Factual error: People often jump from great heights into bodies of water and avoid fall damage. But the surface tension of water is great enough it would be no different than hitting concrete if you're high enough up.
Common movie and TV mistakes - page 3
This is a list of mistakes, things done wrong, etc. that happen so frequently onscreen we barely notice any more. 'Movie logic', stupid behaviours, and everything related.
Factual error: Stun guns and Tasers do not knock people unconscious. They are designed to incapacitate by either interrupting motor control or causing pain. Movies and TV shows often show someone is zapped with a stun gun and falling unconscious almost instantly. Electroshock weapons simply cannot be used this way, nor are they designed with this in mind. It is absurd for a spy to use a stun gun as a stealth weapon, the first thing the target would likely do is yell from the pain.
Factual error: When someone's body is engulfed in flames, s/he must spend at least a couple seconds flailing arms in the air and making awkward leg movements (sometimes zombie-like) before falling to the ground.
Factual error: Military characters who deliver incorrect or inaccurate salutes to each other. Real military personnel know how to deliver a proper salute.
Factual error: People are often watching or staring at the explosion of a nuclear bomb as it goes off, and witness the mushroom cloud form. In reality, the flash from this explosion would be so bright that it would cause instant, and usually permanent blindness. True Lies is a notable exception to this rule where Arnie specifically protects their eyes as the bomb goes off.
Factual error: Hearing a dial tone after someone hangs up a phone - that wouldn't be heard unless you hang up and pick it back up yourself.
Factual error: Movies where a truck or train is uncontrolled and the brake lines have been cut. The whole point of those brake lines is that they keep the brakes from closing - cut them and the brakes apply automatically, for safety reasons - that's the whole point.
Factual error: When someone has a limb or other body part sliced off or the person is bisected, and there is a dramatic delay in the body part falling off as if to cast doubt on whether or not they were actually sliced. Notable examples include "Equilibrium," "Skinned Deep," "Resident Evil," "Ghost Ship," and "Final Destination 2."
Factual error: Wild animals are depicted to be much more violent and vicious than in reality. Truth be told, most wild animals will avoid and run from humans. Even wolf packs, snakes, and jungle cats will avoid humans out of fear.
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Suggested correction: This is only a common mistake if this always happens in a situation where there is absolutely no way the animal can be aggressive. It can happen, especially with a wolf or snake, so in that movie it just happened. Not a common mistake then.
Factual error: After waking up from a coma or being knocked out for several days, people in films often get up and proceed to wander around or have a conversation before moving on. But the body continues to function during this comatose state. When someone gets up after sleeping for 3 days straight, they would immediately need to head to the bathroom to relieve themselves. That, or they would smell very horribly to others around them and need to be cleaned up if they were not already taken care of when asleep by the other people.
Factual error: In almost every movie when a landmine is involved, dramatic tension builds when the character steps on it, inevitably hearing a click. That's it, you and everyone else realise that you triggered the mine, and it will explode the moment you try to step away. It's time to say farewell to your friends surrendering to your fate, or hold very still until someone thinks of something extremely clever and bold to save you. In the real world, though, you'd already been maimed, since mines are made to explode with the initial pressure, not the release. Example; the legendary ending of Double Team, or the movie Mine, which is...literally all based on this.
Factual error: Regular, unmodified weapons firing blank rounds. Real weapons use large and obvious attachments to block most of the propellant gases from going out of the barrel, which cycles the weapon. Hollywood weapons have blockages or mechanisms hidden in the barrel to do the same thing (or they have other effects like CGI or a gas flame), but those would make them unable to fire actual bullets. Also, real blanks are dangerous when fired close to people because they can still fire out debris. Die Hard 2 is a good example, with the bad guys swapping back and forth between blank and live ammunition in the same weapons.
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Suggested correction: Technically incorrect. You can get very high powered blanks called 4 in 1's that can cycle a weapon without the weapon being modified or having a blank firing adaptor. The reason they are not used commonly is because of how loud they are.
Factual error: Trains that do not stop, but crash through objects on railroad tracks. Train engineers will hit the brakes of the train when they see anything or anyone on the tracks, and if they come in contact with said objects, will stop to investigate what they hit, and cooperate with local and Federal authorities. Two examples are "Back To the Future, Part III" and "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry."
Factual error: Any time characters are underwater with no eye protection, they still always seem to have clear and perfect vision to see the world around them, other people and even small objects submerged with them. But to anybody who has ever tried opening their eyes under water, you know this isn't true. It's all a massively blurry mess where you can only make out fuzzy shapes and colors at best.
Factual error: Whenever someone flatlines and a doctor (or nurse) grabs the defibrillator and is able to shock the person back to life. Defibrillators only work when the person still has a heartbeat, but the heart is in fibrillation. And even when doctors do use a defibrillator, they still perform regular CPR afterwards, which is rarely (if ever) shown being done. Usually in the film or show, the person comes back to life, sits up, and takes a huge gulp of air as if they had been holding their breath underwater.
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Suggested correction: The spirit of this entry is correct - defibrillation is WAY overused to add drama - but the facts are wrong. First, defibrillators are rarely used unless there is electrical activity but no heartbeat, as is the case when fibrillation is occurring. In fibrillation, the heart is not beating, only twitching without rhythm. CPR is never done after restoring the heartbeat, no doctor would perform compressions on traumatized heart. Finally, most patients suffer serious complications after defibrillation. A patient who jumps up after defib only happens... in the movies.
I did oversimplify when I said heartbeat. But a twitching heart is different than a completely stopped heart. And the point of the entry is the fact that defibrillation machines are over used and patients don't jump up afterwards, which you only confirmed, so the correction is unnecessary. And, where do you get your information about not performing CPR? The general consensus is to do CPR. Here's a short article. Again, this correction is unneeded. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25597505/.
I think the original points that CPR is over depicted in films and TV, and that patients are debilitated after defibrillation is valid. You can make a better case by avoiding terms like always and never, because there is always an exception, and never and end to the comments. By the way, the article you cite is a database review of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, not the hospital settings you describe, so now a correction IS needed.
Factual error: When the police are on the phone with a suspect who is using a landline and they try to keep them on the line long enough to trace the number and location. If the film takes place after the advent of Caller ID, then this information would be available instantly.
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Factual error: Using a car door as a shield for bullets. They're really thin and you'd be shot right through them really easily.
Factual error: Films set in or around the middle ages depict horses being the size of modern horses. In actuality, horses during that time period were smaller, closer to modern ponies.
Factual error: When the character holding a gun keeps cocking the slide whenever they are about to get into trouble. Once a weapon is cocked, it's loaded. Every other time the slide, or cocking handle is manipulated, the weapon will extract a round from the chamber and draw a new round from the magazine. Whenever this happens in movies or shows, the weapon never extracts the round in the chamber.
Factual error: Women didn't start routinely shaving their legs until the 1920s, but in films and TVs shows set before then, women's legs are always hair free.
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Suggested correction: If you jump in feet first you can survive a jump into water from a very great height without injuries.
lionhead
About the max distance you can fall into water without injury is 65 feet, even at feet first. Professional high divers even struggle to control themselves from that height without doing actions they can control like flips. An untrained individual leaping from a bridge down into water would most certainly kill them in real life.
Quantom X ★
To dive for up to 90 feet is an official sport, while daredevils dive from up 120 feet. And "dive" means head first. Normal people can and do jump feet first without injury, although is a coin toss. Certainly fatal bridge jumps are from very high ones (The Golden Gate is something like 250 feet).