Reality Is Unrealistic: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

 

* [[All Deserts Have Cacti]]

* [[All Flyers Are Birds]]

 

See also: [[Based on a Great Big Lie]], [[The Tasteless But True Story]].

 

* Actual rain never looks like real rain on film, which is why they use a hose and sprinkler. But now that you know that, rain will never look real. You also don't get rain recorded when you just film it. To get it visible on camera, it's back-lit. For the famous scene of ''[[Singin' in the Rain|Singin in The Rain]]'', the water was mixed with milk so it would show up on camera. The smell on set afterwards can only be imagined.

** Actual raindrops also tend to be too small and too fast to register on film. Rain machine raindrops are much larger than normal and are moving much slower, since they don't fall nearly as far. One actor said that working under a rain machine, each individual raindrop was about the size of his fist.

* Mice don't particularly like [[Stock Animal Diet|cheese]]. They like peanut butter, seeds, nuts and chocolate. They ate cheese because in an average household... what was most smelly ''and'' edible? Also, in the past it was likely to be left exposed in the larder. Creepy rat-guy The Exterminator points this fact out in the film version of ''[[Wanted]]''. [[Chekhov's Skill|Trapping rats using peanut butter plays a major part of the very explosive finale]].

* Dogs are portrayed in most films as color blind. This is very false. Dogs can see in color, they just see things in a paler shade than we do. This is due to having far fewer cone cells (responsible for providing the means to see color) than humans do and with dogs being dichromatic (meaning they can only see two prime colors; blue and yellow), whilst humans are trichromatic (meaning we can see three prime colors: red, blue and green). Dogs do, however, have a much higher concentration of rod cells (which provide the means to see in black and white) than humans do. All this means however, is not that dogs can't see in color, but that they can see far better in the dark than we can. Seems Hollywood has got it a little backwards.

** Two other creatures commonly portrayed to be colorblind are cats and bulls when in reality they can see in color. Bulls (and cattle in general) are dichromatic like dogs. Cats are actually trichromatic like humans, but have a different third color from humans, giving them a different range of color vision. See [[Bull Seeing Red]] for more info on the cattle example.

* A documentary of hostage situations included a police sniper lecturing on the difficulty of actual marksmanship compared to that shown in movies. He complained that he regularly had to defend himself to laymen asking "Why don't you just shoot the gun out of his hand? [[The Lone Ranger]] does it every week!" Not that it ''can't'' be done... you just have to be a really, ''really'' good shot. Like the sniper in [http://youtube.com/watch?v=6QCiGQjtqxc this video].

** The problem isn't that it can't be done (it can). The problem is that it can't be done ''consistently'', as the real hostage situation isn't a carefully maintained range and there's a whole lot of small unpredictable things each of that could throw the shot off. That's why "shooting the gun out of perp's hand" is usually considered an unacceptable risk.

*** Or you could accidentally set of one more of the bullets loaded into the gun, which would cause them to drop it, but it would probably also cause them to lose most of their arm in the process.

*** They also showed that despite the technique, you can just plain not shoot the gun out of some people's hands, whether due to experience or their personal grip.

*** The premiere episode of the show featured Michael breaking into a room by removing the exterior siding beforehand and then kicking his way through the drywall rather than trying to bash down a door (not to mention the guy with the gun on the other side of the door). This technique is sometimes used by firefighters in emergencies: you can spend time fooling around trying to force an interior security door in a steel frame open, or you can punch a hole in the wall, reach in and unlock the door.

** Demonstrated in ''[[Chuck]]''—Chuck, attempting to save somebody on the other side of a door, rams it with his shoulder and ends up with a very hurt shoulder. After a few seconds of feeling sorry for himself, he opens it with a well-aimed kick.

** In ''[[Brothers in Arms]]: Hell's Highway'', squad member Paddock tries kicking open a church door, yelping in pain. He then frustratedly shoots the lock and humbly pushes the door open.

** In an episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'', Chase tries to batter down a door in a patient's apartment. He rebounds, hits the floor, and tweaks his shoulder a bit. The irony is that {{spoiler|the force of the ramming knocks the key down from the ledge above the door, allowing Thirteen to unlock it.}}

** On a DVD of News Bloopers, a woman reporter was doing a piece on how easy it was for people to force their way in through a locked door, then turning and kicking it by the door handle, and completely failing to do anything. Followed by a second, and then a third take, all with the same results. The final piece had the reporter speaking off camera while a man at least a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier easily kicked the door in.

* Perhaps the greatest example of this trope are [[ninja]]s. Despite how they are shown in the media, ninja dressed and acted as inconspicuously as possible. No sneaking in at night wearing a pitch-black suit with a sword over your back; a ninja was more likely to get in as a carpenter contracted to do some work on the target's house and beat him to death with a hammer. Or better yet, get onto the cooking staff and poison the target's food. If they used a sword, it would've been stolen from the target or one of his guards; ninja clans couldn't afford to send one of their agents out with a proper sword (Japan is an iron-deficient country, making steel very expensive), ninja were only ever sent out with equipment that could be easily and cheaply replaced.

** The traditional ninja garb is taken from the dress of stagehands in kabuki theatre. They'd dress in all black and the audience would, by convention, pretend not to see them. A ninja character dressed as stagehand used this convention to emulate a character striking from the shadows, since the audience would be surprised to see a "stagehand" suddenly interact with the real actors.

* If years of Hollywood influence has taught us one thing, it's <s>to [[Be Yourself]]</s> that [[Every Car Is a Pinto|cars explode after crashes]], even fairly minor ones (or occasionally, explode in mid-air ''before'' touching the ground). Reality disagrees, and modern cars don't explode readily at all. Nonetheless, the public is largely convinced that cars present a serious danger of explosion after a crash, which has resulted in many, many cases of well-meaning members of the public pulling injured victims out of cars, causing further injury to them, to get them away from the car before it explodes. It's better to not move a victim unless there are clearly visible flames burning the car, or if there is some other form of explosive involved.

** Inversion: While cars in a hard crush will usually just crumple up into hunks of metal, commercial jets frequently ''will'' explode dramatically on a direct impact, thanks to the sheer force of it guaranteeing that their heavy loads of volatile fuel won't stay safely contained - as seen in footage of the 9/11 plane crashes. This is demonstrated to be an inversion, not an '''a'''version, by the number of conspiracy theorists who contend that the effect noted above proves the towers were rigged with pyrotechnics.

*** Something to keep in mind is that this experiment was done on ground level and did not recreate true conditions of a plane in flight. Thus it is technically inconclusive.

** To "spice up" the field test on Ford Explorer rollovers, ''Dateline'' relied on this fact for cover as they rigged the trucks to explode. When they were found out, they issued an apology.

* The volatility of gasoline has been overstated by Hollywood to the point that all gas stations have warning signs regarding cigarette smoking posted at the tanks. However, there has never been any recorded instance of a cigarette or other open flame igniting any gasoline (or petrol) tanks anywhere. The Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms experts have [http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/27/smoking.film thoroughly debunked this], yet the signs remain. Further, dropping a lit cigarette or match into gasoline does nothing more than extinguish it. In order to start a fire, an actual flame has to be held in the fumes rising above it; the ember of a smoldering cigarette will not trigger a blaze.

** At a gas station, signs only remind the people working immediately with light fuels. When a spark just somewhere around can make a fireball, it'd be an emergency already. As to the ATF "experts", it's a bad consolation: they [http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/savage2.htm used to say ludicrous things].

** ''Brainiac: Science Abuse'' not only demonstrated that a mobile phone causing a spark is virtually impossible, but also that the static electricity caused by the rubbing together of polystyrene or other similar fabrics is more likely to cause petrol explosions. You'll note that you don't see a ban on polystyrene clothing in petrol stations.

*** However, many gas stations have a warning to make sure you discharge on your car before putting the pump in and to not get back into the car while the pump is running.

** There is a police report of a man being brought in for questioning after a large blood splatter, as well as an embedded bullet, was found on the wall of a hotel room he had rented the night before. Upon further inspection they discovered it was a failed suicide attempt; the bullet (which was quite low-calibre) had gone straight through his brain yet missed any important parts. He had reportedly walked off with no memory of the suicide attempt.

** Look no further than Gabrielle Giffords. She was shot through the head, but she is expected to eventually make a full recovery.

** Several names fall into this. In ''The Canterbury Tales,'' several of the female characters are given modern-sounding names (albeit spelled differently.) Allison and Emily come to mind.

* Anatomically, the human heart is located in the ''bottom center'' of the chest cavity, yet everything from vampire flicks to firing-range targets depict it as being in the upper left quadrant, merely because the heartbeat is ''louder'' in that location. (The heart's left side is stronger than the right, and projects its sound upward with the aortic blood flow.) Even doctors get looked at funny if they try to center their hands over their actual hearts during the US national anthem, as opposed to centering the hand over the left lung as most people do and letting the heel of the hand end up closer to the actual position.

* Vikings never actually wore horned helmets. The horns would put them at a serious disadvantage, since the opponent could grab onto them. They came about in tales written during Greek and Roman times to make the vikings seem more intimidating.

** There ''were'' no Vikings in the Greek and Roman periods. The Viking Age lasted roughly from the 6th century to the 10th CE. Now there were people living in Scandinavia at the time, and some of them apparently did wear horned headwear, but presumably this was for ceremonial purposes, not battle.

** The horned headwear actually derives from an opera by Wagner. He essentially added the horns for [[Rule of Cool]].

*** Being one I can tell you it has nothing to do with grabbing the horns, but that a) horns in a metal helmet would leave a weak point with less protection. b) Horns (and other weird fantasy embellishments like spikes, etc) will but lead your opponent's weapon to you; channeling them in, and to weak points and a hit on the easy-to-hit horns would likely break your neck or at the very least give you a concussion or shock you enough that he could dispose of you easily after.

* The "ashes" from someone who has been cremated (which are really called "cremains") are depicted as being lighter than air. Cremains are in fact bits of bone too large to simply blow away in the wind or dissolve almost instantly in water.

 

* Remember those "Ask Dr. Z" commercials for what was then Daimler-Chrysler, with the actor with an odd-looking fake mustache and goofy German accent purporting to be the company's CEO and taking customers' questions? That was [[wikipedia:Dieter Zetsche|the actual CEO of Daimler]], and the accent and mustache are both real.

* You know how beer commercials always have a "beauty shot" with a glass of beer with a thick, frothy head? Beer doesn't really froth that much, but the average viewer thinks it should, so the advertisers add detergent to the beer to achieve the effect.

*** The United States, where most of our beer is watered-down horse piss.

 

* A lot of reviewers of ''[[Kanon]]'' complained that the scene in which a character gets hit by a runaway car looks unrealistic, since the victim cannot be seen anymore. In reality that is likely to happen when the car actually covers the victim or when the victim gets catapulted out of sight, as can be seen on footage of real accidents. And, after that episode was aired, people found footage of an accident on [[YouTube]] which was ''identical'' to that scene. It's quite possible that it was the one used by the animation team as a reference.

* In ''[[Transformers Cybertron]],'' Jetfire was voiced by a different actor than in the previous two seasons, ''Armada'' and ''Energon.'' [[The Powers That Be]] wanted the new version to sound Australian. The kicker? (No, not [[The Scrappy|that annoying kid from Energon]].) The old actor, Scott McNeil, is Australian. The new one, Brian Drummond, is Canadian. As the Transformers Wiki puts it, clearly, McNeil was insufficiently Australian. Though to be fair, he is only technically Australian. He was born there, but he is a certified Canadian.

* One criticism often leveled against ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' is that its characters are unrealistic. The depiction of their dysfunction is supposedly too extreme to be believable. In fact, the main trio's personalities match up very well to genuine mental problems, to the point where it seems probable that they were consciously modeled after them. Shinji seems to have [[wikipedia:Avoidant personality disorder|avoidant personality disorder]], Asuka [[wikipedia:Narcissistic personality disorder|narcissistic personality disorder]] and Rei [[wikipedia:Schizoid personality disorder|schizoid personality disorder]]. Granted, it's unlikely that three such people would just so [[Everyone Went to School Together|happen to be acquaintances]], which hurts the [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]]. {{spoiler|Well, [[Omniscient Council of Vagueness|there's a reason for that...]] }} The in-universe explanation for why all the Eva pilots happen to have deep-seated emotional problems is [[All There in the Manual]].

** The [[Eldritch Abomination]] portrayal of Angels in the series is actually more accurate to what the bible described them as than the humans with white wings we see in most religious art.

** It should be noted that many western media reported the more or less total lack of looting in Kobe, following the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, with considerable undertones of awe. Add to this that the Japanese are widely considered as a society striving for consensus and collective good and this turns into a major case of the reviewer not doing his research.

* Yasuna from ''[[Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl]]'' has a physical condition where she can't see mens faces. It comes off as a blur in the anime, and an outline in the manga. A lot of fans and critics believe it to be an outlandish made-up disease or a psychological problem. Her condition is actually very similar to a real disorder called [[wikipedia:Prosopagnosia|Prosopagnosia]], albeit hers is probably a mild form... {{spoiler|In the manga at least.}} One sufferer of the disorder has stated that the portrayal is rather realistic.

* When people want to paint the Leo from ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' as a shoddy piece of junk, they tend to cite scenes in which merely being ''near'' the blast from Wing's rifle is enough to destroy one. This is, however, a rare aversion of [[Convection, Schmonvection]] in the ''[[Gundam]]'' metaseries, as a gigantic wave of super-charged plasma would generate some pretty intense heat.

** The same effect is shown in ''[[Gundam Unicorn]]'', in which a mobile suit is blown up when a discharge from the [[Wave Motion Gun|Beam Magnum]] passes near it. The other pilots take this as an indication of the beam's extreme power.

 

* Invoked in ''[[Wonder Woman]]: Eyes of the Gorgon'' - A battle between Medusa and Wonder Woman is being broadcast on national TV, and one of the viewers comments that "The CGI looks totally fake!".

 

* In ''[[Slacker]]'', a videogeek mentions that he recently saw a [[Real Life]] shooting, and complains that it didn't look realistic. "The blood was the wrong color."

* In the film ''A Bout De Souffle'', the American actress Jean Seberg played an American character who lived in Paris and spoke French with an accent that was presumably Seberg's own. A poster on the IMDb forums labeled her a French actress that had put on an unconvincing American accent.

** Lastly, when asked about the [[American Civil War]], most people recall scenes from ''[[Gone with the Wind]]'' which portrayed a very rose-colored picture of the South. ''[[Gone with the Wind]]'' is the result of that rose-colored picture already being popular.

** [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] is always portrayed with a French accent. Yet in actuality, during his lifetime some of his French contemporaries complained that his thick Corsican Italian accent made his French nearly impossible to decipher. (Which may be why a few of his comedic appearances instead depict him as muttering incomprehensibly and needing to have someone else translate for him.) Also, Napoleon was not quite as short as [[The Napoleon|he is often depicted in fiction]].

** Similarly, they General Beck committs suicide with a single shot. In reality, he botched his suicide very painfully, and had to be [[Mercy Kill|finished off by a sergeant]].

* Many film critics who otherwise enjoyed ''[[Schindler's List]]'' complained that the one thing the found unbelievable was Ralph Fienne's villain Amon Goeth, saying that he was [[Complete Monster|far too evil]] to be believable. Not only was Amon Goeth a real person, as bad as he is in the movie he got a [[Historical Villain Downgrade]]- the real Amon Goeth was [[Up to Eleven|much, much worse]]. Stuff like his morning ritual of shooting innocent people with a sniper rifle from his house made the movie; stuff like his [[Torture Cellar]] did not. The most fictional aspects of his character are actually his [[Pet the Dog]] moments, put in to make him seem more human.

* Some viewers of ''Munich'' complained that the scene in which the Mossad agents dress as women in order to approach the apartment they are raiding in Tarifa without suspicion was ridiculous, contrived, and ruined the realism of the film. Presumably they were unaware that this particular sequence was closely based on Operation Spring of Youth, a real Mossad operation, in which the men did indeed dress like women to approach their target.

* [[Ridley Scott]] actually declined to include any reference in ''[[Gladiator]]'' to the historical practice of gladiators endorsing products from their sponsors, specifically out of fear of this trope.

** There was a Discovery Channel show on it in 2007. The church is beautiful in a somewhat macabre manner.

* The movie ''[[The Great Raid]]'' was lambasted by some critics, especially bloggers, as being unrealistically gung-ho about the rescue mission due to the large differences in casualty rates as very few Americans and Filipinos died in the film compared to the scores of Japanese. The brutality of the Japanese in the film was also criticized as over-the-top, even racist. This ignored the fact that in the real life mission the film was based on the Japanese sustained 523 casualties total (killed and wounded) while the total casualties of the Filipino guerrillas performing the rescue numbered under 30, and the American Rangers suffering two. The brutality of the Japanese in the film was also very much downplayed compared to the multiple documented cases of how horribly [[Imperial Japan]] treated the people in its conquered territories.

* The movie ''[[Red Tails]]'', as well as the older [[Made for TV]] film ''Tuskegee Airmen'', both about the all-black 332d Fighter Group of [[World War II]], features a scene where one of the pilots manages to blow up a destroyer using only his machine guns, and predictably drew complaints that a fighter plane didn't carry enough firepower for that kind of effect. Most American fighter planes in WWII carried six .50 caliber machine guns, firing a rifle round that was a half-inch thick, which was nothing to sneeze at by itself. These planes often carried armor-piercing and incendiary ammo for their guns. And destroyers of that era often carried their [[Made of Explodium|torpedoes and depth charges]] on the deck of the ship, being too small to carry them anywhere else... long story short, that happened.

 

* The book for the German movie ''Sonnenallee'', literally ''At the Shorter End of Sonnenallee'', provides an in-universe example that played the trope straight. When protagonist Micha finds out how his extreme-sporting relative Lutz gets to Mongolia when visa (or rather "invitations") are hard to get, faking the seal by penciling the relief of a five Tukrig coin, Micha succeeds by this method as well. Unfortunately, when they get a real invitation to Mongolia, the officers reject approval as the seal doesn't look as it's supposed to be.

* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: In one of [[Aesop's Fables]], a talented clown does impressions for a town, including an "incredibly realistic" pig's squeal. Finally, a farmer in the back shouts that it sounds nothing like a pig. The next day the two have a face-off. The clown gives his squeals, and then the farmer puts his head in his cloak and there is a horrible sound. The crowd jeers and says it's fake...and then the farmer pulls a piglet out of his coat, as he'd been pinching its ear to make it squeal.

*** The sword either plays it completely straight or completely inverts this trope: since everything in the Discworld is permeated with at least a slight background level of magic anything that is completely unmagical is slightly more real than everything else around it.

** Possibly referenced in ''[[Good Omens]]'', when War has her sword delivered. The narration points out that it's not a fancy magical sword, just one obviously designed to hurt, kill, and maim as many people in as efficient a manner as possible.

* Some people have criticized ''[[Maurice]]'''s ending as [[True Art Is Angsty|too unrealistically optimistic]] about the fate of a homosexual interclass romance in [[The Edwardian Era|Edwardian England]], but Forster's inspiration for Maurice and Alec's relationship came from [[wikipedia:Edward Carpenter|Edward Carpenter]] and [[wikipedia:George Merrill (gay activist)|George Merrill]]'s ''non''-tragic real-life relationship. Such relationships were far from common in early 20th century England, of course, but they weren't ''impossible''.

 

* In an episode of ''[[Babylon 5]]'', Centauri women (a type of almost [[Human Aliens|Human Alien]]) were depicted as being completely bald or bald except for a ponytail. They were played by actresses who wore latex caps, except for one extra who actually was bald. Supposedly, one of the production crew commented that her cap looked fake.

** This criticism was also aimed at Mira Furlan, who played Delenn using her native Yugoslavian/Croatian accent, leading detractors of the show to complain that the character's accent sounded "fake". Similarly with the new Earth Alliance president late in season 4; like Furlan, the actress used her real accent (Polish) and many viewers complained that it sounded fake. With the new president, though, viewers did at least have one point in their favor; the actress was supposed to be portraying a ''Russian'' character—and though both Polish and Russian are Slavic languages, the accents sound ''very'' different. So, real accent... just not a real ''Russian'' accent.

** The state's appellate courts are misleading too; the court of last resort for all state matters is the plainly named Court of Appeals. If you're familiar with the Federal court system, that's just like the mid-level appeals court above the trial court and below the Supreme Court of the United States. The NY version of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals? The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Yeah, good luck with convincing people who aren't legal experts that's real.

* Similarly parodied in ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]''. While filming "Scott of the Antarctic" on an English beach, the crew cover up the sand with white foamy mats, which supposedly, "on screen, look more like snow than snow!"

** When testing the method of slowing the detonation of a bomb by cooling it with liquid nitrogene like in ''[[Lethal Weapon 2]]'', it turned out that not only did it work, it actually worked a lot better than in the movie. In the movie, cooling the bomb gives Riggs and Mmurtaugh two or three seconds of time to dive into cover, but in the test they had to wait for the bomb to completely thaw before it would explode 15 minutes later. To quote Adam: "The technique used by the bomb squad is far more effective in reality than it is in the movies. When does that ever happen?"

* A common sources of snickering about [[Star Trek]] is that Picard is supposedly French, but speaks English with a British accent and not a French one. Patrick Stewart is indeed British and not French, but it's common for French people who know English well to speak it in a British accent - Britian is, after all, the nearest English-speaking country to France. A French person speaking English with a British accent is no more unrealistic than is, say, a Mexican person who speaks English with an accent from the American south.

* As [[Badass]] as [[The Wire|Omar Little]] is, there's no way he would really be able to survive a leap from a fourth-floor window, right? Except for the fact that Donnie Andrews, one of the real-life Baltimorians Little is based off, pulled off a similar feat with a ''sixth''-floor drop.

 

* This is somewhat a film example as well as music, but [["Weird Al" Yankovic]] holds a note out so ridiculously long in the [[Theme Song]] to [[Spy Hard]] that it's commonly thought that this was a sound editing trick.

* Happens a lot in music; the advent of the synthesizer allowed amateur songwriters to fake any number of musical instruments and other sounds to near-perfection. Because of that, people who enjoy the synthesized stuff would be mighty surprised when they're told that their favorite song was, in fact, played by a real band with real instruments.

*** The same thing happened to Roger Ebert once: when reviewing the 1998 remake of ''Psycho'' he complained of the evident electronically tweaked voice of the cop to make it sound unusually deep for effect. After someone wrote to him in the "Questions for the Movie Answer Man" column correcting him he had to add a footnote to later versions of the review saying, "I was wrong: that's James Remar's real voice."

** [[Queen]] in particular were notorious for this; contrary to popular belief, the "no synths" disclaimer on their early albums wasn't because they had anything against synths even then, but because they were annoyed at May's guitar proficiency and their overdub tricks being mistaken for synth effects.

** Of course, during the mid-90's, alternative rock radio also played a grab bag of vaguely alternative subgenres. "The Mummers' Dance" by Celtic musician Loreena McKennitt and "O, Carolina!" by reggae star Shaggy were also Top 20 hits on the Modern Rock Track tracks chart during this time.

* Listeners often complain that [[Gorillaz]] vocalist 2D sounds too different between singing and speaking to have realistically performed those songs. (In all fairness, he is played by two separate voice actors.) In reality, people can have dramatic differences between their speaking and singing voices: accents disappear, pronunciation becomes clearer, tones vary widely etc. It's not uncommon for someone with a thick accent or odd mode of speech to sound fine in recordings; learning to shift between voices is one of the first things aspiring vocalists are taught.

* A hot-ticket act for many years around Canada is The Musical Box, a fantastically accurate tribute band that plays spot-on performances of vintage (usually [[Peter Gabriel]]-era) [[Genesis (band)|Genesis]] music with spot-on theatrics; in fact, the only tribute band Genesis and Gabriel personally endorse and allow to perform with those theatrics. This is the closest you are going to come to a recreation of the band in its progressive rock heyday. This is until you technically take into account that Genesis performed to much smaller, feistier crowds, with less spit-and-polish than TMB use, lower-tech and less reliable sound equipment, lighting, musical instruments, theatrics and staging, and smaller road crews (if any). They were also flying by the seat of their pants as a young, naive, hungry unknown band playing unknown and weird experimental original music with unheard-of, weird, outrageous, experimental theatrics in [[The Seventies]], with all the nerves, spontaneity and hunger to prove themselves you would expect out of such a band starting out.

 

 

* Players and reviewers of ''[[D20 Modern]]'' often complained about how unrealistic it was that wielding a weapon with a burst fire setting doesn't give you the effects of the game's Burst Fire feat. As the game's designers have pointed out, the point of the burst fire setting on guns is to ensure you only fire the three to five rounds in an automatic burst that have any realistic chance of actually hitting the target. If you don't know how to effectively fire an accurate burst with an automatic weapon, this setting won't make it any easier.

* [[Dragon (magazine)]] article "[http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?articleid=13023 Illusions of Grandeur]" proposed Spectral Farce spell weaponizing this. It makes things in the affected area to be perceived as less believable, whether they are real or not. Of course, in this case Illusion/Phantasm magic aura actually ''helps'' the effect if detected. The whole point is that a harmless spell becomes ridiculously lethal once the victims disregard as "fake and tacky" something like a swooping dragon—or even a badly disguised trap.

{{quote|The ''Combat & Tactics'' book is a compromise that adds some detail to combat -- not to make it more ''realistic'', but to make combat more ''believable''.}}

** Of course, [[Running the Asylum]] gradually made it a moot point, what with Bear Lore et al.

 

* The Blood Elf male models in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' are perhaps the most realistically proportioned models in the entire game. Almost everyone's thoughts on the model for the Blood Elf Males? That they look very scrawny. (Females are obviously intended to be this way, they look like [[Survivor|Courtney Yates during China]].) Well of course humans are gonna look ultra-thin when you put them next to the bulky Orcs and Draenei and the chunky Tauren...

* A very common gripe among some ''[[EVE Online]]'' players is that the game's colourful background nebulae are massively over the top because the sky should just be black with twinkly bits, right? In reality, space is full of all sorts of spectacular features, it's just that these are too dimly lit for the human eye to see unaided, especially if you live in an urbanized area with lots of light pollution.

* ''[[Pokémon]]'''s May, Dawn, and to a certain extent Misty (even though the last one is actually flat-chested, something explicitly stated on the show) are often accused of being unrealistically "well-developed" for a 10-year-old. In reality, puberty for young girls has gotten much lower in recent generations because girls are fatter than they used to be (a girl needs a certain amount of body fat before she can begin puberty). Thus the average age for puberty to start in girls is actually at nine and ten years old. Not surprisingly, this shocks people in ''real life'' as well.

** On a completely different tangent is Brock's ethnicity. Most Americans think that he is Latino or Black or so on. Turns out that it's really not that uncommon for Asian people to get that dark.

** Lest we not forget, the world's youngest recorded mother was ''[http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/medina.asp five years old]'' well before such chemical exposures were likely to have happened; individual differences in this regard are, and have always been, huge. And in any case, minor breast growth can happen even before the puberty kicks in with full force.

** It's also not uncommon for precocious puberty to be a temporary thing, environmentally or otherwise, such as in an Italian school in the 1970s where boys and girls started [http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2879%2990304-0/abstract growing breasts]—believed to be from exposure to contaminated beef or poultry. The effects disappeared within 8 months.

** In the same vein, auto glass (specifically the front and rear windshield) is specifically designed NOT to shatter in the case of a crash. The side windows are a little different, as evidenced by many photos of carjackings where the perp smashed the drivers window.

*** You can smash almost any car window with a sharp point and some leverage. The same window may remain intact if you simply throw a brick at it, however. They are made of safety glass designed to shatter without sharp edges when a strong enough pressure is applied to a single point.

** On that note, in the first of the Ace Attorney games, the Steel Samurai case is though by many people as being completely ridiculous and impossible to do in real life... In actual fact, [[Word of God]] has said that this case was based on a similar case that happened at a Japanese filming studio in which the actor who portrayed the villain on a show was killed by the actor who played the hero on said show. In the actual real life event, the case linked back to an accident from the past involving an impaling just like in the game and also a grade schooler did testify under the impression that the murder he saw was a staged fight. As well as this the real life victim did steal the hero costume to kill someone who he wanted to get revenge on. Believe or not, it's true...

* On the forums of the ''America's Army'' game, a game created by the U.S. Army, people often complain that certain aspects about the game are less realistic than other games. The actual case is inevitably that ''America's Army'' is the first game to get that particular aspect right and the people aren't used to that. Common examples of what uninformed posters complain about are what weapons the Army uses (specifically the lack of [[Good Guns, Bad Guns|expected weapons]]), the slow speed of the reloading animations, the [[Heroic RROD|dramatic stun effects]] of flashbangs, the frequency of weapon jams, the slow movement and gameplay speed, the lack of some [[Guns Akimbo|ridiculous practices]], and other things commonly misrepresented by other games. You know a media-caused misconception is ingrained firmly when people [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All|think they understand]] something about combat better than the actual Army.

* In a humorous example in the second ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' game, a huge Luigi fan asks Mario to introduce her to her idol. In order to complete this quest, you must wear the L badge, which dresses Mario in Luigi's garb. When you speak to her, she's estatic, until the ''real'' Luigi shows... and is immediately chastised by the girl for being an imposter.

* The developer commentary to ''[[Portal 2]]'' reveals that an important detail of the [[Final Boss]] fight very nearly fell victim to this. {{spoiler|Playtesters expected portals fired by the Handheld Portal Device to appear instantly and were confused when an obvious [[Chekhov's Gun]] failed to go off as expected due to [[Shown Their Work|speed-of-light lag]]. After toying with ignoring the speed of light, Valve's final solution was to constrain the player's view so they cannot easily look away from the intended target, and once the final shot is fired, to lock the game into cutscene mode. It works perfectly.}}

* ''[[Bully (video game)|Bully]]'' actually ''does'' have some events like what goes on in the game happen in real life. But don't worry, in [[Real Life]], if ''half'' of the stuff that goes on in Bullworth happened in one year, it'd get closed down by the end... probably before.

* Some criticisms of ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' towards the [[Lizard Folk|Argonians]] was that they walk on plantigrade feet (human feet). In Morrowind, they walked on digitigrade legs, and others claimed this was more realistic. Funny thing... in [[Real Life]], Reptiles are plantigrade, so technically, the ''Morrowind'' argonians were the ''most'' unrealistic. Now, as for the Khajiits, based off of felines who ''don't'' walk on plantigrade feet...

* In ''[[Dead Island]]'', the Australian character Purna is voiced by an Australian actress, Peta Johnson. Despite this, one of the most frequent criticisms of Johnson's performance is that her accent sounds fake.

* Most gamers playing ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword]]'' don't know that the design of the goofy-looking [http://www.zeldawiki.org/Loftwing Loftwings] the citizens of Skyloft ride on are based on real (though smaller but still quite large) birds called [[wikipedia:Shoebill|Shoebill storks]], native to Sudan.

* Racing games with licenced cars very often feature stereotypical handling and performance. Whenever a Porsche shows up in a racing game you can bet it will oversteer and be hard to control, even though you are driving a modern Porsche with four wheel drive and 45-55 weight balance and not a '76 Turbo. The Boxster and Cayman will be very light and have a low top speed because they kind of look like something Lotus would make, even though the only reason the real life Cayman does not outperform the equivalent 911 is because its [[Executive Meddling|drivetrain was intentionally downgraded]] and a tuned Cayman should blow the doors off a comparable 911. Lotus itself always ends up providing the slowest car with the best acceleration and handling, even if said car is the Esprit V8 which is pretty much a mid engined muscle car in real life. The perennial Aston Martin in ''[[Need for Speed]]'' always handles like a boat, even the [[DBR 9]] version which is a race spec build and should handle like any other [[GT 1]] formula sportscar. Same goes for the BMW [[M 3 R]] and for the same reason. The Nissan GTR is often represented as a drift car with a low top speed, probably because it looks like an upgraded Skyline. And whenever you see a modern four door car in the lineup, usually the Audi [[RS 4]] or a Maserati, it will have the handling and ramming power of a semi.

 

* [[Invoked Trope|Invoked]] in ''[[Girl Genius]]'' by Master Payne's Circus of Adventure, whose crew explicitly avoids everything that looks ''too'' realistic: most notably, for a talking cat, they use a man in a cat costume rather than Krosp.

** Much like with [[Dawson Casting]], there is also the issue that real cats, talking or not, are proverbially difficult to direct.

{{quote|'''Dustin''': Well, to be fair, there can't be that many Jamaican voice actors in the business... they probably just hire black actors who can sound Jamaican.

'''Mark''': Hey, you know where Blizzard could have found a LOT of guys who can do a perfect Jamaican Patois accent, and could use the work? }}

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' amorphs [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-05-21 had a problem] because repeating what Sergeant Schlock does on the TV is impossible and no one is impressed by ''their'' tricks now. Schlock can't either—so he [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-05-23 considers] solving it in [[Comedic Sociopathy|his usual style]]:

{{quote|'''Schlock''': The TV-me is putting me-me out of a job. [...] Maybe we can kill another TV network. Is there still money in that?}}

 

* Almost any photography blog (or any blog where someone puts up scenic photos in general) will immediately attract a flood of commenters complaining that the image is 'obviously Photoshopped'. Of course, a talented photographer is perfectly capable of capturing an impressive shot without resorting to Photoshop software to touch it up, but try telling them that. In many cases, comments of these nature indicate that the commenter is either a [[Troll]] just trying to stir up trouble or just unfamiliar with professional grade SLR cameras. Point-and-shoot cameras have about as much in common with these SLRs as, say, a butter knife has with a chainsaw. Many effects you can get with an expensive manually controlled camera really are impossible with a point-and-shoot. Moreover, many commenters are unaware that effects have [[Older Than They Think|long]] been added to traditional film photos in the development process.

* [http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html This] "review" of the History Channel's "World War II Show" provides a hilarious example. The author denounces the show for being a [[Cliché Storm]] full of lazy writing, and calls out The Bomb for being an [[Ass Pull]] with no [[Foreshadowing]], which then became [[Forgotten Phlebotinum]] as the writers never used it again despite the numerous subsequent wars.

* As modern vehicles have been fitted with increasing levels of electronic driving aids the sorts of tyre squealing, rubber burning, back end sliding maneuvers typically seen in chase scenes are no longer possible without intentionally disabling such features first. When such features are on vehicles will maintain almost full traction no matter what sort of craziness the driver attempts to do. The result is not only vehicle behavior that looks completely alien, but also one that is quite dull to watch.

 

* Used in an episode of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]''. When he needs to get an operation from a very shifty doctor in order to get Helper's head out of his chest, Brock pulls the pin on a grenade, and places the thing in Helper's mouth, with the implication being that Helper will let go of the lever if the doc tries anything funny while Brock's under.

* Parodied in ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'', where a Hollywoodesque special effects team paints a horse's skin in a cow pattern, because "real cows don't look like cows on-screen." When asked how they would make something look like a ''horse'' on-screen, they suggest stringing a bunch of cats together.

* A case of skin colour confusion, in ''[[The Proud Family]]'', Lacieniga is obviously hispanic, and takes after her mother. (Who's dark-skinned.) Felix also obviously looks pretty hispanic as well (but more light-skinned) but his father, Papi could pass for "White". There was actually a bit of debate where people assumed that Felix's mother was hispanic that he's only half hispanic. In actuality, it is fully possible for Papi to be hispanic yet could still pass for "white".

 

* Jess Harnell was once told that his [[Animaniacs|Wakko Warner]] impression "[[Your Costume Needs Work|Didn't sound anything like him!]]" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY_sl1R3KJQ&feature=related Ditto for Kevin Clash and Elmo].

* An audience member at a late showing of ''[[Rocky Horror Picture Show]]'' was asked to leave the theater for being a [[Tim Curry]] impersonator. The member? [[Tim Curry]].

** Amusingly, given the limitations of 1960s technology it would have been ''more'' expensive to design and build a vacuum-sealed sound stage and sets capable of filming a mock-up of the entire Moon landing sequence in vacuum than it actually cost to design and build the Apollo spacecraft.

* [[John Barrowman]], who is openly gay, tried out for the role of Will from ''[[Will and Grace]]''. According to the producers, ''[http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/interviews/article.html?in_article_id=23649&in_page_id=11 he wasn't gay enough]''. They then proceeded to hire Eric McCormack, who is straight.

* About fifteen years ago, there was a foiled bank robbery where one of the robbers had a submachine gun, and fired a couple bursts at the guards, with video shown on the news. There were accusations that the video was faked because none of the guards were hit, let alone shredded to pieces as they would have expected. This objection eventually was raised as the story developed, with a clip of a gun expert basically explaining that submachine guns aren't known for their fantastic accuracy, especially when you're ''holding it wrong'', not even really trying to aim or keep it under control.

** ''[[The Dark Tower]]: The Drawing of the Three''. Near the end of the first segment, a [[Mook]] opens fire with an M-16 assault rifle, which [[I Call It Vera|he calls]] "The Wonderful [[Rambo]] Machine". He promptly cuts one of his own allies in half. The narrative then pauses to point out that with a weapon like the M-16, [[More Dakka]] will send you off target after about four or five shots. It describes the look of amazement on Eddie's face as the bullets miss him by a mile. The idiot in question is screaming "I got him!", "unable to distinguish between the script in his head and reality" when he is shot.

*** This underlines why rifles like the M-16 have a selective fire option to limit bursts to three rounds and keep the gun 'under control' - professional soldiers don't empty magazines in a 'spray and pray' fashion.

* A bizarre [[Real Life]] example: [http://flagspot.net/flags/vxt-dv-o.html#opticalproportions optical proportions], intentionally unbalancing the design of a flag to account for the distortion caused when the flag is flying in the wind.

** Ancient Greco-Roman columns were built with a bulge in the middle to make them look straight from far away. The bases of large Greco-Roman buildings were likewise built ever-so-slightly co/ncave, on a 3+ mile radius of curvature, so as to appear flat (a genuinely flat surface would appear to bow outward slightly).

* As destructive as atomic bombs are, many people survived the Hiroshima bombing in 1945. Their homes destroyed, the survivors vacated the area to live with relatives, including several who moved to Nagasaki. This means a few dozen Japanese residents, such as [[wikipedia:Tsutomu Yamaguchi|Tsutomu Yamaguchi]], survived not one, but two atomic bombings.

* In ''Animals Make Us Human'', animal-husbandry scientist Temple Grandin relates how her research on the stress-free collection of blood samples from wild antelope had to be published under another title, because no one was willing to acknowledge that traditional methods of capturing wildlife ''were'' stressful. Her own data proved otherwise, as levels of stress hormones in antelopes tested using her methods were far lower than the alleged "baseline" levels in animals that'd been netted and held down.

** This is actually done right in ''[[Doonesbury]]'', though played for laughs. BD and Mike to on a vacation and at one point visit a pool. All we're shown is BD and a girl hanging around the side of the pool, looking into the water (presumably at Mike), commenting on how he's got such great stamina to hold his breath underwater for so long. In the last panel, we see Mike thinking "Actually, what I'm doing is drowning".

** According to the CDC, in 10% of cases where a child dies from drowning, an adult is not just present but watching the child drown, having no idea that that's what's happening.

* Actual freshly-severed heads tend to take on a latex-like appearance (thanks to blood drain and post-mortem bloating) that makes them look remarkably like Hollywood-style fake heads.

** How do you know that....

** Not to mention that the body itself doesn't have to be present for the DNA test. A blood and/or tissue sample is quite enough.

** If a movie had used the account of how Osama went down as a plot point, some internet nerds surely would have complained. "Oh, let me get this straight, a super secret squad of soldiers came in over international borders and through a residential area, next to a military installation, in a helicopter, and got in without arising suspicion? What did they have, like a STEALTH HELICOPTER or something?Of course, in reality, military helicopters flying about weren't exactly common in the area to begin with, and as the famous tweets reveal, it ''was'' noticed.

** Michaele and Tareq Salahi also did this back in 2009 [[wikipedia:2009 White House gatecrash incident|at a White House dinner party.]]

* The Egyptian pyramids as we see them today (and as are depicted in historical works) are as brown and worn out as the dunes that surround them. However, during history, they were gleaming white due to an outer layer of heavily polished limestone (and topped off with a gold cap). Thousands of years of wear and tear from sandstorms and attackers (particularly medieval sultans pilfering the precut blocks to build Cairo, which is nearby) revealed the brown core underneath. ''[[The Mummy Trilogy|The Mummy 1999]]'' was one of the few pieces of work to get this right.

** To be fair, ''maybe'' you could argue that Cleopatra is tanned from living in Egypt, but an ethnic Egyptian is pretty easily distinguished from an ethnic balkan who is tanned.

* You know how whenever you see an eagle in the movies or on TV, they make a ''very'' loud high-pitched noise? Well you're more likely to hear a Red-Tailed Hawk's screech, as an eagle's vocalisations are more along the lines of chirping, although they can ''certainly'' be quite loud.

* Apparently, a lot of people think narwhals are mythical and that wolverines are just some fancy title for a certain ''[[X-Men]]'' character. Best illustrated by [http://www.2birds1blog.com/2009/12/what-fuckity-fuck-fuck.html this].

** In addition a lot of commentators refused to believe the sounds made by [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y the Australian lyrebird] (a bird known for mimicking practically any sound, including constructing equipment such as chainsaws) were real.

** Another 9/11 conspiracy theory is that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, because there was no readily identifiable plane wreckage at the crash site. Two things they're overlooking: first off, due to weight limitations airplanes are some of the flimsiest objects known to modern industry. The average airplane is built just sturdy enough to not fall apart under its own weight or the stresses that can be reasonably expected during flight conditions or normal turbulence, and not an ounce sturdier. Second, the Pentagon is not a normal building—it's a steel-reinforced concrete fortification that was designed and built to withstand bombardment from 8-inch naval guns. (And the part of the Pentagon that was struck is even sturdier than the rest—it was given additional reinforcement in the 90s after the Oklahoma City bombing against the possibility of truck bombs being parked on the road outside, because that's the side of the building the Secretary of Defense's office is located on). Ramming an airplane into this kind of obstruction at 500+ knots is going to leave you with a pile of shredded aluminum dust and not much else, and that's exactly what happened on 9/11.

* Many from the West who see portrayals (or even actual recordings) of Soviet people invoking God's name or the like as expletives or in prayer often call it out as unrealistic, mostly because the USSR has always been said to be anti-religious to the point of suppressing any and all things even remotely related to religion. The reality was far more complex. Active relgious practice was allowed in the Soviet Union, and while suppression or support tended to vary depending on the current leadership and sociopolitical atmosphere, there was never any real attempt to completely eradicate it. "Opium of the people" or not, centuries of influence from the Russian Orthodox Church<ref>and to varying degrees, other Christian sects, as well as Buddhism and Islam in the Asian parts of the USSR</ref> isn't going to disappear just like that.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]

[[Category:Meta Concepts]]

[[Category:Omnipresent Tropes]]