Best TV factual errors of 1994

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Friends picture

The One With The Hypnosis Tape - S3-E18

Factual error: When Pete takes Monica to Rome for the date this would have been impossible as Rome is 6 hours ahead of New York and at least 4/5 hours travel time, assuming they went by Concorde (double that otherwise). They would have had to have left New York early in the morning to make dinner for 8/9 pm in Rome.

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ER (1994)

ER picture

The Show Must Go On - S11-E22

Factual error: When the woman is giving birth, they show the baby just after they finally got her out. The baby is clean, no blood and other signs of a recent birth are visible. This is especially unlikely since the doctors had to "cut her open" to liberate the baby from the birth channel.

Ronnie Bischof

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Suggested correction: Not entirely true; although they are rare and may no longer exist now, I've seen traffic lights that followed the red, yellow, green pattern as recently as the mid-1990s.

zendaddy621

Interesting. What state (s) did you see this in? I'm assuming going from red to yellow was to encourage cars to cautiously enter the intersection in case someone was running a red light?

Phaneron

Traffic lights in the UK do this - it's more to give you a second to get ready, in gear, etc., then as soon as the lights turn green you can go. Otherwise you get no warning of when the lights are about to change.

In Illinois; as I said, such traffic lights are rare, but they did exist at least as recently as the time this episode of the series aired, and they may still possibly exist in larger cities such as New York City.

zendaddy621

This traffic light set-up (red to yellow to green) still exists today in the UK. From what I understand, it is to alert the driver that the light will be turning green imminently and to prepare themselves to put their car in gear, as manual cars are still pretty common in Europe. I'd wager this light cycle was phased out of North America due to the abundance of automatic cars today. Could have been different in 1994 though.

critterbonus

It should be noted that traffic lights that go from red to yellow before going green keep the red light illuminated so that both red and yellow are lit up. However, that's not what happens in the scene. I've never seen a traffic light operate the way it's shown. And Massachusetts still has traffic lights that go from red to yellow, however, when red and yellow are lit up together, this allows for pedestrian crossing.

Bishop73

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The Vicar of Dibley picture

Songs of Praise - S1-E2

Factual error: In the scene where they are gathered to watch the episode of Songs of Praise in the shot of Alice's reading. Her quote 'from the sixth chapter of the Song of Solomon, beginning at the second verse' "ye are the fault [salt] of the earth and fainted [sainted]." doesn't exist.

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Mysteries of the Bible picture

Show generally

Factual error: Near the beginning of the episode dealing with the life of Moses, they depict various scenes of ancient Egypt, during his time. But they show the Sphinx with the nose missing (as it looks today), when that face was intact until the early 19th century when Napoleon's troops used it for artillery target practice.

roy sandefur

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