Your most pointless TV/movie/book nitpicks

[Ryujin]

Oh no, not this again.

Yeah, I know. I harp on it.

 

[Umbran]

There are any number of nitpicks of the form, "We needlessly invoke a scientific reasoning, and get it wrong."

Like, the Blade movies -

• Vampires drink blood. Blood has coagulants in it. So, we shoot vampires with anti-coagulants. When coagulants meet anti-coagulants, they explode!
• These are super-vampires. They have no lower jaw, so they can bite harder!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As a 20-year USAF veteran, it irritates me to no end when authors refer to the Air Force as the "air force," "Air force," or - worst yet - "Airforce." It's two words, both capitalized. Some amazingly high-profile authors have gotten this wrong, and it always disappoints me to no end that no editor caught it.

For similar reasons, I dislike in movies and TV shows when they get military customs and courtesies wrong, like when you wear your cover (hat) and when you don't, when saluting is proper and when it isn't, and simple stuff like how long your hair can be and how far your mustache can extend. And I'm always amused when a female military member was apparently issued a miniskirt as part of her official uniform.

The crazy thing is that this is so easy to get right. It's not like the Pentagon doesn't publish lots of guides for the Armed Forces to use to educate their own personnel. Laying hands on this information is trivial.

 

[Umbran]

Oh. Any time they say, "You only use 10% of your brain."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Oh. Any time they say, "You only use 10% of your brain."

People who say this deserve to be smacked on 90% of their heads.

 

[Deset Gled]

There's an Orson Scott Card novel where the liberals try to take over the world. It happens mostly in DC, and at one point there was a chase scene up Wisconsin Ave. into Bethesda. They take a right turn onto East West Highway, going the wrong way down the one way street in front of the office I was working in at the time. Now, sure, chase scenes go the wrong way down one way roads into oncoming traffic in lots of media. But there is no indication that this is the case in the book.

The TV show Fringe absolutely killed me with this. There are episodes where they have high speed chases in downtown Boston during daylight hours. I can suspended disbelief for alternate universes, dimension jumping, time travel, whatever. But the idea that they had enough traffic-free pavement for that is inexcusably inaccurate.

In one particularly bad example, a character ran out the main entrance of Mass General hospital, jumped in a car, and sped off. A car chase scene followed. In real life, the heroes should have just walked up to the car and arrested the guy. He wasn't going anywhere for a while.

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

You mean it didnt ruin itself?

How dare you?!?!

 

[ichabod]

The crazy thing is that this is so easy to get right. It's not like the Pentagon doesn't publish lots of guides for the Armed Forces to use to educate their own personnel. Laying hands on this information is trivial.

In addition, it's the obvious choice. I have almost no connection to the military at all, and if you had asked me I would have said, "Air Force."

 

[Ryujin]

Pretty much any chase that involves motorcycles. I've done 8 racing schools, two advanced street riding schools, and shot motorcycle racing for over 20 years. I can tell when you're only doing 30 MPH.

 

[MGibster]

There's a book called Extinction Point, and the premise is most of the population of the Earth dies off after a msyterious red rain falls from the Earth. Our hero, Emily, manages to contact some other survivors in a remote area of Alaska. Emily decides the best course of action in this case is to bike her way from New York all the way to this remote location in Alaska. She never learned to drive, which isn't unrealistic for someone in New York, but she grew up in the midwest in a small farming community. I can believe the extinction level event, but living in rural America without ever learning how to drive a car? No. You need to explain that. The worst part is that strange alien lifeforms, some of them dangerous, start bursting from the various corpses laying about the city. Still going to bike your way to Alaksa? Yup. That's the plan.

I just learned the author is from Wales. That explains how he got an American from the midwest so very, very wrong.