# What silly things can't you suspend your disbelief about? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 22, 2009, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340 "2009-05-22T21:43:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/21 "2009-05-24T01:56:46Z")
I don’t think all the stuff in _The Giver_ is supposed to be scientifically based. I saw it more as a surrealist fantasy than sci fi. ---
**Author:** ![davekhps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/22 "2009-05-24T02:10:12Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > Military stuff in general. Usually when it’s blatantly obvious that none of the writers have ever been in the military(nothing wrong with that), but apparently didn’t bother to research it either(such as hiring a technical/military adviser who did that job in that branch). > > Or maybe something as simple as a quick read through of _The Art of War_. > > Though my personal pet peeve is the fact most movies/shows fail to acknowledge the existance of enlisted people or NCO’s(unless as background extras), focusing only on officers. Which feeds back into my first point of not doing the research. My personal military show/movie pet peeve is that every officer is always wearing their Class A uniforms, have their cover (hats) on indoors, and/or salutes indoors, none of which ever happens (well, sometimes folks wear their Class As to work-- it’s called “promotion ceremonies” and “briefing Congress”, otherwise no one ever wears the jacket, and most officers on bases go short-sleeves without ties if they’re not wearing their BDU/ACU/flight suits). ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/23 "2009-05-24T02:21:32Z")
I can ignore an awful lot of things, simnply because they’re always done, and I’ve seen them so often. –Shoot off guns in an enclosed space and it doesn’t affect anyone’s hearing? Fine. –Computers that constantly make stupid noises? OK – Laser beams visible? Doesn’t bother me. But some things still annoy me, particularly things about falling. It STILL bothers me in the beginning of _Indiana Jones and the Temples of Doom_ that they fall out of a speeding plane several hundred feet up in a life raft onto a snow pack and don’t break any bones. Then they fall off a cliff into a river, and STILL don’t break any bones. (And don’t tell me that _Mythbusters_ did it – they didn’t do it like that.) Indy and company should have multiple fractures, including their spines. Not content to confine this idiocy to 1984, Spielberg did it again last year in _Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull_, only this time with a jeep. And if you fall with a rope tied around you, it might stop you from falling, but the sudden jerk will do terrible things to your body. The stunt actor in the James Bond film _For Your Eyes Only_ had a complex set of ropes that gradually stopped him when he portrayed Bond falling while mountaineering his way up st. Cyril’s. But if Batman (in the 1989 movie) had simply been stopped by his grapnel biting into the spire on Gotham Cathedral like that, the sudden jerk would have yanked Vickie Vale out of his arms, and snapped his spine for good measure. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/24 "2009-05-24T02:25:34Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > It irritates me no end when movies get firearm-related stuff wrong; guns from the wrong time period being used, characters with shotgun shells on bandoliers across their chests when they’re carrying a rifle, and- this is a big one- soldiers carrying the wrong country’s weapons. Don’t soldiers often do that because their standard issue isn’t as good as the other side’s? ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/25 "2009-05-24T02:25:46Z")
The Meet Cute in movies and TV. Two adorable complete strangers walking their dogs - dogs and leashes get them all tangled up, Love ensues. Cute guy working on a scaffold, his sandwich falls and lands right in cute gal’s purse as she’s walking by, Love ensues. Fender bender - Love ensues. COME ON! ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/26 "2009-05-24T02:41:05Z")
Firearms. Bullets don’t send people flying through the air when they get hit, they don’t make cars explode, and for Frith’s sake, can we please see a soldier carrying an extra magazine on his web gear once in a while? Psychics. Enough people get ripped off by them every day, I’m sick of seeing movies and TV pandering to folks by pretending they’re real. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/27 "2009-05-24T03:12:53Z")
Hot shot crime inspector, with cutting edge technology, takes a picture of the crime scene, with her brand new high tech camera and you hear the\* film\* advance. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/28 "2009-05-24T03:37:37Z")
I can never really buy into the idea in some fiction that magic, monsters, psychic powers and so on are real, often not even all that rare but people just ignore them. Especially when accompanied by the speech about how modern people are all big believers in Science who ignore anything that violates Science’s rules. When, in fact, there is if anything more believers in unscientific worldviews than not. And I doubt that the reaction of the typical scientist who ran into actual evidence of magic or monsters would be to deny it, but more likely "_squeeee ! ’_ Here comes my Nobel Prize !’ " A rather specialized example, but I’ve run into over the years occasional sci fi stories written by extreme feminists that envision men being killed off by them ( usually as a solution to violence, because apparently exterminating all of mankind doesn’t qualify as “violent” ). That’s bigoted; but what always struck me as unbelievable was how every such story I ran across assumed that the typical woman would _ **approve** _ of this. Would even assist in hunting down any males who survived the initial genocide. And not, say, string them up for killing their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, and so on. I think it’s an insight into a certain type of fanatical mind, who can’t even conceive of anyone actually disagreeing with them. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/29 "2009-05-24T05:01:35Z")
> [@chacoguy420](#): > > Hot shot crime inspector, with cutting edge technology, takes a picture of the crime scene, with her brand new high tech camera and you hear the\* film\* advance. :rolleyes: Oooh, or how you can take any grainy security camera footage and zoom in on a license plate with clear detail. It’s getting a little old. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/30 "2009-05-24T05:19:36Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > Don’t soldiers often do that because their standard issue isn’t as good as the other side’s? I’m not talking about American GIs during Vietnam using “liberated” AK-47s or German soldiers during WWII using captured PPSh-41s (all of which were historically known to have happened on a fairly wide scale), but things like divisions of German soldiers in _The Blue Max_ being shown armed with (British) Lee-Enfield No. 4 rifles (not invented when the film was set). In other words, when the people making the film simply say to the armourer “We want some old-looking guns” and take whatever they can get, [instead of doing the research and getting it right](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidNotDoTheResearch). Admittedly, for the most part it’s completely un-noticeable to The Average Viewer, but irritating to people like myself who A) know their history and B) know their firearms. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/31 "2009-05-24T05:30:47Z")
> [@Patch](#): > > Oooh, or how you can take any grainy security camera footage and zoom in on a license plate with clear detail. It’s getting a little old. :rolleyes: You know what I can’t suspend my disbelief about? When they CAN’T zoom in perfectly on a show where they’ve done it hundreds of times before. Suddenly for the sake of the story their software isn’t as good anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/32 "2009-05-24T08:32:59Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It STILL bothers me in the beginning of _Indiana Jones and the Temples of Doom_ that they fall out of a speeding plane several hundred feet up in a life raft onto a snow pack and don’t break any bones. Then they fall off a cliff into a river, and STILL don’t break any bones. I also always thought it was ridiculous that this plane explodes in a giant burst of flame after it crashes, even though the reason why it crashed is because it ran out of fuel. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/33 "2009-05-24T11:52:08Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > For me the thing that really gets me is how in movies, all computers must constantly be bleeping, blooping, beeping, clicking, whirring and making all kinds of ridiculous noises all the time, whenever the (often fictional) GUI is being operated, menus are brought up, etc. Constant R2-D2-type noises from computers might have been OK several decades ago when PCs were unfamiliar to most people but now that EVERYONE knows how a computer works, portraying them as science-fiction devices with magical interfaces and robot noises is just inexcusable. “Zoom in!” Keyboard sfx, and no mouse pointer motion, as somehow exactly the correct area of the image is chosen, zoomed to fill the screen with unnecessary animation. “Enhance the image!” The image is instantly sharpened to an absurdly clear level; clearer than a real security camera at full scale, let alone zoomed. “Run his face through the magic computer face matching software mainframe CPU firewall IP USB RAM hard drive database!” Two words: Fuck off! ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/34 "2009-05-24T13:46:11Z")
> [@Captain\_Carrot](#): > > Don’t soldiers often do that because their standard issue isn’t as good as the other side’s? It’s very uncommon. Why would you want a weapon for which you are not trained, your side doesn’t have ammunition, and which willi dentify you by the sound (weapons have distinctive sounds) as an enemy to your own compatriots? ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/35 "2009-05-24T13:56:18Z")
On Batman: His magic grappling line has ‘deceleration cord’. It’s stretchy! (yeah, someone thought of that a long time ago.) On Indy’s plane: Fuel vapor in the gas tank. Gasoline doesn’t explode, but fuel vapor does. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/36 "2009-05-24T13:59:42Z")
I’m a botanist, but I’m okay with the protagonist couple walking on a country road where all plants clearly indicate it is spring, only to have the same couple walking a week later somewhere else and all flowering plants indicate it is late summer. Or worse, our couple meet again in Winter in a forest where all deciduous trees are in full leaf, but sprayed with artificial snow. When that happens, I can only smile. However, I go ballistic when the hero does some Intellectual or Scientific Explanation, that is crucial to either the plot, or to portray him as Damn Smart, and what comes out of his mouth is internally inconsistant nonsense. Man, I _hate_ that, ant it takes me right out of the story. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/37 "2009-05-24T14:00:10Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I also always thought it was ridiculous that this plane explodes in a giant burst of flame after it crashes, even though the reason why it crashed is because it ran out of fuel. The reason it crashed was because it had no pilot. The lack of fuel didn’t help, but it wasn’t the cause. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/38 "2009-05-24T14:01:27Z")
Yeah you’re right, but they bailed out because they were out of fuel, if I recall correctly. Still I guess it’s true that the vapor would cause an explosion even if liquid fuel was run out. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/39 "2009-05-24T14:34:22Z")
> [@PapSett](#): > > Also… switching horses and pretending like it’s the same animal. There is a scene in Troy where a chariot is being driven; the team of horses is black. Change of camera angle, they suddenly become a team of bays. Another change of camera angle, they are back to black again. :rolleyes: Yeah. In “The Black Stallion” movie, the main horse-actor, [Cass Ole](http://www.arabianbreeders.net/Forums/uploads/monthly_01_2008/post-197-1201100671.jpg) is a true black (flashing blueish in the sunlight) but one of the racing doubles is very definitely brown. And, um. A gelding. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340/40 "2009-05-24T14:46:34Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > Military stuff in general. Usually when it’s blatantly obvious that none of the writers have ever been in the military(nothing wrong with that), but apparently didn’t bother to research it either(such as hiring a technical/military adviser who did that job in that branch). > > Or maybe something as simple as a quick read through of _The Art of War_. > > Though my personal pet peeve is the fact most movies/shows fail to acknowledge the existance of enlisted people or NCO’s(unless as background extras), focusing only on officers. Which feeds back into my first point of not doing the research. Me too. Mostly because it would take very little effort to get it right. The military will provide information with some strings. Or they could hire one of the consulting firms. Or they could ask the third grip who spent a couple of years in the Army. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-silly-things-cant-you-suspend-your-disbelief-about/497340.md?page=3)