I’m aware of the NCIS scenes, what else you guys got?
I love scenes where a character hotwires a car by:
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reaching under the steering wheel and pulling a panel off. It isn’t held on by fasteners or anything, it’s just like wedged in place.
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A bunch of loosely coiled wires tumbles out. In front are two thicker wires that are cut, stripped and tinned.
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The character strikes these two wires against each other like attempting to strike a match, mostly to make sparks.
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The sound of a car engine turning over plays.
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Climb in, shut the door, put it in gear and drive off.
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The Iron fist show had me livid when the MC gets “voted” out by the board of the company the MC OWNS A MAJORITY OF!!
CPR. Doing 2-3 chest compressions, seconds apart, and then some mouth to mouth, followed by 2-3 more chest compressions. Or the needle into the heart thing. Or the shock a flatline thing. All of it. It’s just all wrong.
On Andromeda? I believe it was, a villain used the stereotypical twist the head to break the neck and they fall over dead bit. The character proceeded to be not dead and did the stereotypical express their love while dying in the protagonist’s arms bit, talking and moving their neck as if it wasn’t broken. And then died.
Two people are fighting and one gets control of the other. He then throws the person across the room instead of killing him.
“We got their hard drive!” *Holds up a power supply.
And even if it was a hard drive, what were you going to do with it? You went in there guns blazing with no warrant after you knocked on the wrong door. The evidentiary chain is well and truly broken at this point. Nothing from that scene would be able to be entered into evidence.
“I want a lawyer!”
Cops: Proceed to very thoroughly not respect Miranda law and continue to interrogate
There was a movie or show where they ripped a hard drive out of a server and then punted it through a gunfight. It slid on floors, rolled around a dozen times, and the hero picks it up and leaves with it.
And it just works.
Eh thats believable to me, dropped one down a flight of stairs once. Dented enough to no longer fit in the quick release bay, sounded a bit scuffed but still worked perfectly fine.
I don’t have a particular scene, but a here’s a funny conversation I had with an acquaintance:
Huh, this thing takes just 12 volts. Could run it in a car.
Wait, a car’s electricals are just 12 volts?
Yeah. The battery and most wiring around a car is 12 volts.
Wait… then what about those scenes in movies where they torture people with car batteries?
Yeah, those are fake.
looking into the distance as the realization dawns on him Those movie directors deserve jail time.
That was actaully a brick joke in the first episode of Archer. Here’s the first part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahObgDYU58E
Quite a few of them have several car batteries in series so as to increase the voltage. And also Which is the Killer, Current or Voltage?
This is completely ignoring amperage and lowered resistance via saline. An automotive battery with sufficient CCA applied to sweaty or salt-water-doused skin wouldn’t be fun to be on the receiving end of. And if they’re using a picana, which they often are, things are going to be even worse.
If the skin is punctured then yes of course it would hurt a lot. But with sweat/saltwater? I’m no expert, but I highly doubt it. I remember helping a friend out with his boat (also 12v) during a hot summer, and I was holding onto the battery terminals with really sweaty hands. It was just a tingle.
Puncturing the skin has nothing to do with it. Human skin normally has high resistance, the palms and fingertips more so due to their skin being thicker and more likely to be calloused. Saline will always lower that resistance, though possibly not enough to allow for painful shocks across the width of your body from fingertip to fingertip. That’s quite a lot of resistance to overcome. There’s also the matter of the resistance provided by the terminals, but we’ll handwave that.
How often would you try to shock someone’s palms in a torture situation? How often do you expect to see current routed from the left hand all the way over to the right hand? And how likely are you to use just the lead battery terminals? Generally, you’d administer the shock across a shorter span, minimizing the most resistive part of the circuit. Any area with thinner, more sensitive skin is likely to experience thermal discomfort from a high amperage current, especially with lowered resistance. Even at 12V, it wouldn’t exactly be pleasant. The resistance is lowered even further by using thick copper cables, which are much more conductive than the lead terminals.
The picana makes it all so much worse. Ohm’s law tells us that current is equal to voltage divided by resistance. The rheostat in the picana allows the resistance in the circuit to be manipulated further at the turn of a dial. Cranking down the resistance means more current is applied, and that current is flowing through two copper conductors that are typically pretty close together. That means you have even less skin to serve as an insulator against the current, which ultimately results in more pain for the unlucky person being tortured.
Basically every moment of this unintentionally hilarious show.
I laughed constantly.
It helps to know archaeology, but it’s so bad it’s good even if you don’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonekickers
In the first episode they find that the True Cross that crucified Jesus is in Britain and at the end they just kind of let it get burned up in a fire when they could have easily removed it from the fire.
The Independent’s Thomas Sutcliffe found it laughable and full of absurdities, while also observing that “Professor Magwilde’s approach to archaeology is unconventional. She likes to squat at the edge of the trench and mutter urgently, ‘Come on! Give up your secrets!’”
I almost want to watch it now - almost.
Do it. Honestly, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I have no idea what they were thinking. And it just gets stupider and stupider.
The Dark Knight trilogy really wanted to be a realistic, grounded take on the Batman mythos, so they dropped the more fantastical elements of some characters’ backstories. Ra’s Al Ghul was no longer immortal, Bane didn’t have super steroids, the Joker wasn’t permanently bleached by chemicals…then there’s Two-Face.
I guess they thought acid burns were too unrealistic, so they gave him regular burns…apparently without knowing that burns that severe would be so painful that he wouldn’t even be able to remain conscious, much less run around the city on a killing spree. I mean, you can see exposed muscle in some places. There’s a line where Gordon says he’s rejecting skin grafts, and I remember thinking, “WTF are you talking about? He should be in a medically induced coma, not making healthcare decisions.” Half of his body was an open wound; I’m amazed he didn’t die of infection 15 minutes after he left the hospital.
That always killed me! Like… bro, a soft breeze should take him out. He’s not ready to be a villain, he’s ready to spend 5+ years in rehab.
It always bothered me that two-face has no pronunciation problems with only half a pair of lips
This might be the only time we’ll see somebody complain that somebody is speaking too clearly in a Chris Nolan movie.
I read this as “No Pronoun Problems” and was like, dayyum, Two Face got my vote. Hell yeah de-gender those bathrooms in the Two-Face Goon cave.
Thoo Faith
They also bankrupted Bruce through theft.
He could also talk normally despite half of his lips being gone.
The Nolan movies always cared more about giving the appearance of realism by making everything dull and monotone than actually being realistic.
First time I saw the Jurassic park I thought no way would intelligent people just run around a huge and therefore dangerous Brachiosaurus or jump out of the car and run right to the ill Triceratops. That would be Darwin’s award kind of madness.
Then I studied biology, got to know some zoologists and paleontologists, and yeah, this is exactly what would happen.
Space Flight.
I walked in on my roommate watching “Don’t Look Up” right during the space shuttle launch scene. Literally every single thing was wrong. The trajectory the shuttle took off the launch pad. It flying RIGHT SIDE UP as it did the gravity turn like a fucking airplane. The fact 50 other rockets were in formation with it despite that being stupidly dangerous, them all having different TWR ratios, there not being nearly enough launchpads anywhere in the world to do that, etc. Just everything.
We have existing video footage of shuttle launches. It’s not some crazy mystery. This isn’t Gravity where they add a window that doesn’t exist on the ISS for dramatic tension. It’s not Star Wars where the X-Wings behave more like airplanes than spacecraft for visual appeal. This was deliberate negligence.
A very common one is spacecraft seem to always launch in a direct line away from the planet. They just go straight up. That’s the least efficient way to get into space. But I usually let it slide because explaining orbital mechanics and Hoffman transfers isn’t necessary for good story telling.
Star Wars where the X-Wings behave more like airplanes than spacecraft
My favorite part of Empire Strikes Back was when Luke takes his (presumably) short-range interceptor X-Wing and flies it to another star system to hang with Yoda. I dunno, maybe canon explained this one somewhere (was Yoda’s planet in the same star system as Hoth or something? are X-Wings capable of FTL travel for no reason?).
The X-Wing is explicitly hyperdrive equipped. That’s also part of why it has an astromech droid seat in it (R2), apparently so the droid can handle the jump calculations. A lot of later technobabble in the expanded universe expounded on this after the fact, but I presume this decision was made on a snap basis specifically so Luke could go to Dagobah in his cool
planespaceship.You get to make hyperspace jumps yourself in your X-Wing a few times, fittingly, in the X-Wing games.
are X-Wings capable of FTL travel for no reason?
Heh, that’s actually the canon reason. Whereas TIE Fighters would launch from star destroyers like aircraft from a carrier, X-Wings would jump into hyperspace along with the frigates they were escorting.
Star Wars had basically no concept of fuel until like, one of the recent movies I didn’t watch. Obi-Wan calls a TIE fighter “a short range fighter” in A New Hope. Luke flies an X-Wing all over creation; several are shown jumping to hyperdrive alongside other larger ships in Jedi, it’s established that X-Wings are FTL capable.
Back when they made the first movie they literally used WW2 fighter footage to design the final battle with the Death Star.
Anyone who hasn’t done a Mun landing shouldn’t get to direct space scenes.
When someone’s falling hundreds of feet and when they’re inches from the ground a super hero swoops in from the side to grab them.
Sure, they didn’t hit the ground but not only did you catching them slow down their vertical velocity just as fast as the ground would have, now you’ve accelerated them horizontally so fast that they’re now twice as dead as they would’ve been otherwise
twice as dead
That’s like even worse than being dead!
My head canon, at least with Superman, is his powers. He doesn’t have multiple unrelated powers, but only 1 main one. Instinctive momentum control.
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Flying - Momentum control
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Bullet proof - Momentum stopped at the point of contact.
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Heat beams - Changing the momentum of particles he’s focused on.
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Holding a plane by a thin aluminium sheet - Adjusting the momentum of the plane directly.
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No sonic booms, or massive wind - momentum nulling on the nearby air.
In this case, catching a falling person safely makes complete sense. He just nullifies their momentum before they hit.
I guess you could explain it like that, but I’d really prefer it if they just started writing Superman stories with a more realistic depiction of the world around Superman in mind. It would add more drama since, while Superman himself is invulnerable, the rest of the world isn’t, so Supes should have to be extremely careful with how he uses his powers if he’s actually going to save anyone.
“I live in a world made of cardboard, except for Lois’ bones and ligaments.”
while Superman himself is invulnerable, the rest of the world isn’t
Larry Niven wrote a great essay many years ago about the physical realities of being Superman. My favorite bit was about how him having sex with Lois Lane would have resulted in her head being blown off.
You lazy b##stard!
[jk, enjoy!]
https://temp.larryniven.net/?q=man-of-steel-woman-of-kleenex-by-larry-niven
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Similarly- when a person is hanging off a building or cliff by one arm, and holding something heavy or another person with the other. It requires an INSANE amount of strength to hold that position, let alone actually haul them back up.
Every once in a while, it’s subverted. IIRC, that’s how Gwen dies in Spiderman comics.
I appreciated The Amazing Spider-Man 2 for that reason. Gwen was falling so fast that when she was caught I honestly thought her neck snapped and I didn’t notice her skull hitting the floor
We just watched “The Trap” last night. There was a major pop concert that ended in time for family dinner time during daylight. In the concert, they were depicted having time to make multiple trips to the merch tables and concessions, and in one of those trips, they talked like it was an intermission to change the stage set between songs.
Plot twist= It started at 8PM and ended at 3 pm.
Kingsman
Training scene where they shove a shower hose down a toilet and use it to breathe…
There would be no air (or even sewer gas) to breath in that case. Toilets work by raising the water level in the bowl above the water level in the S-bend/siphon. Since the room was full of water, those toilets would have been flushing constantly, and the whole pipe would be full of water.
Better(ish) solution. Use the body bags that they each had to fill out and place in their trunk/locker to capture an air bubble. That would at least give you some time to attack the door, or figure out how to drain the room.
Maybe the constantly flushing toilet would drain the room.
Must be filling faster than it’s draining, otherwise it never would fill up.
It was enough water to fill that room in a few minutes, I’d say a few toilets and shower drains would be a negligible effect. Although one the water got a few feet over the bowl, or other drain, I’d stay the fuck away from them because of potential delta-P situations.
There’s a scene in Spider-Man: No Way Home where Tom Holland is fighting the Green Goblin. Goblin grabs Spidey, jumps with him, and then they both smash through the 23rd or so floor of the apartment building they’re in and they land on the floor below.
Sure, they’re both super strong but neither of them used their strength to push through the floor. They just jumped and reached no more than like a foot off the floor, implying that gravity pulled them both through the floor. Okay, so the floor was built poorly, but then why did falling 10+ feet from the 23rd floor to the 22nd floor not make them smash through the 22nd floor?
That movie’s a lot of a fun but that scene makes me upset lol
Sprinklers react to heat, not smoke and they don’t all go off at once. Also the water that comes out is brown from rust, not clear.
War bows are so heavy that you can barely hold it for the moment it takes to aim. There’s no way you’re holding it for minutes before told to release.
Fire sprinklers have two requirements: to be able to turn on immediately if they’re ever needed, and to dispense something capable of extinguishing a fire. In order to accomplish this, the pipes that feed them are constantly, 24/7, full of water, providing constant pressure on the sprinkler head to be ready to feed it with water in case it ever needs to go off. These water pipes are generally not used for anything else, so the water does not tend to circulate. In fact, there’s usually a sensor in them that detects if the water is flowing (and thus if any sprinklers have been triggered, providing somewhere for it to go) and activates the building’s fire alarm. When a fire sprinkler goes off, the water that comes out has been sitting in that pipe (an iron pipe if you’re lucky, a lead pipe if you’re not) basically since the building was built.
That stuff is NAS-T.
When replacing thermostat valves or radiators in buildings with steel-pipe radiator lines, the water that comes out is often as black as ink. It’s surprising how dark it can get.
And for anyone wondering why steel is used, yes, it does rust, but only while there’s air in the water. As the pipes start rusting, that air gets used up, and the rusting stops. Same applies to sprinkler lines. Steel pipes in radiator lines can easily last the building’s lifetime, whereas copper pipes for drinking water usually need replacement every 30 years or so.
I’m reminded of a Linus Tech Tips video in which they built a gaming PC with the express purpose of heating a room/house. To do this more effectively, they connected a bog-standard water cooling loop to an actual radiator like you would find plumbed into an old building, instead of using a purpose built PC water cooling radiator like every other water cooled PC ever built (I guess because they either thought it wouldn’t dissipate enough heat (in which case why not just use more of them?) or because they forgot those existed). They flushed the radiator with water and vinegar before putting it to work and what came out of it was… colorful. Even after flushing it much more thoroughly, after putting it into the final setup, the system did not perform anywhere near as well as expected due to the copper water blocks inside the PC getting covered in rust and stopping conducting heat. Those systems are no joke.
Copper pipes only need replacing that often if a) you cheaped out on construction and used the thinnest kind (M-type, which isn’t even legal in some states), and b) you had some pressure issue along the way that left the pipes only partially full of water for a time.
