Movies are designed to entertain us. As such, they often take creative license with reality.
After all, reality can be less than cinematic.
And most audiences won't have the expertise to pick out the inaccuracies. But for those who do...
Reddit user BlackPhoenix1981 asked:
"What is something you saw in a movie and you totally called bullsh*t on because of your job?"
Gold
"50 gold bars into a gym bag and then carried by hand."
"I was a precious metals fabricator and I have dealt with a lotttt of gold - including casting "small" bullion bars. 1kg of gold is about the size of a bar of soap. So those big bars they're carrying around would have to be around 12 kg each."
"50 bars = 600 kg (1,320 lbs). Even just 10 bars would be 120 kg (264 lbs)."
~ Mercurial_Morals
* The iconic gold bars seen in movies—called "Good Delivery" bars—weigh around 400 troy ounces (depending on the purity of the gold) which is about 27.4 pounds or 12.4 kg.
Gloves
"Actors playing medical professionals taking off their rubber gloves and waving then around the same way they take off a pair of winter gloves."
"You only have to have sh*t covered gloves once before you peel those off a very specific way that means you don't get anything on your skin and you have them and anything that might be on them contained to prevent 'dripping'."
"And seeing a character with a rubber glove dangling from their mouth by a finger makes me feel ill now. Absent mindedly putting a rubber glove in your mouth is on par with absent mindedly holding toilet paper in your mouth while wiping your sh*t. You don't do it."
~ Diocletion-Jones
Costco
"In 'Stronger', Jake Gyllenhaal works in a Costco Meat dept. Costco generates a tremendous amount of trash, so they have dedicated trash chutes."
"He would not be walking it outside bag by bag into an open dumpster; seagulls would wreck that much food waste."
"He messes up how long rotisserie chickens are cooking so they burn, but the rest of the meat staff ignores the smoke while the warehouse is open with shoppers, waiting for him to turn off the oven."
"No meat dept would ignore smoke as that could lead to a fire & the building being evacuated, someone would turn it off then reprimand him."
~ HyraxAttack
Helicopters
"'Deepwater Horizon' is a terrific movie."
"But, there is a scene early in the movie where they are flying out to the rig on a helicopter. Two of the characters have a conversation in the helicopter."
"No. You wear double hearing protection, and even then, the racket is awful. You don’t talk to coworkers on a helicopter."
~ Tipitina62
Microphones
"Every movie where someone picks up a mic, and it immediately feeds back just because that character is nervous or the audience doesn't like them."
~ Captain_Chappie
"And it stops feeding back, although they are still in the exact same spot!"
~ BattledroidE
"Or worse, the mic is on a stand and it feeds back just walking up to it!"
~ Hilomh
Guns
"Guns are loud. Especially in enclosed spaces. Your ears are going to hurt. A lot."
~ Prize-Flamingo-336
Old Machinery
"In that 'Planet of the Apes' movie, where they just clean the debris out of the hydroelectric dam and crank a valve, and all the lights turn on in the city."
"I was watching with my GF, and I was like 'pfft wtf, I bet that dam isn't even black start capable', and she says, 'oh, the talking monkeys were OK, but this is where you draw the line?'"
~ Worried_Birthday_734
Ejection Seats
"Anything that involves someone ejecting from a military aircraft."
"I worked with ejection seats for over 20 years, and Hollywood has never, ever gotten it right."
~ ACES_II
"I'm a Navy pilot that has known a few people that have ejected. Some were drinking in the club that night. Some were completely jacked up."
"It all depends on body placement, and how close to the edge of the seats envelope you are."
~ LegiosForever
Poli
"Every single time a cop finds imported cocaine or heroin and dips their finger in to taste it."
"I used to search imports for drugs, and tasting an unknown powder is probably as stupid as you can get."
~ Evil-Penguin-718
Cars
"Any movie that involves cars jumping stuff and surviving the landing."
~ congteddymix
Bullets
"Treating people for gunshot wounds has nothing to do with bullet removal. We don’t remove bullets. We stop what's bleeding and repair what's hit."
"The average writer seems to think the body is just a blood bag and bullets are poisonous like cyanide and youre dying until it’s pulled out."
"Bullets are minimally toxic (theoretical lead risk, not that big a deal irl) and bullets actually hit important things that need surgical repair or hemorrhage control. You cause more damage digging bullets out of of tissue than just ignoring them."
~ Brilliant_Voice1126
"It's also a rule that when you pull the bullet out, you MUST drop it into a metal emesis basin and there MUST be an audible 'clink'. This never doesn't happen."
~ eggs_erroneous
Archives
"I used to work in an archive, and Hollywood gets it very wrong. No one is allowed to rummage through the stacks. Researchers tell us what they need, we retrieve it, and each item is returned before the next is brought out."
"If more than one box is open, documents can easily end up in the wrong place and effectively be lost forever because the physical location no longer matches the database."
"Letting people browse would almost guarantee misfiling, missing documents, and damage to fragile materials."
"The image of a person sitting on the floor with several boxes opened and scattered contents around them sets my teeth on edge. And who lets a random detective loose in the evidence archive?"
~ Electronic_Fix_9060
Horse
"Anything with horses in. They put stupid noises and neighing and squealing, etc... Horses are mainly quiet animals because in the wild, they're prey animals. Like deer."
~ Reasonable-Horse1552
Kitchens
"Restaurant kitchens in movies. Nobody wears gloves or hats and they all look amazing and are leisurely chopping up some lettuce."
"In reality, almost everyone is on drugs and screaming. Gloves and hats are on about 65% of the people. Very few people look good, and most look like they are doing a 'Beetlejuice' cosplay."
~ CowEmotional5101
Sprinklers
"Every time in a movie where an actor puts a lighter or heat source under ONE sprinkler head and the whole system in the whole building goes off."
"Every floor, every room, that's not how sprinkler systems work. So let's just destroy everywhere there's not a fire with black, stinky water, ya, that's how that works."
~ pantslesschef
"Finally, somebody said something about the stagnant water in those lines! It's not clean, clear water."
~ BlackPhoenix1981
What else do the movies get wrong?
