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/724 "2021-02-28T23:07:44Z")
> [@Didi44](#): > > I see it a lot in Hawaii, mostly Filipinas married to old white men. The mail order bride business is big money worldwide for numerous different nationalities worldwide. Obviously these aren’t successful women. They’re just trying to make a better life for themselves and often their families. Oh yeah. I’m close friends with a Thai family who owned a restaurant. Many of their waitresses over the years ended up marrying American men. Not necessarily (what I would call) rich men. But a middle-class American is rich compared to most people in Thailand, and with the added benefit of a faster path to U.S. citizenship. ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/725 "2021-02-28T23:19:18Z")
Makes sense. My parents were married not long after WW2. He was considerably older, so probably benefited from the corresponding groom shortage. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2021, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/726 "2021-02-28T23:29:40Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > My parents were married not long after WW2. He was considerably older, so probably benefited from the corresponding groom shortage. There probably was one after WWII as well, albeit, not as bad as the one after WWI/the flu pandemic. There was, though, a shortage of well-paying jobs for a couple of years, which was why there was so much propaganda around women staying home-- to get them out of the workplace so there were more jobs for men. When my parents were married, they were 24 and 34. My father was an officer in the Air Force reserve, exercised regularly to maintain military fitness, and was in great shape. He also walked part of the way to work, and took the subway part of the way, but probably walked a total of 3 miles 5 days a week. He was very slender. He did not start to go gray until he was about 50, but my mother was only 40, and had no gray at all. Also, by that point, he was living in the suburbs, and driving to work. He’d gone from about 140lbs to about 180. In spite of two children, my mother had gained only about 15lbs over what she weighed at her wedding. My mother had a lot of nervous energy, and was in motion all the time. She was the kind of person who cleaned or organized when she was upset or just bored. Also, after she had a hysterectomy at 48, she started taking an exercise class at a gym. My father associated that kind of thing with his military days, and dammit, he was RETIRED. OTOH, my father was no sit-com doofus; he got his PhD at 28, and was the smartest person I knew. My mother also had a PhD, and was not dumb (she spoke 8 languages), but my father was clever, canny, and noticed everything. And he knew a lot about things way outside his field. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/727 "2021-03-01T01:18:24Z")
In the genre of people being in close proximity to massive explosions but walking away unscratched, there’s the movie about WWII I saw last night, in which a dive-bomber pilot approaches to within what appears on-screen to be no more than 10 feet or so above an aircraft carrier before releasing his bomb, but escapes unscathed. In reality he would have been doomed, like the real-life WWII bomber pilot who dived to within 200 feet of his target and had his plane (including himself and crewman) blown up in the ensuing explosion. My vote for dumbest TV/movie/literary trope remains the hero who is clubbed/shot/stabbed and taken for medical treatment but then demands his clothes and walks out, saying that no hospital can hold _him_ while there are bad guys to be brought to justice. You never see the hero collapsing in the parking lot and taken for emergency surgery on his subdural hematoma. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/728 "2021-03-01T01:32:45Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I feel like in movies a carnival Hall of Mirrors is about a thousand percent more likely to exist than in your average real life carnival. > **[The Pike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pike)** > > The Pike was an amusement zone in Long Beach, California. The Pike was founded in 1902 along the shoreline south of Ocean Boulevard with several independent arcades, food stands, gift shops, a variety of rides and a grand bath house. It was most noted for the Cyclone Racer (1930–1968), a large wooden dual-track roller coaster, built out on pilings over the water. > The Pike operated under several names. The amusement zone surrounding the Pike, Silver Spray Pier, was included along with additional ... #### Amusements[[edit source](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Pike&action=edit§ion=14)] _Beginning at the entrance to the “Walk of a Thousand Lights” through the [arcade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_(architecture)) archway entrance of the last surviving building associated with The Pike, the [Ocean Center Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Center_Building) containing Hollywood on the Pike [[7]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pike#cite_note-7) cabaret and an [amusement arcade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusement_arcade), one could stroll west along the [midway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_(fair)) past storefront games, such as ball-pitch and [shooting galleries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_gallery_(carnival_game)), as well as outdoor amusement machines such as fortune predicting weight-scales, and several large indoor collections of coin-operated [Electro-mechanical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromechanics) amusements - [pinball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball), skill-prize [merchandisers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchandisers), penny-pitch, [nickelodeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickelodeon_(movie_theater)) viewers, love and strength testers, fortune tellers, the House of Mirrors and more. Among the most popular coin-operated amusement machines and devices were the [redemption games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemption_game) which dispensed tickets, such as [skee-ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skee-ball)._ I was there in my youth. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/729 "2021-03-01T01:40:57Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Criminals somehow never realize they’re being tailed by cops, no matter how obvious it is they’re being followed across town. (Of course, they invariably lead the cops to someplace absolutely incriminating.) > > Neither do they ever notice the plainclothes officers parked on stakeout across the street, not even when the detectives are watching them through binoculars or snapping photos with the car windows wide open. The average person is remarkably unobservant. And criminals, almost by definition, tend to be rather stupid. As long as you’re half a block down the street, or on the other side of a fairly good-sized parking lot, you can openly take pictures of any random person to your heart’s content, and odds are pretty good that they’ll never notice. I’m an amateur photographer, and I’ve done street photography from time to time. > [@Didi44](#): > > A car tire blows or is shot and the car or truck goes completely out of control. When I was a boy, we lived in a farming community. My father was friends with some of the farmers, and did odd jobs for some of them from time to time. One day he was driving a truck of wheat to the silo, and I was along for the ride. The front tire blew out, and lifted that whole corner of the truck into the air. The truck came within a whisker of tipping over on its side. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/730 "2021-03-01T02:13:53Z")
If you really, really gotta have $100,000 in 48 hours, you can always come up with some sort of wacky plan to get it in the movies. In real life, you’re just fucked. Same with hit men. In the movies, they’re amazingly easy to find and hire. ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/731 "2021-03-01T02:40:33Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > If you really, really gotta have $100,000 in 48 hours, you can always come up with some sort of wacky plan to get it in the movies. In real life, you’re just fucked. You can usually just win a contest that has a prize for the exact amount that you need. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/732 "2021-03-01T02:56:04Z")
BUT, it’ll take a team of rag-tag misfits and a complex-yet-hilarious caper that requires a split-second execution. Oh, did I mention the embarrassing comeuppance for the requisite bullies? ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/733 "2021-03-01T03:19:55Z")
> [@Biotop](#): > > How to get in a locked building: > > Stand in the shadows and wait for someone to come out. Slip through the door after they leave but before the door completely closes. No one will notice this. No one else will be leaving just behind them to catch you. well the apartment complex i lived in had coded gates and between them changing them every 6 weeks and my horrid memory I never remembered the entry codes… so id wait for someone to leave or the lady in the nearest apartment would let me in … sometimes they’d just put a paint can so it couldn’t close on weekends … ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/734 "2021-03-01T04:16:04Z")
In fiction, the star-of-the-show police detective rushes dramatically across town to the train station/airport/whatever to personally catch the fleeing suspect, or to where the victim needs to be rescued from immediate peril. At the last minute, of course. I’d imagine a cop in a similar situation in reality would remember that (1) they work for the police, (2) there are other cops and firefighters in stations all over the city, including one MUCH closer than they are, and (3) there are telephones and radios. 🙄 I excuse this when the character can’t rely on backup for some reason and has to do it themselves, but many a time I’ve yelled “Phone! Use the damn phone!” when that’s not the case. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/735 "2021-03-01T04:22:37Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > Even divorced older men could find younger women to start over with. Especially if a woman was a young widow with children of her own, remarriage was often her only realistic career option. And an older, financially stable man might be the best choice. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/736 "2021-03-01T04:27:03Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Especially if a woman was a young widow with children of her own, remarriage was often her only realistic career option. And an older, financially stable man might be the best choice. Oh, yeah. If you were a young widow, with what would in that case be young children, yeah, you married what you could get. If he didn’t beat you, brought home a paycheck, and didn’t drink half of it, marry him fast! ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/737 "2021-03-01T04:27:38Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > It’s been my observation that the “hot wife, fat husband” trope occurs far less in real life than it does in entertainmen It’s been my observation that people who think this have not actually experienced life outside of the US. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/738 "2021-03-01T04:42:47Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#): > > I excuse this when the character can’t rely on backup for some reason and has to do it themselves, but many a time I’ve yelled “Phone! Use the damn phone!” when that’s not the case. That one goes back really far, albeit, in the original, the people rushing across town are trying to get a pardon document signed by the governor to the gallows in time to save someone scheduled to be executed. It’s in a movie from **1916** , and the people rushing across town are in one of those new-fangled _cars_. They are racing a train, which is really exciting, if you remember how new a car was in 1916, and think just how suspenseful that would have been. A car could not go faster than a train, and everyone in the audience knew that-- but wait–! a car could go anywhere, taking advantage of shortcuts, while the train had to stay on the track. Could the car make it to a crossing before the train? or would it have to stop at the crossing, and be held up several minutes while the train went by? Then, the film cut from the racing car to the man being taken to the gallows. In 1916, it was believable that people would not have known where to stop for a phone, or what number to call if they could reach a phone. It was also believable that the governor wouldn’t know how to call someone to put an immediate stop to an execution-- or that there might actually be a law that the paper had to be in the hands of the warden, because the law had not been rewritten to account for phones yet. The film is the sequence called “The Mother and the Law” aka, “The Modern Story,” from _Intolerance_. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/739 "2021-03-01T04:44:19Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#): > > In fiction, the star-of-the-show police detective rushes dramatically across town to the train station/airport/whatever to personally catch the fleeing suspect, or to where the victim needs to be rescued from immediate peril. At the last minute, of course. > > I’d imagine a cop in a similar situation in reality would remember that (1) they work for the police, (2) there are other cops and firefighters in stations all over the city, including one MUCH closer than they are, and (3) there are telephones and radios. 🙄 > > I excuse this when the character can’t rely on backup for some reason and has to do it themselves, but many a time I’ve yelled “Phone! Use the damn phone!” when that’s not the case. There are also the scenes where someone calls the detective to say, “I know who killed him/her/them! I’m on my way over there and will explain.” Of course the caller is killed before they can reveal what they know. Of course, they could just have _said_ what they know when they made the phone call. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2021, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311/740 "2021-03-01T07:00:46Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Same with hit men. In the movies, they’re amazingly easy to find and hire. Excuse me. In that fine documentary TV series (season one) **She Spies** the bad guy in one episode pulls up to a parking lot full of ninjas waiting for work and picks two or three to help him. It can’t be that hard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311.md?page=36) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-extremely-common-in-tv-or-movies-but-almost-never-happens-in-real-life/932311.md?page=38)