13 Lies Movies Taught Us

Explosions. Gun silencers. Chloroform. All very exciting cinematic tools, but none of them really act the way they do in movies. Today, we're going to break down some of the most egregious lies that movies have taught us over the years.

Join host Erin McCarthy as she breaks down some common myths from the big screen.

[theotakux]

In fact, a T-Rex can't see you even if you DO move, just gotta keep some distance between them and yourself.
About 65 million years or so should do the trick.

[kayisfish]

I had a cat growing up that climbed a pole and touched it's nose to an electrical line while sitting on the transformer. An electrical shock about a foot long shot off of her nose and she fell about 40ft to the ground, landing on her side. She was breathing so we wrapped her in blankets and towels in a basket and watched over her, not knowing what to do. A few hours later she sat up and looked at us and meowed. She was never healthier. She had been a sickly kitten, and after this she lived another 6 years healthy and happy and strong. She had her nose completely blown off in the incident and had squiggly whiskers, but was otherwise totally fine. How's that for a cool cat?! Lol her name was Tigger

[LupusYonderboy]

When I was in high school, the local fire department filled a house slated to be torn down with natural gas as a training exercise for gas explosions. The thing is, they miscalculated and overfilled the house by about 4 times. I was riding my bike around 1.5 miles away and I got knocked clean over. It was nuts.

[emceeunderdogrising]

I had a stab wound on my calf. The second it happened blood gushed out and I lost the ability to stand on it immediately. It took 6 months of physical therapy to fully walk again. Now I laugh anytime a character gets stabbed and runs it off.

[zatoth]

On the missing persons-some police departments in true crime documentaries have told family members that they needed to wait 12-48 hours (depending upon the story) in order to file a report. This may be an outdated policy in those departments or laziness of the police to investigate every teen who ran away or even a misconception of the police themselves (we all know that they can be like other folks who don’t pay attention to policies or procedures). I think pushing the notion that you need to wait 24 hours is dangerous-the sooner they know, especially with children, women and seniors, the more likely they are to find them alive.

[yugen]

I have a couple more to add that movies often get wrong, which more people ought to know for safety reasons. 1) myth: if someone is in a bad car accident you should yank them out of the car, such as through a window. Unless the car is actively on fire or there is some other immediate threat to life you are actually much better off leaving the person in the car and letting rescue crews extract them, and 2) myth: if you are impaled with something (like a knife or arrow) you can just yank the thing out of you. It's actually almost always preferable to leave the object in the victim, immobilize the object if possible, and get the victim to a trauma center so the object can be removed surgically. Removing the object yourself can increase blood loss and damage upon exiting.

[FaultAndDakranon]

In Hugh Jackmans defence on the explosion walk-away he was playing a magic super-strong self healing demi-human at the time.

[Jahmaan]

Re: missing persons, I watch a lot of truecrime, and a recurring issue is in fact that many police officers also claim that waiting period, especially with teenagers. One explanation is that they don't want to risk wasting resources on someone who "ran away" and will turn up within an arbitrary cooling off period. So there may be no official requirement, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

[Ericaodd]

Here's a famous cat!

Unsinkable Sam, survived the sinking of three ships in WW2. He was on the Bismarck when it went down. He was picked out of the water by the crew of the Cossack. When the Cossack was sunk Sam made it to shore in a lifeboat. He was then on the Ark Royal when it sank. After that, remained safely on shore at Gibraltar.

[johnstevenson]

If dinosaurs couldn't see you if you didn't move, they'd have spent their lives bumping into trees. Try rubbing his tummy instead.

[zednott]

thanks for including the suppress lie. i think you could do a whole show on gun lies from movies. like how cars, tables and couches are not bullet proof. how guns only carry a set # of rounds not like the movies where the bad gun can shoot for ever.

[brianarbenz]

When I went to an open house at my old Elementary school in 2013, I sat exactly where I was sitting in my 1st grade class picture, in 1964. I asked a stranger to stand where the camera had been in '64 and photograph me sitting exactly how the 6-year-old me had. He had no experience using my camera phone and the pic was blurry. I so wanted to make the coolest social media comparison image, so I went to a photo enhancing place and learned what you said: can't be done as easily as we have been led to believe.

[AnthonyBayerl]

I appreciate how hard you worked on the script for the image enhancement portion to shut down any "but, what about" comments. All bases covered. :-)

[RavenFilms]

When you started with Jurassic Park, I thought for sure number one would be about dinos having feathers

[zero]

When a person is knocked out they’re generally not unconscious for more than a couple moments. Not long enough for the hero to infiltrate a building for a half hour or whatever.

Also, people aren’t knocked out as easily as movies and tv shows demonstrate.

[zero]

Most things aren’t bulletproof. Even a pistol round will go right through a car door. Doors aren’t bullet proof. In movies they like to show a person hiding behind another person. People aren’t bullet proof and bullets will often go right through a person.

Also, no your cigarette case or phone isn’t going to stop a bullet.

[XtomJamesExtra]

They already got something wrong about T-Rex in Jurassic Park. All of the Dinos, according to JP lore, were created by splicing various ancient DNA with the DNA of extant amphibians and reptiles, and chickens. The vision of most frogs hinge upon movement and are highly adept at catching moving things, but not so great at seeing up close or things that aren't moving. While a natural T-Rex most certainly wouldn't have any issue spotting you even if you stood still, the bioengineered ones living in the Jurassic Park reality likely couldn't.

Although they did miss the far bigger mistakes regarding the T-Rex and other dinosaurs. For one, all T-Rex and similar clade raptorix had feathers, much like their modern chicken evolutionary descendants. Recent research also suggests that a fully grown T-Rex likely couldn't move very fast, at all, maxing out at a whopping top running speed of 13 mph. The position and form of their pelvises wouldn't allow them to run very fast, or for very long, and it's suspected that they were mostly ambush predators. They didn't jump out either at their prey, or really at all. Jumping any significant distances would have left them prone to broken bones due to their huge mass. Rather they'd spring out at pray biting down on their necks, and then use their mass to drag their prey to the ground before using their hind legs to rip them open in a raking motion.

Ironically enough, this means that a person, who is aware of a T-Rex could easily outrun, if not potentially out walk one.

[toddboughn]

The one TV show that got the sound in space mostly right (along with a lot of physics) was the 2000s version of Battlestar Galactica.

[jacforswear]

My city’s missing person info page says you don’t have to wait right at the top of the page and they say it on the phone directory when you call. It’s honestly really unfortunately that myth is so pervasive (and still used)!

[skybluskyblueify]

Misconceptions in RomComs would be good episode all on its own. Young people can actually use the plots and tropes IRL leading to disaster for the victim and/or victimizer. Too many people think movies and TV are good sources of information for many things but from RomComs especially.