History Main / ArtisticLicenseGeology

* VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}: In-game, obsidian is one of the hardest materials in the game to the point of being invulnerable to any amount of explosives - in real life, obsidian is very brittle and prone to fracturing, and is by no means the super-stone it is depicted as in-game.

* InUniverse example in ''WebComic/DarthsAndDroids'' when Jim and Ben [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0035.html call the GM on this trope]] with regards to Naboo being hollow and water-filled. Later on, the GM has Jim, a geophysics Ph.D. student, [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0150.html figures out how it could work]] (which requires him to {{retcon}} in that Naboo has a moon).

This is the supertrope of CaliforniaCollapse, GoldIsYellow and LavaPotVolcano. Compare ArtisticLicenseBiology (with which it shares the subtrope ArtisticLicensePaleontology), ArtisticLicensePhysics. Contrast ShownTheirWork. See also AllNaturalGemPolish.

* Creator/MarvelComics: Many old stories have characters visiting Subterrania, a land located at "the center of the Earth." The place was later {{Ret Con}}ned as being a cave system not far from the surface.

* Many old Creator/MarvelComics stories had characters visiting Subterrania, a land located at "the center of the Earth." The place was later {{Ret Con}}ned as being a cave system not far from the surface.
* The MagicalLand realm of Skartaris in Creator/DCComics' ''ComicBook/TheWarlord'' is located in the center of a HollowWorld Earth as a tribute to the ''Literature/{{Pellucidar}}'' novels of Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' storyline ''ComicBook/TheSuperRevengeOfLexLuthor'', the eponymous villain builds a weather-altering machine which starts a new ice age, and the people of Metropolis treats the possibility of glaciars burying their city as an immediate concern instead of a future threat (the fastest glacier in the world only advances up to 40 metres per day).

This is the supertrope of CaliforniaCollapse and GoldIsYellow. Compare ArtisticLicenseBiology (with which it shares the subtrope ArtisticLicensePaleontology), ArtisticLicensePhysics. Contrast ShownTheirWork. See also AllNaturalGemPolish.

In addition to quakes, volcanoes, and mudslides, this trope also covers any abuses of the field of geology including getting rocks, minerals, or whole processes wrong.

* ''Film/{{Volcano}}'' has the titular feature pop out of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles- while the area is tectonically active, the faults are not the type that generate volcanoes, being too far below the surface. The LA Basin as a whole has no volcanic features newer than a couple dozen million years.
* ''Film/DantesPeak'', a [[DuelingMovies dueling movie]] with ''Film/{{Volcano}}'', made more of an attempt to be accurate but still pick and chose things to be dramatic (the USGS has a detailed response somewhere.) For example, there is fluid lava during what is otherwise a large explosive eruption, (the two are not absolutely exclusive, but they are highly unlikely to occur together at the scale the movie shows.), and there's a pyroclastic cloud chase scene where the vehicle has way too little lead time.
* The volcano part of ''Film/{{Congo}}'' had many geologic sins (diamonds in basalt, etc), but often gets faulted for one part that was actually accurate; the speed of the flow. The Congo is the only place in the world where lava actually can move at freeway speeds due to its consistency (think mud bath, only it would melt your face instead of cleansing your pores).

-->''The magnitude of an earthquake is related to the area of the fault on which it occurs - the larger the fault area, the larger the earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is 800 miles long and only about 10-12 miles deep, so that earthquakes larger than magnitude 8.3 are extremely unlikely.''

* The 1965 film ''Film/CrackInTheWorld'' suffered from a fast case of ScienceMarchesOn. It was in line with accepted theory at the time the film was made, but the time the film was released geology was undergoing a revolution, and the Plate Tectonics theory was finally gaining acceptance, making much of the geology in the movie nonsensical as the title went from being regarded as possible apocalypse to normal state of the Earth. (Geothermal energy was also a very new idea at the time of the film; now countries like Iceland use it routinely, and don't need atomic bombs to access it!)
* In ''Film/{{Outlander}}'', the protagonists trek through lava-filled tunnels in Norway. The Fennoscandian Shield which makes up Norway's land mass is one of the most tectonically stable areas in the world, and has had no volcanic activity for hundreds of millions of years.

* In ''Film/GameraVsZigra'', the main villain causes multiple earthquakes. The strongest earthquake in the film does a lot of damage, but most buildings are still left standing. This earthquake is said to have a magnitude of 18 on the Richter scale -- More than ''100,000,000'' times more powerful than the strongest earthquake ever recorded. Such a quake is impossible and would rend the earth apart.

* In Creator/PeterJackson's ''[[Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheReturnOfTheKing The Return of the King]]'', the destruction of the ring is accompanied by Mount Doom erupting... but it has both lava flows and pyroclastic explosions, while in reality volcanoes generally only have one or the other. Of course, the eruption is the death throe of a demonic sorcerer, so most likely AWizardDidIt.

* Lots of games have "diamond" weapons or armor, assuming that since diamond is hard, it must be very durable. In fact, diamond crystals have perfect cleavage in four directions and are therefore quite brittle: ''scratching'' a diamond is hard, but ''breaking'' it is not. (An exception is ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', where the ''Normandy'' can be upgraded with armor composed of carbon nanotube sheets interwoven with diamond [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition chemical vapor deposition,]] crushed into dense layers which compensate for diamond's brittleness.)
* Throughout ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, quite a few crafting materials and ores have real world names, but have vastly different properties. A recurring one is Ebony, depicted as a rough black ore which can be melted into dull, malleable ingots, which can in turn be crafted into either glassy black armor or dull grey-black weapons. In the lore, it's said to be a super-durable glassy substance with mystical and holy properties. Real life ebony is a type of wood. Numerous other examples are described under the FantasyMetals trope.

* Invoked in ''VideoGame/TheClueFinders5thGradeAdventuresTheSecretOfTheLivingVolcano''. The island is apparently floating, yet is also ''actively volcanic''. The characters question how this is possible. [[spoiler: It turns out? ThatsNoMoon - it's an ''alien spaceship''.]]

* ''[[Series/WonderWoman1975 Wonder Woman]]'': Paradise Island didn't appear on any map for inadequately explained reasons. It remained separate from Man's World despite the fact that in "The Feminum Mystique" the Nazis could and did sail directly to it. No one discovered an idyllic island of [[SuperStrength super strong]], beautiful [[ActionGirl amazons]] just because, well...they didn't.

* Jaburo in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' is an ElaborateUndergroundBase built in a natural cavern underneath the Amazon rainforest... Which shouldn't be possible, since the entire Amazon basin's earth is made of 4,000 metres of sand and soft clay, with virtually no rocks.

* Jaburo in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' is an ElaborateUndergroundBase built in a natural cavern underneath the Amazon rainforest... Which shouldn't be possible, since the entire Amazon basin's earth is made of 4,000 metres of sand and soft clay, with virtually no rocks.

* The 1965 film ''Crack in the World'' suffered from a fast case of ScienceMarchesOn. It was in line with accepted theory at the time the film was made, but the time the film was released geology was undergoing a revolution, and the Plate Tectonics theory was finally gaining acceptance, making much of the geology in the movie nonsensical as the title went from being regarded as possible apocalypse to normal state of the Earth. (Geothermal energy was also a very new idea at the time of the film; now countries like Iceland use it routinely, and don't need atomic bombs to access it!)

* ''Film/CrackInTheWorld'' from 1965 suffered from a fast case of ScienceMarchesOn. It was in line with accepted theory at the time the film was made, but the time the film was released geology was undergoing a revolution, and the Plate Tectonics theory was finally gaining acceptance, making much of the geology in the movie nonsensical as the title went from being regarded as possible apocalypse to normal state of the Earth. (Geothermal energy was also a very new idea at the time of the film; now countries like Iceland use it routinely, and don't need atomic bombs to access it!)

* ''Film/BloodDiamond'': Danny Archer plans to sell a number of large diamonds, each at least 10 carats, to a diamond company where they will be processed in India and "become like any other diamonds," and plans to do the same with a large pink diamond found by Solomon Vendy. The colour, shape and crystal structure of a diamond reveals its origin, so they would still be identifiable as African and thus possibly sourced in a conflict zone (which they were, in the Sierra Leone civil war). Additionally, India specialises in small diamonds only. It's also very strange for a multination diamond corporation, large enough to be invited to a G8 summit, to bother with a single, albeit large, diamond, as most of their product would be melee, or medium diamonds of a half to two carats (similarly, the mercenaries are being paid in diamond mining concessions, so they should have no reason to chase after one diamond, though Colonel Coatzee suggests he's doing it because ItsPersonal). However, the filmmakers did extensive research on the subject, even opening their own diamond mine, and it {{show|nTheirWork}}s.

* ''Crack In The World'' from 1965 suffered from a fast case of ScienceMarchesOn. It was in line with accepted theory at the time the film was made, but the time the film was released geology was undergoing a revolution, and the Plate Tectonics theory was finally gaining acceptance, making much of the geology in the movie nonsensical as the title went from being regarded as possible apocalypse to normal state of the Earth. (Geothermal energy was also a very new idea at the time of the film; now countries like Iceland use it routinely, and don't need atomic bombs to access it!)

* ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' pretty clearly throws any accuracy out in favor of RuleOfCool. It would be easier to list the couple correct pits than the many, many wrong parts.

This is the supertrope of CaliforniaCollapse. Compare ArtisticLicenseBiology (with which it shares the subtrope ArtisticLicensePaleontology), ArtisticLicensePhysics. Contrast ShownTheirWork. See also AllNaturalGemPolish.

* In Peter Jackson's ''[[Film/TheLordOfTheRings Return of the King]]'', the destruction of the ring is accompanied by Mount Doom erupting... but it has both lava flows and pyroclastic explosions, while in reality volcanoes generally only have one or the other. Of course, the eruption is the death throe of a demonic sorcerer, so most likely AWizardDidIt.

* Largely averted in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' except for some minor issues with ConvectionSchmonvection and some dwarves being tough enough to drown in the lava before being burned in it.

* The mines of the ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' games. Even discounting the one set in [[ConvectionSchmonvection a semi-active volcano]], you have mines where you can find gold, silver and copper, along with emeralds, rubies, and diamonds ''on the same level''. Older games at least tried to pay lip service to reality by having the precious gems and metals in different mines, but that was abandoned in favor of streamlining.