History FailedASpotCheck / RealLife

** Works for predators too. [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/leopard_5.jpg This leopard]] could easily be missed until it's too late for its prey, and [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tiger1.jpg this tiger]] is likewise very difficult to spot.

** For example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006 one notable case]] had a 747 pilot focusing on his airspeed indicator because of engine problems and failing to notice his attitude indicator, ''right beside the instrument he was looking at'' indicated the plane was about to go into a diving barrel-roll.

** For example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006 one notable case]] had a 747 pilot focusing on his airspeed indicator because of engine problems and failing to notice his altitude indicator, ''right beside the instrument he was looking at'' indicated the plane was about to go into a diving barrel-roll.

* Right after the 2002 Bali Bombings in Bali, Indonesia, investigators struggled to find a lead as to who perpetrated the attacks, even when top forensic investigators were on site to scour for clues--cultural factors also came into play as Islamic custom dictates that deceased Muslims should be buried within 24 hours, hampering autopsy efforts--and the only other lead they had was a white minivan used to carry out the bombing, which had the serial numbers literally filed off. What the terrorists forgot to file off however was the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number used to identify nearly every cellphone on the planet,[[note]]CDMA phones on the other hand use ESN and MEID numbers instead, though dual-mode phones such as those sold in the States do carry both IMEI and [=MEIDs=].[[/note]] which was retrieved intact from the remains of an old Creator/{{Nokia}} 5110 used as a remote detonation device. Through this, Australian intelligence agencies were able to trace the origins of the call and thus unravel the terrorist group responsible.

* This trope can easily happen when navigating an airport thanks to a combination of increasingly complex layouts, hurrying to catch a flight, and jet lag. It’s not uncommon for airport workers to get stopped by a passenger asking for directions to a location just a few more steps away.

* A flyer for the now-defunct American discount department store chain Caldor [[note]]within its final months before closure in 1999[[/note]] included an image of two boys happily playing TabletopGame/{{Scrabble}} with the word ''"rape"'' spelled out on the board. Apparently, this wasn't spotted by proofreaders... [[EpicFail and got printed in]] ''[[EpicFail 11 million copies]]'' [[EpicFail for the general public resulting in widespread backlash]]. For their part, Caldor themselves were confused as to how that could've made its way into the toy section of a weekly flyer in the first place.

** For example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_006 one notable case]] had a 747 pilot focusing on his airspeed indicator because of engine problems and failing to notice his attitude indicator, ''right beside the instrument he was looking at'' indicated the plane was about to go into a diving barrel-roll.

* Checklists and questions may seem annoying for surgeons, but it's all too easy to glaze over glaringly obvious things, especially when you have just spent over an hour doing delicate work with a person's life in your hands and just want to go sit down and do anything else. A common mistake among surgeons is to leave surgical equipment inside the patient's body. This can vary from relatively harmless sponges and surgical gloves to life-threatening knife blades. These incidents are common enough that they are today considered the main form of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_ipsa_loquitur res ipsa loquitur]]'' ("the thing speaks for itself", basically meaning "we may not be able to prove exactly how the incident happened, but there's no reasonable explanation for it that doesn't involve you making a mistake, so you're still liable") in modern tort law.

** Played ''painfully'' straight with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAPA_Flight_3142 LAPA Flight 3142]], in which the pilots were so careless (they were ''sharing a cigarette'' in the cockpit and chatting with a flight attendant) that they decided to take off, ''with the takeoff configuration warning blaring all way''.

* Some find BlackComedy in one [[https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1993-06.html instance]]: would-be armed robber targets a gun shop, which would be a bad idea anyway, as the BallisticDiscount trope discusses. Said would-be robber also failed to notice the marked police car outside the store, even while walking around it to enter, or the uniformed police officer chatting with the clerk. No prize for deducing the [[Website/DarwinAwards outcome]].

* Very much present at skydiving, and that is one of the main reasons why parachutes are garishly colored and the skydivers wear colorful overalls. Collisions in free fall can cause serious injuries or even deaths, and most fatalities are due to inadvertent collisions on canopy ride. The intention of the garish coloring is to warn other skydivers of the presence of yourself, and also to individuate each skydiver. Sadly even despite these measures, accidents due to this trope do happen, and many deaths are due to CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain) [erroneously pronounced as "see-fit"]: the skydiver has concentrated so well on one thing (such as making a good landing) that he has not noticed linear obstacles such as fences, power lines or lamp posts or ground obstacles and ran into them.

* Some find BlackComedy in one [[https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1993-06.html instance]]: would-be armed robber targets a gun shop, which would be a bad idea anyway, as the BallisticDiscount trope discusses. Said would-be robber also failed to notice the marked police car outside the store, even while walking around it to enter, or the uniformed police officer chatting with the clerk. No prize for deducing the [[DarwinAwards outcome]].

* Some find BlackComedy in one DarwinAward-winning [[https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1993-06.html instance]]: would-be armed robber targets a gun shop, which would be a bad idea anyway, as the BallisticDiscount trope discusses. Said would-be robber also failed to notice the marked police car outside the store, even while walking around it to enter, or the uniformed police officer chatting with the clerk. No prize for deducing the outcome.

** A more recent example, Pennsylvania's Strasburg Railroad was running one of its daily excursions to the Paradise interchange with Amtrak and Norfolk Southern when the crew onboard Norfolk and Western 475, the only operating 4-8-0 in the nation, were so busy waving to the passengers onboard during the runaround for the return trip to Ronks that they failed to notice the switch was misaligned. 475 smashed into a parked MOW backhoe, though fortunately the damage was minor and nothing major was broken.

* The vast majority of humans can only pay full attention to a handful of things and our peripheral awareness also has limits. This is actually a good thing as it prevents information overload and frees up thinking power and memory capacity, but it does cause us to fail spot checks on a myriad of subtle cues, and ties into ConfirmationBias. Proper training and certain disorders can expand the aforementioned limits but they result in both positive and negative changes to the fundamental brain functions.

* Quntinshill, the biggest rail disaster in Britain, partially occurred because of a common disregard for safety procedure. While signalman were required to log the trains that passed by the junction, they had been writing them down on a separate piece of paper to let their relief come in an extra half hour later to get more sleep, then passing their notes to said relief so they could write down the logs in their handwriting. The relief signalman for that day was jotting down his predecessor's notes in the logbook during rush hour, forgetting about the very express train he had come in on that was ''still on the main line'', and cleared another train to pass that way. One crash later, another late-running train plowed into it, killing over 200. While both signalmen were held at fault that day, the BBC later postulated that the railroad was truly at fault for overworking the line and their employees during wartime.

* The March 1945 Battle of Cologne is well remembered for the duel at the Cologne Cathedral in which a Panther had been engaged and destroyed by an M26 Pershing. The film shows that the Panther had anticipated the appearance of the M26 down the street to their right but when the American tank came into view, the Panther crew hesitated which was the fatal mistake that allowed the M26 to fire on them first. It was stated by the daughter of Bartelborth, the commander of the Panther tank, that he told the family that they ''misidentified the M26 Pershing as a German tank'' because they were fully expecting a Sherman tank to appear instead.

** The dazzle paint used on ships in WWII was intended not to make ships hard to see but to make it hard to judge the shape of the ship. This made it more difficult to determine the type of ship and its range, heading, and speed.

** In one particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} example, the captain of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_International_Airways_Flight_808]] became so fixated on looking for a strobe light that indicated a key border that he failed to realize that his plane was on the verge of stalling, ''even though his first officer and flight engineer were directly telling him so''. In that case, it's believed that this was caused in part by the fact that the captain was suffering fatigue due to flying an excessive amount of time in the preceding days, further limiting his capacity to process information.

** In one particularly JustForFun/{{egregious}} example, the captain of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalitta_Air#Incidents_and_accidents American International Airways Flight 808]] became so fixated on looking for a strobe light that indicated a key border that he failed to realize that his plane was on the verge of stalling, ''even though his first officer and flight engineer were directly telling him so''. In that case, it's believed that this was caused in part by the fact that the captain was suffering fatigue due to flying an excessive amount of time in the preceding days, further limiting his capacity to process information.

* The March 1945 Battle of Cologne is well remembered for the duel at the Cologne Cathedral in which a Panther had been engaged and destroyed by an M26 Pershing. The film shows that the Panther had anticipated the appearance of the M26 down the street to their right but when the American tank came into view, the Panther crew hesitated which was the fatal mistake that allowed the M26 to fire on them first. It was stated by the daughter of Bartelborth, the commander of the Panther tank, that they ''misidentified the M26 Pershing as a German tank'' because they were fully expecting a Sherman tank to appear instead.

* The human brain seems to have an "auto-correct" feature for when one sees a sentence with minor spelling or grammar errors, e.g: if you write a sentence like "I went to the the store." most people won't notice the extra "the" unless you point it out, with some people missing it even if told to read the sentence aloud. This can be problematic if someone misreads a word the first time, as their brain will "correct" it to look the way they think it should be spelled, and this will likely happen until someone points out that it's not really spelled that way.

* The human brain seems to have an "auto-correct" feature for when one sees a sentence with minor spelling or grammar errors, e.g: if you write a sentence like "I went to the the store." most people won't notice the extra "the" unless you point it out, with some people missing it even if told to read the sentence aloud.

** In one particularly egregious example, the captain of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalitta_Air#Incidents_and_accidents American International Airways Flight 808]] became so fixated on looking for a strobe light that indicated a key border that he failed to realize that his plane was on the verge of stalling, ''even though his first officer and flight engineer were directly telling him so''. In that case, it's believed that this was caused in part by the fact that the captain was suffering fatigue due to flying an excessive amount of time in the preceding days, further limiting his capacity to process information.