The Coconut Effect: Difference between revisions
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See also [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], [[Audible Sharpness]], [[Mickey Mousing]], [[Radio Voice]], [[Vinyl Shatters]], [[Beeping Computers]], [[V8 Engine Noises]] and the semi-related [[Extreme Graphical Representation]]. Related in concept is [[The CSI Effect]] and [[Eagleland Osmosis]]. Nothing to do with [[Coconut Superpowers]] (except insofar as both relate to ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]''). Thankfully, this won't be [[Television Is Trying to Kill Us|causing any real-world casualties]]. We hope. Compare [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]] and [[Small Reference Pools]]. Also see [[Necessary Weasel]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Media in General / Common Tropes ==
* One of the most recent and peculiar instances of The Coconut Effect is the addition of [[Lens Flare]] to [[Post Processing Video Effects|computer-generated scenes]]. [[Lens Flare]] is a ''flaw'' resulting from the physical properties of the camera lens, but it is so ingrained in the public consciousness that its absence makes a scene look "fake;" it may be that adding it adds to the audience's [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]], by implying that the scene was actually shot by a camera (perhaps via the [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]).
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** In the making of ''[[WALL-E]]'', the Pixar animators brought in renowned cinematographer Roger Deakins to demonstrate real-world lighting and camera techniques, using real cameras, lenses and lights, which they then replicated digitally in the film. He was highly amused they wanted to duplicate effects that technicians and equipment makers have been trying since the advent of film to eliminate.
** There's been a jarring trend for makers of [[3D Movie]]s to add in lens flare and ''then'' apply 3D effects to it. This makes ''lens flare'' come out of the screen towards you.
* The stroboscopic effect often seen on spoked wheels, fans, helicopter blades, etc. is another example of a camera artifact which is so expected by audiences that it's left in, even though there ''are'' cameras and shutter mechanisms available which would eliminate it. Although there are situations where stroboscopic effects are visible to the naked eye, commonly observered under street lights (50 or 60 hertz flicker), and sometimes even in broad daylight (PNAS article [https://web.archive.org/web/20141014050629/http://www.pnas.org/content/93/8/3693.abstract here]).
* Morse code is always received as through a WWII-era radio: bee-beep-beep-bee-bee-beep.
* Use of defibrillators (those machines that deliver a short pulse of electric current via two paddles when someone has one of a number of heart condition emergencies) always causes the recipient to flex up from the bed. And never in real life. It looks slightly less dramatic in real life, if it weren't for, erm, it being in real life.
** When using the defibrillator, the defibs must always charge with an audible, high pitch sound. And the defib paddles are always rubbed against one-another when charging. When discharged, the defibs also make a loud SHUNK. Let's not forget that the person using them always says "CLEAR!!"
:"Clear!" is sort of [[Truth in Television]]. However, in reality, the users will say, "Clear the patient," and then check to see if all persons are no longer touching the patient. A single dramatic "Clear!" followed by no safety check and a zap is pure Hollywood.▼
▲"Clear!" is sort of [[Truth in Television]]. However, in reality, the users will say, "Clear the patient," and then check to see if all persons are no longer touching the patient. A single dramatic "Clear!" followed by no safety check and a zap is pure Hollywood.
** In addition to this, a defibrillator is unable to revive a "flatlining" (asystolic) patient, which runs contrary to their depiction in medical dramas. The heart's electrical system controls the muscles of the heart. A defibrillator is designed to "reset" the heart's own electrical system when it's erratic and causing the muscles to contract wildly (fibrillation, as in ''defibrillator''). If the muscles of the heart are no longer responding to the electrical system (for example, Pulseless Electrical Activity), or if the electrical system is down (asystole), there's nothing to be gained by shocking the patient.
* [[Man in a Kilt|Kilts]] in Scotland. The pleated kilt as we know it today was invented in the 18th century; prior to that there was the greatkilt, which was essentially a big blanket (which may or may not have been tartan) wrapped round the waist and pinned at the shoulder. This probably dates from the 16th century. It was ''illegal'' for Highlanders to wear a kilt between 1746 and 1782 - it was seen as a rebel military uniform. And modern "Highland dress" was invented in the lowlands in the 19th century. The upshot of all this is that Scotsmen in kilts in nearly ''every'' historical period tend to be wrong, unless it's [[The Present Day]] and they're at a wedding.
** It does appear that ''[[Highlander]]'' got this fairly right, at least in the series flashbacks. Duncan and
* 19th century clothes are usually depicted in dull, dirty-looking colors such as cream or dusty rose (otherwise known as antique pink). Bright colors were in fact both available and fashionable. This is most likely because people are used to seeing clothes in museums, where the dyes have faded and dulled over time.
** Aniline dyes had just been developed, and fashion called for color combinations most modern people would describe as clashing - like bright yellow and mauve.
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** ''[[The Egyptian]]'' showed this in the opening scenes; first, what the Pyramids and Sphinx are like now; then a dramatic cut (with musical flourish) to what they looked like when new and shiny.
** Interestingly, a lot of video games set in Ancient Egypt avert this. Whether that's because the developers ''did'' do their research or because they realized that normal people don't like to stare at [[Real Is Brown|variations of beige]] for hours on end is another question. One intro movie even includes the golden pyramid tips, though in-game, the pyramids are only shiny, shiny white.
** The Sphinx is an even bigger example of this, about 400 years after it was built the body, made of
** Arabian-style music wasn't present during Ancient Egypt times, yet it is constantly used as a background music when Egypt is depicted. At the moment, only the instruments played back then are known, but none of the actual music scriptures have been found.
* For that matter, most anything sufficiently old will tend to be a bit drab. Things set in the early part of the 20th century will tend toward grays, while the latter half of the 19th tends to favor browns. While this is sometimes intentional to evoke the feel of a black and white film or sepia photographic plate, it just as often comes more from the fact that the set and costume designers were working from colorless references. In the middle ages, houses, clothes, and churches were uniformly brown, and in colonial America, everyone had white hair.▼
** Brick churches usually were reddish-brown as they generally weren't plastered (at least in Western and Central Europe) but townhouses were painted in vivid colours or at least covered with white lime. Only shabby houses of the poor people were devoid of such decoration. In several Polish and German cities inhabitants were criticising the idea of painting Rennaissance-era townhouses with yellow, pink or green paint if they were painted that way in the sixteenth century (and actual colours were determined by archeologists).▼
* Thunderclaps are usually heard at the same time as lightning, even though we all know light travels faster than sound.
** Amusingly, in ''[[The Sound of Music]]'', [[Julie Andrews|Maria]] tries to comfort the children during a lightning storm by explaining that "the lightning says something to the thunder and the thunder answers back". Of course, the thunder and lightning in the film happen at once, so apparently Lightning and Thunder are talking over each other.
** "[[Poltergeist]]" is one movie where lightning flashes silently, followed by the rumble of thunder several seconds afterwards, but this is actually a plot point.
▲* For that matter, most anything sufficiently old will tend to be a bit drab. Things set in the early part of the 20th century will tend toward grays, while the latter half of the 19th tends to favor browns. While this is sometimes intentional to evoke the feel of a black and white film or sepia photographic plate, it just as often comes more from the fact that the set and costume designers were working from colorless references. In the middle ages, houses, clothes, and churches were uniformly brown, and in colonial America, everyone had white hair.
▲** Brick churches usually were reddish-brown as they generally weren't plastered (at least in Western and Central Europe) but townhouses were painted in vivid colours or at least covered with white lime. Only shabby houses of the poor people were devoid of such decoration. In several Polish and German cities inhabitants were criticising the idea of painting Rennaissance-era townhouses with yellow, pink or green paint if they were painted that way in the sixteenth century (and actual colours were determined by archeologists).
* Swords tend to make [[Audible Sharpness|a metal-on-metal scraping sound]] when drawn, no matter what the scabbards are made of. The first metal scabbards which really do make this sound come from the late 19th century. Scabbards were of leather and wood before that.
** In the ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' movies swords make a steel-against-steel sound when drawn from leather scabbards. It is alleged that they originally intended to use more realistic sounds, but in a textbook example of the Coconut Effect decided that it sounded "wrong" on film.
** The visual commentary from ''[[Kingdom of Heaven]]'' states that the metal-on-metal sound is just for dramatic effect; if a scabbard were designed in a way that would produce that sound would likely end up ruining the blade's cutting edge.
** In his Little Movie Glossary, [[Roger Ebert]] describes the application of this cliche to slasher movies as "The [[Alice in Wonderland|Snicker-Snack]] Effect":
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* Anyone carrying a weapon that has full-auto capability will always shoot on the auto setting. They will also fire [[Bottomless Magazines|many more rounds than the weapon is capable of holding.]] In reality most police or military-trained operatives are trained to use their weapons on single shot setting. Firing all out on full auto is inaccurate, in addition to emptying the magazines rather quickly. Fully automatic fire is usually used for suppressive fire ''i.e.'' throwing a lot of bullets at an enemy position to discourage return fire.
* The view through a pair of binoculars is usually [[Binocular Shot|depicted as two intersecting circles]], whereas the view through a true set of binoculars is one circle, if they have been adjusted properly for the user. This is parodied in the second ''[[Hot Shots]]'' movie, where they are revealed to be looking through a black sheet of construction paper with two intersecting circles cut in it.
* Even in [[Real Life]], calling a number on a cell phone invariably results in a rapid-fire "dialing" sound effect, despite the fact that no cell phone actually uses touch-tones to dial numbers. This is most noticeable in the first half of the
** Ironically, calling the touch-tone sound "dialing" reflects an even older convention, harking to back when phones had actual dials instead of buttons. Touch tone phones have been around since the 1960s, yet we still call it "dialing" the phone.
** Additionally, unless there's a joke or other reason to focus on it, a cell phone will make an electronic trilling noise that almost no real phone owner uses anymore.
** ''[[Xkcd]]'': When someone calls my phone, it makes a goddamn ''[http://xkcd.com/479/ ringing sound]''.
** How many [[Real Life]] cells phones actually have a dial tone?
*** A model marketed almost exclusively to senior citizens
** DTMF tones can be optionally set by the user so that the the phone makes them when pressing the number keys when not in a call (otherwise, the phone can be set to just make simple beeps or clicks during these presses, or for silent mode, no sound at all), but they will always be heard in the earpiece when pressing the keys during a call (e.g. during automated/prompted calls, where the cellphone's network [not the phone itself] actually generates the touch-tones for the other party to receive and decode).
* When a character goes to switch a TV set or radio on or off (or turn the volume up or down, etc.), the actor will invariably mime the turning of a "knob" on the electronic appliance in question, even if it's a modern one without anything resembling an actual knob. In theater the big hand gestures are easier for the techs to see and adjust stage lights on cue.
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** Most two-handed swords weighed closer to 6-8 pounds, slightly less than a modern assault rifle (8-10 pounds, loaded).
** So much for some modern fan writers' assertion (in an apparent overcompensation to avoid accusations of [[Mary Sue]]) that ''women are not physically capable of handling or wearing swords''.
** 12-15-pounders existed too. Those are mostly parade variants, however. A giant of a man standing around 6'6 and up would probably use them however, as the weight and balance would feel similar to their smaller-of-stature trainer's.
* [[Noisy Nature|Frogs, save for one species, do not go "Ribbit."]] Unfortunately, that one species lives in Hollywood, so movie frogs tend to make that noise, and as a result we all think frogs ribbit, and even tell our children that.
** Real frogs make a wide variety of sounds, depending on species, including barking, croaking, and chirping.
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** At least one documentary show had a scene of frogs doing mating calls at night. Sounds included chirps, whistles, a whimper, and something akin to a rapid fire toy laser gun.
* For all gunplay based mistakes, please see this [http://theoutfitcollective.blogspot.com/2007/04/egregious-gunplay.html link]. For example, people do not fly backwards when shot in real life.
** As pointed out by the [[MythBusters]], Newtonian physics [[Sarcasm Mode|surprisingly]] applies to firing a gun.
* The ubiquitous "ping" sound heard everywhere that submarines are concerned. It's actually a ''very'' specific sound: a signal pulse of the ASDIC—an early [[World War Two|WWII]] British sonar, widely used by all Allied navies in the war. It was so ubiquitous that it got thoroughly associated with every thing submarine, so it even came to be used where German submarines were involved, and their sonar pulses sounded nothing like that.
* Real bald eagles do not actually make the long, majestic "keer" noise they always make in films. That sound is actually [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33DWqRyAAUw the call of a Red-Tailed Hawk], but because Bald Eagles and some other birds of prey have really lame and silly sounding calls in real life, their calls are usually replaced with the keer to make them sound "better". And of course, this has become so ubiquitous that now if one were to use the right sound, audiences would complain. This is only untrue in the case of nature documentaries.
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** Mountain lions are a victim of this all too often as well. Unlike some of their cousins, the cougar does not roar; instead it shrieks or lets out a growl much like a house cat would, albeit much louder and with a deeper tone. In some movies however, cougars roar like lions but a few notes higher on the octave scale. The ''mountain lion'' name is misleading - bear in mind the [[I Have Many Names|cougar/puma/mountain lion/etc/etc]] is a big small cat not a small big one ... i.e. it is not a slimmed-down version of the true big cats but in fact is the largest of the small cats, with vocalisations to match.
* From vampire stakings to target-sheets at firing ranges, countless film and television images depict the heart as being located in the upper left quadrant of the chest cavity. It's actually in the ''center'' of the chest, and much lower, about where the sensation of acid reflux is felt. (Hence, the term "heartburn" ... which is also anatomically inaccurate.)
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20091220055620/http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/the-sizzling-sound-of-music.html People are so used to the compression artifacts of MP3s that they prefer them to lossless codecs]. Reminds of an [http://xkcd.com/598/ xkcd strip].
** Ultimately, ''any'' recorded media will, by definition, be compromised by the recording and playback equipment used. Different mics have different properties, speakers vary wildly in tone, the media itself will always have an effect, even "lossless." When people say they prefer to hear a "realistic" sound quality, they really mean a quality that sounds pleasing to their ears, hence people who like the "warmth" of vinyl are simply preferring the artifacts of that form.
* The Uzi, vz. 61, MAC-10, and many other submachine guns are shown so rarely with their stocks extended or unfolded in any medium that most people truly believe they're actually pistols and that the folded or collapsed stocks are some deranged-looking part of the working mechanisms. The SPAS-12 and Striker-12 (to a lesser extent) also suffer from it. All folding stocks in movies in general tend to get hit with it but the aforementioned ones pretty much never see any exceptions to this rule, causing the issue.
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** The distinctive "ping" sound of M1 Garands make is very soft compared to the round firing. You're more likely to hear it because the clip hit something hard.
* Here are few things about fruit that you may seem wrong if they aren't portrayed wrong:
** Coconuts. The brown, furry part we're used to seeing is actually the "stone" of a mature coconut. Coconuts themselves are [https://web.archive.org/web/20111112135953/http://img.alibaba.com/photo/104498637/Young_Green_Coconut.jpg very different-looking].
** ''[[Super Mario Galaxy]]'' and ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]'', on the other hand, actually both got this right. There's even a boss where you're told to hit coconuts back at him. This trope is so ingrained that some players will try to hit the [[Violation of Common Sense|big brown rocks that are clearly on fire]] instead of the harmless green things.
*** Likewise with ''[[Super Mario Sunshine]]''.
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* While it's mostly now gone away, for years printers in movies and TV would make the loud sound of a dot matrix printer, even when an obvious laser printer was being used.
* Ninjas do not dress up in all black from head to toe. Instead the best disguise for a ninja is to look like the everyman from farmers to monks. The trope started from kabuki by stage hands dressed in all black. These stage hands are suppose to be invisible so the audience are suppose to pretend they don't exist. When a character is killed by a ninja, a stage hand does it to show that the character has been killed out of nowhere for dramatic effect. In modern times, the only way you can recognize a ninja is from this costume.
* The use of a crosshair on a scope. Early scopes had crosshairs made of wire or fiber such as hair (hence the name cross hair), which only allowed crosshairs and a few variants. Modern optics use reticule that are etched into the glass and can be almost any shape with high end optics actually having multiple markings for different range. Despite this, only video games will show a reticule more complex than a crosshair, no matter how expensive a rifle the assassin is supposedly using, and there they will rarely actually ''do'' anything due to [[Hit Scan|few games modeling bullet drop correctly]].
== Anime and Manga ==
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** ''Airplane 2'' has a similar effect, but on a space shuttle.
* ''[[Cowboys and Aliens]]'' featured incredibly overdone punch sounds, similar to those in ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' (this may have been intentional due to the presence of Harrison Ford in the movie). Jake's punches seemed to be even louder and more exaggerated than other characters.
* ''[[Waterloo]]'' gets most of its details reasonably correct. However the artillery looks like it was all explosive shot, as if it was modern artillery. The majority should have been roundshot, which toward the end of its flight path would have bounced around like a particularly deadly basketball.
== Literature ==
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* [[Crate Expectations]] has become a sort of coconut effect. Almost every game that involves ammo (and many that don't) have crates that must be broken to get ammo. [[Valve]], for example, found this out during playtesting of [[Half Life]]. They attempted to avoid including crates, but so many people wanted something to use the crowbar on and get ammo from that they eventually had to give in.
* [[Exploding Barrels]] could easily be classified as this. By now, most people realize that shooting a barrel won't actually cause it to explode, but for a game to not have explosives that can be triggered by shooting them would be just odd to the gaming audience.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130221190007/http://www.peoplecanfly.com/blog/2011/01/we-had-to-use-red-barrels/ People Can Fly] found that just trying to change the ubiquitous colour (red) of the exploding barrels to green for ''[[Bulletstorm]]'' didn't work right for the players.
* Every [[Platform Game]] since ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]'' has had a special sound effect for when the hero jumps, except for some of the ''[[Metroid]]'' games (but the [[Double Jump]] made a woosh noise to indicate the upgrade activating). Then again, [[Jump Physics]] in platformers is generally not realistic.
** This even affects the 'realistic' platformers as seen in the SNES' heyday. Climbing up 3 straight-jump-up ledges in a row makes it sound like the hero of say, Flashback, is attempting to drop a log cabin in an outhouse. The boingy springy sound gets replaced with 'old man toilet grunts.'
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** The Blackberry Storm tried to remedy this by making the entire screen a button. Needless to say, the phone didn't really take off.
** Nokia addressed this by using the vibrator to gently shake the phone when a "button" is touched.
*** This is an option on many Android on-screen keyboards, including many by Samsung.
** Talk to any serious typist and you'll find just how important physical and auditory feedback is... it's why some people will shell out $70–$100 for Model M keyboards.
** In fact, The Coconut Effect is an ''essential'' component of user-interface design. People (there are ''extremely'' rare exceptions) get frustrated when devices don't behave the way they expect them to, which includes fake buttons clicking.
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** [[Mass Effect]] addresses this by stating that a man typing on a holographic keyboard usually wears gloves which provide feedback. A real hacker implants chips in his fingers.
** The Wii remote had an interesting method to simulate the "feel" of buttons: every time your cursor passes over a button, the controller makes a very slight vibration.
*** A similar effect is provided by Oculus controllers.
** The [[ZX Spectrum]]'s command-line editor played a short click through the speaker every time a non-shift key was pressed. The duration of the 'pip' could be changed.
* Many low-end digital cameras attempt to simulate the old-fashioned shutter click when taking a picture - some even have inbuilt mechanical contraptions specifically to that effect.
** Consumer digital cameras still ''have'' an old-fashioned shutter click, what with them having shutters, although the noise is practically inaudible in comparison to a $5 disposable camera. The sound they're emulating is more like the action of the reflex mirror in an SLR camera, with a hint of motor-driven film feeding, which is the stereotypical "taking a photograph" sound.
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*** In the case of Nikon SLR cameras, it's not the shutter you're hearing but the mirror flipping up so that light can pass from the lens to the photocell.
* When the U.S. Air Force began using the F-16 fighter jet in the 1970s, its control stick was designed to change the plane's direction entirely by detecting the force and direction of the pilot's hand, ''without'' the stick actually moving. Pilots hated the fixed-in-place stick, complaining the lack of feedback repeatedly caused them to over-rotate the jet; later F-16 models came with a revised stick with some "play" in it, to replicate the feel of a mechanical linkage - an example of the Coconut Effect's essential role in product design.
*
** The exception to this would be in a highway or other long road without stops, where
** The engine noise
** Also, some electric cars can hit 80 mph/130 km/h with ''entirely silent'' engines. So drivers who use engine noise as a makeshift tachometer are often unaware of how fast they're going without taking their eyes off the road to glance at the speedometer.
** When Trolleybuses (electric buses) came into use in the UK, they were often nicknamed "The Silent Service" due to their very low sound levels. Naturally, this, combined with their speed and performance (very good for such large vehicles back when horse power was still not entirely replaced) lead to a fair number of fatalities, and them being referred to as "The Silent Death".
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** Natural mint flavoring has no color, but consumers have come to expect mint-flavored foods to be colored green. Only gourmet mint foods will abstain from doing this, allowing consumers to feel proud that they don't need the coloring.
*** The exception is peppermint sweets, which are usually white.
*** In ice cream at least, part of the reason that they have mint green is because green is quite visible - if you notice, other than Pistachio, lime sherbert, or homebrew flavours (Such as lime ice cream), it's the only green ice cream flavour there. There have been a few [https://web.archive.org/web/20130916002758/http://notalwaysright.com/blurgh-is-right/54 customers] surprised by this, and if you ask around at an ice cream place that ''doesn't'' use food colouring, you'll probably hear a few stories about how a customer or new employee mistook the mint for Vanilla.
** Strawberry-flavored food is always colored pink.
** Most consumers expect raspberry flavoring to be red, but [[Reality Is Unrealistic|strains of dark blue raspberries]] exist, leading to some (often brightly) blue-colored raspberry flavors.
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** In the earliest remotes (like the one linked), the clicking sound wasn't just a resultant of a mechanical button being moved, it's how they sent the signal to the T.V. Each button flicked a different tine, setting it resonating (like a tuning fork), and the T.V. was able to detect this sound; different tones would trigger different functions. Naturally, there isn't a lot of bandwith there, so these early remote controls did little more than adjust the volume, power, and sometimes change the channels. It was only later that televisions began to be signalled electrically, first by wired remote and later wireless (via infrared or radio-frequency).
* Oddly, for years after the introduction of early B&W televisions, it was assumed by a significant number of people that dreaming in monochrome was the norm and dreaming in color was a rarity. If you could have asked someone from a time before the age of TV if they dreamed in black and white, they'd look at you funny like you just said the sky is green with pink polka dots.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20091012010849/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3353504/Black-and-white-TV-generation-have-monochrome-dreams.html This study] notes that before the advent of B&W TV, most people dreamt in color, but people who were exposed to only B&W TV during childhood are more likely to dream in B&W than people raised on color TV.
* Digital telephones have a clause in their governing standards that mandates the use of "[[wikipedia:Comfort noise|comfort noise]]", a soft hissing generated in the receiving end, in order to fake the atmospheric noise from normal land lines. The most often cited reason: in a normal analog telephone, a soft hissing means the line is working fine, whereas complete silence means the line is dead, and the audio data sent by digital phones is pretty much impervious to atmospheric noise and thus it must be added. Another reason is that while the silence is encoded as true silence, transmitted speech always contains some noise from the speaker's environment and speech encoding. If comfort noise was not added during silence, the end result would be a chopping background noise whenever the speaker says something.
** Similarly, Bell System engineers discovered long ago that feeding the speaker's voice back into the earpiece prevented users from shouting into their phones. This feature, called sidetone, actually had to be carefully calibrated; too much and users will speak too softly. Most cell phones are on the soft end of the extreme, which is why people on cell phones in public are often so obnoxious.
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