History Main / Hollywoodscience

* ''Film/BuffaloSoldier'' contains a scene where someone in charge of a large-scale heroin synthesis operation warns that if the solution hits boiling point, dire consequences will occur. Conveniently enough, as we later discover during a dramatic close-up on a thermometer, it boils at exactly 100°C. (Even if it were to hit the actual boiling point of ~270°C, the result wouldn't have been nearly as explosive as shown in the film.)

* ''Hollywood Science'' was also an Open University program run on Creator/TheBBC, which attempted to assess the scientific validity of several events from movies including ''Film/DieHard'', ''Film/{{Speed}}'' and ''Film/FightClub'', [[DanBrowned DanBrowning]] some (but not all) of them in the process.

* The NecroCritic loves to point out this trope. Usually by mentioning how he's "pretty sure (extremely obscure/specific scientific property) doesn't work that way".
** Then of course there was his freak out about the above DrJekyllAndMrHyde example:

* According to the 2006 ''StrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde'' movie, {{nanomachines}} can [[UnstableGeneticCode completely change the species of whatever gets injected with them]]

** And writers who don't even bother to look terms up when they're ''trying'' to be accurate, as when the term "distal phalange" was used to describe a pinky bone. "Distal" is a correct description for a fingertip-bone, but "phalanx" is the proper singular of "phalanges". Somebody put the dictionary away too soon.

* In the ''JusticeLeague'' episode "The Enemy Below", the villain tried to melt the arctic ice cap to flood the world, even though since arctic ice is floating in water it wouldn't change sea levels much, if at all. However, this may have been a confusion of wording on the part of the writers; while ''arctic'' (i.e. north pole) ice floats in water, ''ant''arctic ice does sit, in large part, on an actual continent and could indeed cause flooding if it melted quickly enough (Though it still wouldn't be enough to cover the Earth's entire landmass). In fact, an explosion or "impact" destroying the latter is what triggers many of the events in the main plot or characterization in ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion''.

** One troper's Astronomy teacher in college was a science adviser on ''Deep Impact''. They ignored most of what he said, except for his strong warning about the ridiculousness of having astronauts hopping around on the surface of a comet as though they were on the Moon (if you were standing on a comet you more than likely wouldn't be able to tell there was ''any'' gravity, period); the scene was altered. Of course, he also got a cameo out of the deal (balding guy in mission control, even has a line).
** The entire premise of shattering a comet with a bomb to save a planet is flawed anyway, since you still have the same amount of mass traveling toward the planet, albeit broken up into smaller chunks. It's not the size of the object alone that makes it dangerous, but how much mass it has.
*** It depends. Larger than a certain size, a asteroid/comet can effectively bore through the Earth's atmosphere fast enough to remain mostly intact. Thus, breaking up an object much larger than this threshold size into several smaller objects, each of which is ''still larger than the critical size,'' actually makes things '''worse'''. However, if you can break up the larger object into many smaller objects much smaller than the critical threshold size, they will all effectively be destroyed in the atmosphere. Whether a bomb is a good idea is dependent on a whole host of factors (mostly the size and exact composition of the comet), but the comet depicted almost certainly would have been a bad candidate for such a plan.
**** Then again, there's the bothersome aspect of all those little things "effectively be destroyed in the atmosphere." They are '''vaporized by the heat''' resulting from the friction of their passage through the air at high speeds. How many of these little hot tamales would it take to superheat the atmosphere beyond the tolerance of most - if not ''all'' - terrestrial organisms? And it's not like marine life would have an easy ride (cough)ordovician extinction(cough) either...

* Parodied, like nearly everything else, in ''ItalianSpiderman''.

* ''CSIMiami'': "Prey": A suspect's IP address is traced as 359.33.9.234. This is actually a new variety of FiveFiveFive (while intentionally avoiding private IP address, like 10.X.Y.Z, 172.16.X.Y or 192.168.X.Y). All of those examples are possible with [=IPv4=]. The '''exact''' behaviour is not defined, but most systems will do modulo 256 on all four numbers. This was used in many movies to create weird [=IPs=] that people who know just enough to recognize an address think it's ''bad'', while those that decide to try ''hacking'' end up attacking for example 127.0.0.1

* ''{{CSI}}'' is often accused of Hollywood Science; which arguable applies to the time compression more or less necessary for dramatic purposes. Early on in the show's run, the producers stated that they made the science deliberately bad, to avoid becoming a primer on evading detection for budding criminals.

* ''{{Fringe}}'' is probably a deliberate example, violating every physical law and then some, normally as [[CaptainObvious some sort of fringe science]] doing it.

* ''Buffalo Soldier'' contains a scene where someone in charge of a large-scale heroin synthesis operation warns that if the solution hits boiling point, dire consequences will occur. Conveniently enough, as we later discover during a dramatic close-up on a thermometer, it boils at exactly 100°C. (Even if it were to hit the actual boiling point of ~270°C, the result wouldn't have been nearly as explosive as shown in the film.)

* The film {{Lucy}} is built around the "humans only use 10% of their brain" myth. The myth is that humans could do so much more if they could unlock 100% of their brain power. In reality, 10-15% of our brains are used for cognitive processes, the rest is used for unconscious processes like breathing, blinking, and pumping blood to and from the heart. In the film, Lucy steadily learns to use more of her brain power, and gains a bunch of ridiculous abilities in the process.

* ''Hollywood Science'' was also an Open University program run on TheBBC, which attempted to assess the scientific validity of several events from movies including ''Film/DieHard'', ''Film/{{Speed}}'' and ''FightClub'', [[DanBrowned DanBrowning]] some (but not all) of them in the process.

* ''{{Armageddon}}'' is loaded with HollywoodScience, to the extent that it has become something of a RunningGag on the [[http://badastronomy.com Bad Astronomy website]]. Some can live with it, some can't.

** {{Counter-Earth}}

* The ''{{Numb3rs}}'' episode "Backscatter" had, in a background shot, the phrase "Email response IP address: 192.3382.1043.010.255".

* Spoofed in ''{{Odyssey 5}}''. At one stage the Odyssey team consult an abrasive sci-fi writer clearly based on Creator/HarlanEllison (who conceived the series). As they can't tell him the truth (that they've travelled back in time five years to avert the destruction of the Earth) the team pretend they're writing a science fiction novel. The sci-fi writer goes into detail on how cliched and scientifically implausible their 'novel' is.

* Despite being technologically savvy (he '''''invented the communications satellite'''''), Arthur C Clarke gave a ridiculously impossible ending to ''3001: The Final Odyssey''; he Failed Computer Science Forever, because Emulation Doesn't Work That Way.

* Spoofed in ''{{Odyssey 5}}''. At one stage the Odyssey team consult an abrasive sci-fi writer clearly based on HarlanEllison (who conceived the series). As they can't tell him the truth (that they've travelled back in time five years to avert the destruction of the Earth) the team pretend they're writing a science fiction novel. The sci-fi writer goes into detail on how cliched and scientifically implausible their 'novel' is.

[[quoteright:200:[[DresdenCodak http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/iwilldosciencetoit-sm_8571.jpg]]]]

* Bullets and falling objects frequently disobey the laws of physics. See BlownAcrossTheRoom, VariableTerminalVelocity and BizarreAndImprobableBallistics.

* An incredibly horrible example from ''Bad Boys 2'': A truck carrying some cars is traveling at very high speed. One of the cars falls off but is still attached to the truck by a chain. It hits the ground and digs in, thus acting like an anchor. Said truck's rate of acceleration actually seems to increase!

* ''Film/{{Spider-Man 2}}'' has a depiction of nuclear fusion that is almost, but not entirely, completely unlike real fusion techniques.