Jon Sandys

Deliberate mistake: You don't automatically get "one phone call" when you're arrested in the USA. Depends on the state, for a start. You're always entitled to access to a lawyer regardless, but not always making the call yourself. If you make a call with no-one answering, you've not "wasted" your call either. Plenty of states allow multiple calls, within reason. It's a plot device, not based in reality.

Jon Sandys ★

Factual error: Airbags which deploy and stay inflated. That's not how airbags work, they deflate immediately.

Jon Sandys ★

Stupidity: Some object (or person, occasionally, like The Mummy or the witch in Hellboy) which "can't be destroyed", but can be broken up into large parts and "hidden", often into ornate boxes with a map or record of the location. Nobody ever thinks to break the parts down into hundreds of pieces, then scatter them randomly into separate oceans, up a mountain, into building foundations, into a mine, or thrown in a volcano.

Jon Sandys ★

Other mistake: People gaining access to a computer system they've never seen or used before, but manage to figure out exactly how to do the thing they need to do, often in a very limited timeframe. No clicking around trying to find the right area or the right command.

Jon Sandys ★

Factual error: IP addresses are 4 groups of up to 3 numbers each, maxing out at 255 - it's a fundamental limitation of the technology. But IP addresses in movies are often shown as something like 564.100.432.165, which is impossible. This isn't like movie phone numbers all starting with 555, because that's still a feasible phone number, just with a "movie" area code.

Jon Sandys ★

Deliberate mistake: Strip clubs in non-adult-rated movies/TV shows where every woman dancing onstage is fully clothed.

Jon Sandys ★

Factual error: Often when bombs are shown falling, they're depicted with a distinct whistling sound. Two problems there. Bombs don't inherently whistle - some bombs in WW2 were specifically fitted with whistles for the psychological warfare element, but the vast majority are silent. Secondly, the standard noise heard from the ground, a high pitched whistle slowly getting lower, is wrong. The doppler effect, whereby a sound changes as it moves closer to someone hearing it, means the pitch heard would increase, not decrease, as a bomb falls towards you. The sound most often used in movies/TV shows of a whistling bomb is what the pilots dropping the bomb would hear, not the people it was falling towards.

Jon Sandys ★

Character mistake: In many space-based action sequences, all the craft involved act like space isn't 3D. Ships fly at each other head on, surround other vessels in a circle, not a sphere, attack with a pincer movement from the left and right, rather than above/below, etc. Most of the time the action is all broadly on one plane. Makes things easier to understand from an audience perspective, makes zero sense tactically speaking.

Jon Sandys ★

Factual error: People taking cover behind very small / flimsy things, like car doors or wardrobes, dozens of bullets being fired at them, but they emerge unscathed.

Jon Sandys ★

Stupidity: Highly trained military/police officers/similar in cover during a gunfight who stand up or run out into the middle of the street to shoot at their targets. Also including SWAT teams, supposedly the best of the best, who are bumbling incompetents and get wiped out near-instantly.

Jon Sandys ★

Factual error: Someone gets punched in the face or otherwise knocked out and comes around hours later, then goes on to pick up where they left off as best as possible and forget the incident in about 30 seconds. If you've been unconscious for hours you've got a traumatic brain injury and need medical attention, you won't be hunting down your assailant any time soon.

Jon Sandys ★

Stupidity: One character holding another at gunpoint but right next to them, making it easy for the victim to knock the gun away or similarly fight back. You've got a gun - stand 10 feet from them.

Jon Sandys ★