Did Not Do the Research



""Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself." And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto! I looked them up!""

- Wanda, A Fish Called Wanda

Writers in film, television and other media can sometimes be lazy people who cannot be bothered to do proper research on subjects relevant to the plot of their work of fiction. At other times (especially in TV), they just cannot squeeze research into the 10 days or so they get to write a script. In other cases, putting in too much detail would be distracting and annoying. In any case, the research did not get done.

The result is that depictions of events and concepts taken from history, foreign cultures, or the sciences will often be heavily distorted, caricatured, or otherwise inaccurate, often depicting them as analogous to something more familiar to the audience.

Often these mistakes will be so glaringly obvious to anyone with any sort of basic knowledge of the subject that it will make the entire work seem completely ridiculous.

To avoid making these mistakes, see Useful Notes. For the situations where the research is obviously done, see Shown Their Work. This applies equally well in situations where fictional writers did research, but they did it in books whose own real-life writers didn't.

But remember that most of these works are works of fiction, meaning made-up, be fantasy, science fiction, or works of Alternate History where the scream of "Did Not Do The Research" is not only useless but impractical. This is even, or especially, done in works that are supposed to be "in the real world".

As stated by author Dean Wesley Smith in his book Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, "Just to be clear, I am saying that some projects in fiction require some research and it needs to be done, but not all projects require research, so you should never, ever, let research stop your writing."

It should be noted that the original meaning, as well as the quotation above, referred to facts in the same fiction or verse which were obvious and essential knowledge and therefore made mistakes unforgivable; as opposed to going to the Carbon Nanotube Hard on the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness and screaming foul at the slightest errors, to the point of Natter. (Hence, the Example Sectionectomy.)

Note: Situations in which the research may or may not have been done, but is ignored in favor of the story, is Artistic License. When the science in an old work has since been disproven, that's Science Marches On; when the historical records change, that's History Marches On. When a factual error is left in because it has become traditional, that's The Coconut Effect. For the contrary effect, see Like Reality Unless Noted when this is willfully ignored, the Rule of Cool takes effect, or the MST3K Mantra is used.

This taken Up to Eleven gives us Critical Research Failure, when the inaccuracies in the story are obvious even to non-experts. If the author pretends to have done the research when they haven't, you have Dan Browned. Contrast Shown Their Work. Can be a Berserk Button to the misrepresented subject.

This index has no examples and should not be used as a trope elsewhere. A simple failure of research on one point does not make a trope. Any example should be labelled as a registered trope or it simply doesn't get marked down at all. Otherwise, everything would end up here.

Subindexes:
 * Hollywood Style
 * Index Failure (not exclusively DNDTR tropes, though)
 * Magical Computer (sometimes)
 * Public Medium Ignorance
 * Space Does Not Work That Way
 * You Fail Indexes Forever

Tropes that usually fall into this category

 * Accidentally Accurate (because even a broken clock is right twice a day)
 * Anime Catholicism
 * A Nuclear Error
 * All Animation Is Disney
 * All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles
 * All Asians Are Alike
 * All Bikers Are Hells Angels
 * All Cavemen Were Neanderthals
 * All Deserts Have Cacti
 * All Guitars Are Stratocasters
 * All Monks Know Kung Fu
 * Anachronism Stew
 * Anarchy Is Chaos
 * Anatomically-Impossible Sex
 * Ancient Grome
 * Annoying Arrows
 * Argentina Is Naziland
 * Armchair Psychology
 * Artistic License Indexes
 * Artistic License Animal Care
 * Artistic License Astronomy
 * Artistic License: Biology
 * Artistic License Chemistry
 * Artistic License Economics
 * Artistic License Engineering
 * Artistic License - Film Production
 * Artistic License Geography
 * Artistic License Geology
 * Artistic License Gun Safety
 * Artistic License History
 * Artistic License: Law
 * Artistic License Linguistics
 * Artistic License Martial Arts
 * Artistic License Medicine
 * Artistic License Military
 * Artistic License Pharmacology
 * Artistic License Physics
 * Artistic License Religion
 * Artistic License Ships
 * Artistic License Statistics
 * Artistic License Traditional Christianity
 * As Long as It Sounds Foreign
 * Asteroid Thicket
 * Bar Sinister
 * Beam Me Up, Scotty
 * Black Vikings
 * Burn the Witch
 * California Collapse
 * Can You Hear Me Now?
 * Choke Holds
 * Christianity Is Catholic
 * Common Knowledge
 * Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch
 * Praising Shows You Don't Watch
 * Convection, Schmonvection
 * Conviction by Contradiction
 * Conviction by Counterfactual Clue
 * Cool, Clear Water
 * Cowboy Bebop at His Computer
 * CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable
 * The Cretaceous Is Always Doomed
 * Critical Research Failure
 * Dan Browned
 * Dan Browned
 * Defcon Five
 * Dewey Defeats Truman
 * Did Not Do the Bloody Research
 * Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud
 * The Dung Ages
 * Eagleland Osmosis
 * Earthquakes Cause Fissures
 * Easy Sex Change
 * El Spanish-O
 * Eternal Sexual Freedom
 * Everybody Hates Hades (sometimes)
 * Everything Is Online
 * Every Car Is a Pinto
 * Every Car Is Rear Wheel Drive
 * Every Helicopter Is a Huey
 * Every Japanese Sword Is a Katana
 * Exposed Animal Bellybutton
 * Famous-Named Foreigner
 * Fashions Never Change
 * Fast Tunnelling
 * Fire and Brimstone Hell
 * Fluffy Cloud Heaven
 * Forgot He Was a Robot
 * Gannon Banned
 * Geek Reference Pool
 * Going Critical
 * The Greatest History Never Told
 * Gretzky Has the Ball
 * Grey's Anatomy Emergency Medical Response
 * Guns Do Not Work That Way
 * Helicopter Blender
 * Hijacked by Jesus
 * History Marches On
 * I Am Not Shazam
 * Iconic Character Forgotten Title
 * Improbable Taxonomy Skills
 * Infrared X Ray Camera
 * Inspired By
 * Instant Death Bullet
 * Instant Emergency Response
 * Instant Messenger Pigeon
 * Instant Sedation
 * It's Always Spring
 * Dreaming of a White Christmas
 * Interpol Special Agent
 * Its Always Sunny in Miami
 * Just Plane Wrong
 * Just Train Wrong
 * Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid
 * Law of Inverse Recoil
 * Logical Fallacies
 * Loners Are Freaks
 * Lost in Translation
 * Magical Antibiotics
 * Magical Defibrillator
 * Manual Misprint
 * Mayincatec
 * Mishmash Museum
 * Misplaced Vegetation
 * Misplaced Wildlife
 * Missing Backblast
 * The Mountains of Illinois
 * Never Live It Down
 * New Age Retro Hippie
 * Night Vision Goggles
 * 90% of Your Brain
 * No Arc in Archery
 * No Control Group
 * No Infantile Amnesia
 * Non-Mammal Mammaries
 * Non-Mammalian Hair
 * Not the Fall That Kills You
 * Giant Robot Hands Save Lives
 * Soft Water
 * Nuns Are Mikos
 * Oireland
 * Only a Flesh Wound
 * Organ Autonomy
 * Outside Joke
 * Pac-Man Fever
 * Arcade Sounds
 * Parasol Parachute
 * Parody Failure
 * Patchwork Map
 * Phone Trace Race
 * Popular History
 * Post-Peak Oil
 * Present Day Past
 * Protagonist Title Fallacy
 * Public Medium Ignorance
 * Pull the IV
 * Ragnarok Proofing
 * Reckless Gun Usage (in universe)
 * Religion Is Magic
 * Sadly Mythtaken
 * Sand Is Water
 * Science Marches On
 * Scotireland
 * Selective Magnetism
 * Self Abuse
 * Shallow Parody
 * Shot to the Heart
 * Small Reference Pools (to a degree)
 * All Psychology Is Freudian
 * Snow Means Cold
 * SoCalization
 * Society Marches On
 * Soft Glass
 * Somewhere a Palaeontologist Is Crying
 * Souvenir Land
 * Spexico
 * Subject 101
 * Suck Out the Poison
 * Surgeons Can Do Autopsies If They Want
 * Surprise Checkmate
 * Symbology Research Failure
 * Tanks, But No Tanks
 * Tap on the Head
 * Telepathic Sprinklers
 * Television Geography
 * They Just Didn't Care
 * Thirty Second Blackout
 * Thunder Equals Downpour
 * Torture Cellar
 * Totally Radical
 * Trans Equals Gay
 * Turbine Blender
 * Two Decades Behind
 * Universal Universe Time
 * Unrealistic Black Hole
 * Vinyl Shatters
 * Water Is Air
 * We All Live in America
 * Weapons Kitchen Sink
 * We Have to Get the Bullet Out
 * Weird Moon
 * Worst Aid
 * Writers Cannot Do Math
 * Wrongfully Attributed
 * Ye Goode Olde Days
 * Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe