History RealityIsUnrealistic / LiveActionTV

* In the early years of ''Series/TheAdventuresOfSuperman'', when it was in black and white, Superman's costume was actually white and red, because blue would have looked wrong (you can see it in the movie ''Hollywoodland''). A normal version was created for later seasons that were shot in color.

** The actors portraying Fitz and Simmons were criticized early on for their British accents sounding "fake". Both actors are indeed British: Iain De Caestecker is from Glasgow, Elizabeth Henstridge is from Sheffield. But, since regional British accents are rare on American shows, a lot of viewers apparently assumed they were American actors trying for more familiar [[IAmVeryBritish Edinburgh- or London-based RP accents]] and getting them slightly wrong.

* The ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode ''Force of Nature'' starts what appears to be a story-arc about Federation warp drives causing damage to the fabric of space when they travel at higher velocities. This leads to the imposition of a speed-limit on Federation vessels which is mentioned a few times and then never again. According to WordOfGod the cause of the problem was discovered and some in-place modifications were made to all warp drives to stop if from happening. Environmentally conscious fans screamed "cop out!" over this, but this is more or less what really happened with the issue of holes in the ozone layer.

** There's a joke where Marshall talks about there being [[MonochromeCasting no minorities in Minnesota]] other than Music/{{Prince}}. While it may not seem like it, Minnesota does have sizable black populations in many areas, with there even being a section of Minneapolis dubbed "Little Mogadishu" due to its sizable Somalian immigrant community. That said, this was a joke about stereotypes, and in smaller towns in the state, it's closer to the truth-but incidentally ''not'' where Marshall is from (St. Cloud, which has is about as white as and has a higher percentage of black residents than the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area-about 7% vs. about 6%-although not as much as Minneapolis or St. Paul themselves-which hover around 60% white and 15% black).

* The television show ''Series/TheNanny'' featured Niles the British butler working for British Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield. The show would repeatedly get fan mail suggesting that Daniel Davis, who plays Niles and [[FakeBrit is from Arkansas]], coach Charles Shaughnessy, who played Maxwell and who is (a) from London, and b) [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething an honest-to-god member of the British aristocracy]]) to make his accent more believable.

** ''Series/{{Castle}}'', revolving as it does around a mystery novelist shadowing the police (and one who spends a bit too much time indulging in fiction to begin with), often features in-universe examples of this trope. For example, in one example he was surprised to discover that using the EnhanceButton just made the picture all blurry and pixelated instead of providing a sharp, focussed close-up.

** Police Boxes are not actually made out of wood. Police Boxes were going out of date by the time the series started, and so most viewers grew up much more familiar with the [[SpecialEffectFailure flimsy, clearly wooden look of the cheap TARDIS prop]] used in the show. TheCoconutEffect now means that any attempts to make a clearly cement or concrete TARDIS are usually roundly criticized — because, after all, it's supposed to look like a real Police Box.[[note]]Even though the majority of props used in the Classic Series attempted to look like concrete.[/note]

* An in-universe example in ''Series/StargateSG1'' on the set of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Wormhole X-treme]]'' where, due to low budget, the producer refuses to finance a spaceship prop. Then a real, awesome-looking, spaceship descends from the clouds. At first, everyone is agape. Then a couple of stagehands are discussing how fake it looks. The other one replies that they can make it look "less fake" in post-production.

* The accent Creator/WalterKoenig adopted for Chekov in ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' is roundly mocked for sounding nothing like a real Russian speaking English. However, Koenig has stated in interviews that he based the accent on how he remembers his parents (who were Russian immigrants to the US) speaking when he was growing up.
** In a related example, Creator/JamesDoohan puts on an accent that sounds more Irish than Scottish (but not really much like either) in his role as Scotty. However, Doohan ''was'' actually able to speak in a number of Scottish dialect accents accurately; he was asked not to by the producers, who were concerned that American audiences wouldn't be able to understand him.

** As badass as [[BadassGay Omar Little]] is, there's no way he would really be able to survive a [[SuperWindowJump leap from a fourth-floor window]], right? Except for the fact that Donnie Andrews, one of the real-life Baltimorians Little is based off, pulled off a similar feat with a ''sixth''-floor drop, but David Simon scaled it back because of this trope.

** Police Boxes are not actually made out of wood. Police Boxes were going out of date by the time the series started, and so most viewers grew up much more familiar with the [[SpecialEffectFailure flimsy, clearly wooden look of the cheap TARDIS prop]] used in the show. TheCoconutEffect now means that any attempts to make a clearly cement or concrete TARDIS are usually roundly criticized — because, after all, it's supposed to look like a real Police Box.

* When someone hears that every illness encountered on ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'', it's not uncommon to point at the episode "My Musical" as evidence that this is not the case. Surprisingly enough, the condition the patient experiences, hearing music around her due to an intracranial aneurysm, [[https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)62391-4/fulltext has happened multiple times in real life]], which the writers took full advantage of to make the episode happen.

* Arguably, every episode of every 'ghost hunting' show ever - except for England's ''Series/MostHaunted'', which was revealed to be a fabrication. (Cast and crew members of shows such as ''Series/GhostHunters'', ''Series/ParanormalState'', and ''Series/GhostAdventures'' absolutely insist that no fakery is involved.)

* Creator/MarkSheppard - Badger in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' - has been criticized for his "atrocious accent". Although he's a Londoner, he's from a different social class to the character he was playing and therefore had to fake the Cockney accent; the debate is over how well (or badly) he pulled it off.

** Some fans got upset in the season five opener, when Bunk and Landsman dupe a murderer into confessing with a "lie detector test" that is actually just a photocopier with the words "TRUE" and "FALSE" on different sheets of paper. The only problem is, this method has actually been used to get a murder confession on multiple occasions.[[note]]Although judges have usually thrown those confessions out[[/note]] As they say in the episode: "The bigger the lie, the more they believe."

** Several non-Brit fans of the show have complained about Peter Dinklage's "horrendously fake" British accent. While Dinklage is, in fact, an American, his accent has fooled some native Brits, and seems mostly to offend the ears of Americans, who believe all British accents are either Received Pronunciation or Cockney. Since ''Series/GameOfThrones'' isn't even set in Great Britain, the point should be moot.

* ''Series/{{Lost}}'':
** This was picked up on when fans asked why the French woman trapped on the Island by herself for 16 years (played by Furlan, again with her native accent) is speaking with a Croatian accent. The producers regularly discuss this on their podcasts for Rousseau-heavy episodes, pondering if her traumatic experiences are responsible for the accent shift.
** Some complained that Emilie de Ravin (an Australian), the actress who played Claire (also an Australian), was using a horrible accent.

* The New York Supreme Court is actually the ''lowest'' state-level court in the New York judicial system (county and municipal courts being below it). It's a trial court where felonies, large civil lawsuits, and divorces are tried, whereas other Supreme Courts only hear appeals of issues of major national or statewide legal importance. This all means that to anyone who doesn't know how the New York courts are set up, works that get the name right (like ''Franchise/LawAndOrder'') sound wrong, while works that get the name wrong sound right. A few early episodes of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' erroneously referred to the 'superior court.'
** The state's appellate courts are misleading too; the court of last resort for all state matters is the plainly named Court of Appeals. If you're familiar with the Federal court system, that's just like the mid-level appeals court above the trial court and below the Supreme Court of the United States. The NY version of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals? The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Yeah, good luck with convincing people who aren't legal experts (or haven't been on trial/sued in New York lately) that's real. Oddly enough, originally the court system was like other states': supreme court at the top, a court of appeals below, then trial courts. However, due to its corruption in the 1800s, the New York state legislature ''demoted'' the supreme court to trial jurisdiction level, resulting in the current format.
* Similarly parodied in ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus''. While filming "Scott of the Antarctic" on an English beach, the crew cover up the sand with white foamy mats, which supposedly, "on screen, look more like snow than snow!"
* ''Series/{{Glee}}'': Much has been made by fans and critics alike that most of the cast members playing teenagers are [[DawsonCasting clearly in their 20's or even 30's]], particularly the male students. While this is true, it ignores the very real fact that different people age at different speeds, and it is completely possible for two teenage boys to be in the same grade despite one of them sporting a heavy beard and deep voice and the other unable to grow facial hair and squeaking like a 10-year-old (eg. Kurt, played by Chris Colfer, the only cast member who was still in his teens, albeit late teens, at the start of the show). It may look odd to see mid-30's Matthew Morrison playing a teacher the same age that he is while Cory Monteith and Mark Salling (both in their late 20's) played students in their late teens, despite them all three looking about the same age, but that's only due to how rare it is to see it on television. Many young-looking teachers in real life are mistaken for students, while many teens ages 15-18 are mistaken for adults (or, conversely, much younger children).
* ''Series/MythBusters'':
** When they bust a Hollywood myth, like, say, BlownAcrossTheRoom, you can be almost certain that there will be a large portion of fans who clamor about having the myth re-tested because they're so used to seeing such myths on the media for so long that they have difficulty believing that real life won't live up to what they expect based on said myths.
** When testing the method of slowing the detonation of a bomb by cooling it with liquid nitrogen like in ''Film/LethalWeapon2'', it turned out that not only did it work, it actually worked a lot better than in the movie. In the movie, cooling the bomb gives Riggs and Murtaugh two or three seconds of time to dive into cover, but in the test they had to wait for the bomb's battery to completely thaw before it would explode 15 minutes later. To quote Adam: "The technique used by the bomb squad is far more effective in reality than it is in the movies. When does that ever happen?"
** A similar conclusion came about regarding a freefalling skydiver impacting a seesaw, flinging a young girl on top of a seven-story building (unharmed). The impact of such a skydiver would likely break (or bend) most seesaws, and even if the seesaw managed to transfer all the energy to the young girl, the force of such a launch would be enough to kill her ''on launch''. In addition, the force was ''more'' than enough to launch her well ''above'' a seven-story building. The [=MythBusters=] were amazed; usually the more outlandish stories would grossly ''overestimate'' the forces involved; this one actually grossly ''underestimated'' the forces.
* ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'':
** There's a joke where Marshall talks about there being [[MonochromeCasting no minorities in Minnesota]] other than Music/{{Prince}}. While it may not seem like it, Minnesota does have sizable black populations in many areas, with there even being a section of Minneapolis dubbed "Little Mogadishu" due to its sizable Somalian immigrant community. That said, this was a joke about stereotypes, and in smaller towns in the state, it's closer to the truth-but incidentally ''not'' where Marshall is from (St. Cloud, which has is about as white as and has a higher percentage of black residents than the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area-about 7% vs. about 6%-although not as much as Minneapolis or St. Paul themselves-which hover around 60% white and 15% black).
** Ted's former boss Hammond Druthers is mentioned to have designed a building that focused reflected sunlight so much that it ''melted a few cars and boiled the city aquarium, killing thousands of fish''. While it may sound absurd, it is in fact the ShoutOut to London's 20 Fenchurch Street Scyscraper, which in fact [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street#Solar_glare_problem works as a concave mirror, and on a sunny day partially melted a car, set a carpet on fire in a nearby store,]] [[http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/04/london-skyscrapers-deathray-reflection-is-melting-cars-burning-businesses-but-also-cooking-eggs/ and apparently can be used to cook an egg]]. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vdara And it's not even the first building designed by this architect to have this "little problem"]].
* A common source of snickering about ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' is that Picard is supposedly French, but speaks English with a British accent and not a French one. Patrick Stewart is indeed British and not French, but it's common for French people who know English well to speak it in a British accent--Britain is, after all, the nearest English-speaking country to France. A French person speaking English with a British accent is no more unrealistic than is, say, a Mexican person who speaks English with an accent from the American south (and Picard only speaks French in ''one episode.'' Even his visit home to France was everyone speaking English, since in the show's setting French had become a somewhat archaic language similar to Latin).
** Of course if you get one to not speak in [[{{Pun}} lingua franca]].
** In recent years it's been increasingly common for British people to buy holiday or retirement homes in France. It's not impossible that Picard has an Anglo-French background.
** Furthermore, Picard does not speak in what is Patrick Stewarts original Yorkshire accent ([[https://www.wimp.com/patrick-stewart-recites-a-poem-in-his-native-yorkshire-dialect/ seen here]]).
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'':
** Parodied in the self-referential episode "Hollywood Babylon". There's a real black-and-white ghost woman with rope burns on her neck and the producer just says "Not sure about those neck wounds, though. They need to be ''red''."
** Another version happens in season five's "The Real Ghostbusters": at a [[ItMakesSenseInContext haunted Supernatural convention]], a patron dressed as season one's Hookman ghost tells a group of real ghost-children, "You look nothing like real ghosts. Just telling you!" [[spoiler: Right before they kill him.]]
* A group of Native American actors appearing as extras in the series ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' were asked to speak in their own language for a scene, only for the director to change the dialogue as it didn't sound 'Indian' enough.
* As mentioned in the DVD commentary of the U.S. series premiere, the creators of ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'' run up against this problem quite a bit. It's a fictional show done in documentary style, which means it needs to look "realistic", but to achieve this, it often needs to look less professional than an actual documentary. WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief isn't necessary for a documentary filmmaker, because by its very nature a documentary is assumed to be true and uses no actors or sets. Therefore, they often strive to make their footage look as artistic and professionally staged as possible. But if ''Series/{{The Office|US}}'' did that it would probably look like a regular show, hence it has to be "behind the times".
* For ''Series/TheOfficeUK'', a common point of complaint from early critics was that the PointyHairedBoss David Brent was too obviously incompetent and self-deluding to make it as the manager of the branch. The retort from the series creators was that if these critics were to go into any large organization ([[BItingTheHandHumor such as]] Creator/TheBBC) and spend just five minutes looking around, they'd run out of fingers to count the people who were just as bad if not worse than Brent but who had yet managed to make it to senior management level.

** Police Boxes are not actually made out of wood. Police Boxes were out of date by the time the series started, and so most viewers grew up much more familiar with the [[SpecialEffectFailure flimsy, clearly wooden look of the cheap TARDIS prop]] used in the show. TheCoconutEffect now means that any attempts to make a clearly cement or concrete TARDIS are usually roundly criticised - because, after all, it's supposed to look like a real Police Box.
** "The Underwater Menace" is often criticized for the over-the-top, ridiculous and cheesy Eastern European accent used by the MadScientist Professor Zaroff. That was the actor's natural accent.
** Kettlewell in "Robot" has astonishing EinsteinHair that looks like a bad wig. All of it was the actor's own hair and he didn't even put anything in it to stand up like that, though he preferred a more sedate style for everyday use.
** The episodes "The Impossible Astronaut" and "Day of the Moon" were criticized by some fans because of the character of Carl Peterson, a black member of UsefulNotes/{{Richard Nixon}}'s security detail. While some people claimed this was an example of BlackVikings and PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad, it turns out that in real life Nixon ''did'' have at least one black agent.
** Similarly, Creator/MarkGatiss protested against the casting of a black actor as one of the Victorian soldiers in the episode "Empress of Mars." He relented after learning that there actually was a black Victorian soldier named [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/06/11/exclusive-doctor-writer-protested-against-problematic-casting/ Jimmy Durham]].
* The television show ''Series/TheNanny'' featured Niles the British butler working for British Broadway producer Maxwell Sheffield. The show would repeatedly get fan mail suggesting that Daniel Davis, who plays Niles and [[FakeBrit is from Arkansas]], coach Charles Shaughnessy, who played Maxwell and who is (a) from London, and b) [[RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething an honest-to-god member of the British aristocracy]]) to make his accent more believable.

* In the early days of ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'', Jason Alexander complained to Creator/LarryDavid of the way George was written, saying that ''no'' person could possibly sink so low as to do some particular thing, that it was completely unrealistic for one person to be that selfish and stupid. Larry informed him that he himself HAD done that very same thing in real life. This changed how Jason saw the character when he realized it is possible for a person to sink that low. Also lampshaded in an episode of ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm''--playing himself, Jason complains to Larry that he always gets typecast as schmucks and assholes because of George. Larry asks what he meant, Jason says something like "Well come on, George was an asshole! He did [lists off various misdeeds of George]" to which Larry angrily replies "''I'' did those things!!!"
* Lampshaded in an episode of Series/{{Victorious}} which involves a reality show, and uses stuff they shot to make it look like Tori and Beck were into each other, which then results in Jade getting violent towards Tori. When they go to the show's producers, they claim that nothing that ever happens on reality TV is actually real.
* There were some viewers who complained about ''Series/SleepyHollow'' being "[[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad too PC]]" for having a black female cop as the lead character in such a small, largely-white town. In real life there ''is'' a black female cop in Sleepy Hollow, and she even ended up being interviewed over the controversy.

* British TV show ''Series/CardiacArrest'' was written by a practicing doctor in a hospital about his experiences as a junior doctor. It was slammed as an unrealistic portrayal of life in a hospital by critics who had never been in one.

* ''Series/BurnNotice'':
** Invoked when Fiona's brother shows up to help Fiona survive an old foe come back to kill her. Long story short, the brother thinks Michael is Irish from an old operation and Fiona encourages him to maintain the illusion. At a certain point they need to do some recon work and are left to wonder how an Irishman will blend into an American crew. At that point Michael drops his accent and says he's done undercover work in America before. Fiona's brother remarks that Michael's American accent could use some work.
** This is also a LampshadeHanging on the fact that Michael has his actor's Massachusetts accent, despite growing up in South Florida, which doesn't seem all that likely, either. However (believe it or not), it is far from unheard-of for born-and-bred Floridians to exhibit their parents' accents--for instance, Creator/DavidFosterWallace reported (in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again") a group of four unrelated native-born South Floridians with distinctive Noo Yawk accents despite never having lived there in their lives...but their ''parents'' had. Now, Madeleine Westen doesn't have that accent, but we've never heard from his father (him being dead and all)...
** This trope comes up a lot in the voice-over narrations that Michael gives, explaining how real spy-work differs from the common public perception ingrained by years of action flicks.
* This is a common problem on ''Series/{{Leverage}}''. In interviews and episode commentary, the writers take great pains to point out how few of their villains' atrocities are ''not'' things that actual white-collar criminals have gotten away with.
** In the first season episode "The Mile High Job" the audio commentary points out that the LA Convention Center (where they were shooting) looks much more like an airport than the actual LAX.
** John Rogers frequently does write-ups and Q&A sessions for each episode on his blog. For episodes that feature a prominent character with an accent (e.g. the antagonist with an Irish accent in "The Bottle Job"), someone inevitably tells Rogers that the actor's accent sounds fake, only for Rogers to reveal that the actor is actually using their native accent.
* An in-universe example in ''Series/StargateSG1'' on the set of ''[[ShowWithinAShow Wormhole X-treme]]'' where, due to low budget, the producer refuses to finance a spaceship prop. Then a real, awesome-looking, spaceship descends from the clouds. At first, everyone is agape. Then a couple of stagehands are discussing how fake it looks. The other one replies that they can make it look "less fake" in post-production.
* Tim Minear remarks in an audio comment for ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}'' that they brought in a blind woman as an expert, so Creator/ElizaDushku could portray blindness realistically. But it turned out that when she behaved like a blind person actually would, then it looked fake on screen. So they went with more stereotypical "blind" behaviour. You can hear them talk about it starting around 38:00 of [[http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/2/5/4/25442b9c03c4be6f/sofadogs_dollhouse_1x05.mp3?c_id=2468103&expiration=1386874355&hwt=220fbf492561290e210c874f73dd58b8 this podcast.]]
* Creator/MarkSheppard - Badger in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' - has been criticized for his "atrocious accent". Although he's a Londoner, he's from a different social class to the character he was playing and therefore had to fake the Cockney accent; the debate is over how well (or badly) he pulled it off.
** With regards to other matters, some negative criticism of ''Firefly'' involved the fact the makers of the show do not allow sound to be heard in space (engines, explosions, etc). This is of course scientifically accurate, but ''Firefly'' was one of the first fiction TV series to actually depict it correctly, and viewers used to hearing sounds in space reacted negatively.
*** And then there's the endless back-and-forth between those who insist that Vera needed to be in that space suit to fire and those who know she didn't.
* ''Franchise/{{Buffyverse}}'':
** Long after the end of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', James Marsters' real (American) accent is still rather jarring to fans of the show, as is Anthony Stewart Head's real English accent... which is closer to what Marsters adapted for the character of Spike than the one Head affected for Giles.
** Similarly, some fans complained about Glenn Quinn's Irish accent on ''Series/{{Angel}}''. Quinn was, of course, Irish - and doing his best to tone ''down'' his accent so American viewers would understand him.
** And another set. Alexis Denisof, who played Wesley, does a middle class English accent so well fans tend to find it more realistic than his natural American one. Similarly the accent Amy Acker initially gave Fred in season 3 of ''Angel'' was found to be unrealistic by fans. According to Joss Whedon, Acker originally spoke like that (she is a Texas native) and her accent has simply faded from years of doing Shakespeare.
* The game show ''Series/{{QI}}'' (hosted by Creator/StephenFry) lives and ''breathes'' this trope. For example: Jesus probably wasn't born December 25th; there are words that rhyme with "orange", "purple" and "silver"; goldfish have respectable memories; and [[Funny/{{QI}} they say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is]], that there are no straight lines... though they later admitted ''that'' wasn't actually true.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
** The character of [[MagnificentBastard Tywin Lannister]] was introduced skinning a stag. Viewers heartily criticised the silly fake stag and ridiculed the scene. It was a real freshly killed carcass and Creator/CharlesDance was actually skinning it on camera.
** During the making of the episode "The Watchers on the Wall," D.B. Weiss thought Jon Snow's movements as he entered the epic battle scene were sped up in editing and requested that he be slowed back down--only to be told that Kit Harington really ''was'' moving that fast.
** Several non-Brit fans of the show have complained about Peter Dinklage's "horrendously fake" British accent. While Dinklage is, in fact, an American, his accent has fooled some native Brits, and seems mostly to offend the ears of Americans, who believe all British accents are either Received Pronunciation or Cockney. Since ''Series/GameOfThrones'' isn't even set in Great Britain, the point should be moot.
* Arguably, every episode of every 'ghost hunting' show ever - except for England's ''Series/MostHaunted'', which was revealed to be a fabrication. (Cast and crew members of shows such as ''Series/GhostHunters'', ''Series/ParanormalState'', and ''Series/GhostAdventures'' absolutely insist that no fakery is involved.)

* Any mention of the character of Spearchucker Jones on ''Series/{{MASH}}'' - including multiple pages on this very Wiki - inevitably includes the "fact" that he was written out when producers were told no black surgeons served in Korea. ''M*A*S*H'' is based on a real unit, the 8055th, which did indeed have an African-American surgeon on staff.
* Parodied in an episode of ''Series/OneFootInTheGrave'', when a woman writes a play based on a typical day with the Meldrews... that is, a day when everything goes wrong and a few surreal things happen that [[RiddleForTheAges they never manage to figure out]]. Her backer protests that there isn't a proper story, and it's not convincing.
-->'''Backer''': The bottom line is [[BorrowedCatchphrase I don't believe it]].
* In the early years of ''Series/TheAdventuresOfSuperman'', when it was in black and white, Superman's costume was actually white and red, because blue would have looked wrong (you can see it in the movie ''Hollywoodland''). A normal version was created for later seasons that were shot in color.
** This was an incredibly common practice in the black and white era. The drab-looking parlor on ''Series/TheAddamsFamily'' was actually pink and turquoise.
* Season 5 of ''Series/MadMen'' opens with a rival agency throwing water bombs on protesters. The scene was criticized for being unrealistic and having bad dialogue, but it was actually lifted [[http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/on-mad-men-an-opening-scene-straight-from-page-1/ word for word]] from a contemporary New York Times article.
* Invoked in ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'' when Mac and Charlie get a hold of a hand grenade and use it to blow up Dee's car. There's a small explosion which blows out the windows but doesn't do much other visible damage. They start complaining that they were expecting a fireball that would lift the car in the air.

* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' fans routinely complain about [[HealingFactor Claire]] being MadeOfPlasticine, and there is generally a good deal of validity to that. But one of the examples frequently cited is the time she broke her neck after being accidentally tackled to the ground by a football player. In reality, people suffer horrific and crippling injuries from being tackled on a fairly regular basis (it's what makes football such a dangerous sport), and those people are often trained athletes wearing helmets and proper padding, which definitely does not describe Claire in that scene.
* ''Series/HorribleHistories'' loves pointing out how our perceptions of history are often misguided or influenced by anachronistic sources that came later, such as the works of Shakespeare influencing how Richard III is remembered. Their two greatest sources of sketches are commonly held misconceptions and things that sound so ridiculous that no one would believe they actually happened. For example, if someone named a Victorian era character "Never," or a 17th Century character "Silence," the vast majority of people probably would think it was something out of a bad fanfic as opposed to a completely real name used in England at the time. They've also pointed out plenty of weird things that would seem trite or like a contrived plot convenience in a story that have happened in real life, such as dying on stage or having Dick Turpin be caught by having a kind of mentor coincidentally deliver a letter from him and recognise his handwriting.
* Terence Winter, creator of ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire'', discusses this trope in [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/boardwalk-empire-showrunner-terence-winter-dissect,84300/ this interview]] with the AV Club, using the example of a wire-mesh fence as something that existed in the 1920s but would appear incongruously modern.
* Students and younger alumni from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee often believe the red and white UWM pennants and paraphernalia used on ''Series/HappyDays'' are a mistake, but during the period in which ''Series/HappyDays'' takes place (late 50s and early 60s), UWM's official colors actually were white and cardinal red. The university didn't adopt its current colors (black & gold) until 1964.
* On ''Series/PairOfKings'', the protagonists are a pair of twins born to a mixed race couple; one black and one white. Though it is rare, this has been known to happen.
* In Creator/DerrenBrown's ''Series/{{Apocalypse}}'' (which stages an insanely elaborate fake ZombieApocalypse, with common archetypal characters of such films being played by actors), the "hero" of the story (who is an unsuspecting member of the public who doesn't realize it's fake) uses extremely stilted or cliched dialogue that would be laughed at in a B-movie, despite it being completely natural. [[JustifiedTrope It's unsurprising really]]; given that he's a [[UnfazedEveryman very-definitely-fazed everyman]] totally out of his depth he's not going to be thinking up witty or creative things to say, and will be drawing on the only things that will give him any familiarity with that scenario (ie zombie apocalypse movies).
* While police dramas or dramedies featuring police consultants like ''Series/{{Psych}}'', ''Series/{{Castle}}'', ''Series/TheMentalist'', and ''Series/WhiteCollar'' do play with the boundaries of reality, they're not quite as unrealistic as one would initially believe. Real police departments, military organizations and government agencies hire consultants all the time, prime real life example being [[Film/CatchMeIfYouCan Frank Abignale]], who after several years as one of the world's greatest conmen, was hired onto the FBI as a consultant and stayed for decades. Other examples include military embedded reporters, film crews who follow real police around, and laypeople with special skills hired or consulted by police in solving particularly difficult cases.
** ''Series/{{Castle}}'', revolving as it does around a mystery novelist shadowing the police (and one who spends a bit too much time indulging in fiction to begin with), often features in-universe examples of this trope. For example, in one example he was surprised to discover that using the EnhanceButton just made the picture all blurry and pixelated instead of providing a sharp, focussed close-up.
* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' took flack for a murder attempt audiences saw as too far-fetched in "The Sign of Three": an extremely sharp and narrow blade is used to stab through the very tight belt of a military dress uniform, which acts as a pressure bandage and prevents the victim from bleeding noticeably until the belt is removed hours later. Both attempted murders fail, as even once the belt is removed the bleeding is slow enough to be stopped by prompt medical attention. The method is very similar to the ''successful'' real-life [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empress_Elisabeth_of_Austria#Assassination assassination of Empress Elisabeth of Austria]]. The Empress' extremely tight corset impeded circulation so much that she survived for about half an hour after ''being stabbed through the heart'' because blood didn't enter the pericardial sac until the lacing was cut to allow her to breathe more freely.
** Creator/StevenMoffat mentioned during a panel at the summer edition of the 2014 London Film and Comic Con that back in Victorian times, the "221B" wouldn't have actually been on the door as shown in several older movies and TV series (the 2009 and 2011 movies actually [[AluminumChristmasTrees garnered criticism]] for not showing it on the door, amazingly), so with the show being modernized, this time he actually had a reason to do it.
* The producers of ''Series/TheBorgias'' knew enough about the real period that they could have portrayed things like the Cardinals ''openly'' living with mistresses and their bastard children accurately, but chose not to since they feared this reaction from the audience. Meanwhile, another series, ''Borgia: Faith and Fear'' played the DeliberateValuesDissonance for all its worth. As [[http://www.exurbe.com/?p=2176 one analysis]] put it:
-->I think [Showtime did it] because they were afraid of alienating their audience with the sheer implausibility of what the Renaissance was actually like. Rome in 1492 was so corrupt, and so violent, that I think they don’t believe the audience will believe them if they go full-on. ''Almost all'' the Cardinals are taking bribes? ''Lots, possibly the majority'' of influential clerics in Rome overtly live with mistresses? ''Every single one of these people'' has committed homicide, or had goons do it? Wait, they ''all'' have goons? ''Even the monks have goons?'' It feels exaggerated. Showtime toned it down to a level that matches what the typical modern imagination might expect.
* ''Series/{{Community}}'' has the in-universe example of the phone number for Jeff's legal practice. It starts with FiveFiveFive, which bothers Abed because it sounds fake.
* ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'':
** The actors portraying Fitz and Simmons were criticized early on for their British accents sounding "fake". Both actors are indeed British: Iain De Caestecker is from Glasgow, Elizabeth Henstridge is from Sheffield. But, since regional British accents are rare on American shows, a lot of viewers apparently assumed they were American actors trying for more familiar [[IAmVeryBritish Edinburgh- or London-based RP accents]] and getting them slightly wrong.
** Skye's character got a lot of criticism for several reasons in the pilot, among them being the fact that it was absurd a law enforcement agency like SHIELD would need a civilian hacker who had no formal training and had attacked their databases, or that someone who was homeless and living in her van would be [[MsFanservice so pretty]]. However, both are actually quite plausible; in real life, law enforcement agencies do tend to recruit criminal hackers, even if they've previously attacked said agency, due to the fact its more practical to put them to good use then lock them up and waste their skills. As for being pretty and homeless, Skye, being someone with a safe place to sleep (her van) and, as we learn later, a boyfriend who isn't homeless, Skye would be one of the 'invisible homeless', people who are technically homeless but live relatively comfortably thanks to owning a vehicle and having friends/family they're able to crash with when needed, giving them access to showers and personal hygiene.
* ''Series/BlakesSeven'' is often criticised for FashionDissonance concerning its [[SeventiesHair plethora of perms]]. No-one on the show actually had permed hair besides Jan Chappell - Gareth Thomas and Steven Pacey were just very naturally curly.
* In [[Recap/SharpeS1E1SharpesRifles the first episode]] of ''{{Series/Sharpe}}'', a Spanish partisan chief sets fire to a document using a strange item which looks like a barrel-less pistol. Very few people know that flintlock lighters of that type were very fashionable among wealthy [[UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars Napoleonic wars]]-era smokers, and many call it a scriptwriter's cop-out.
* When NBC aired 'The Gangster Chronicles' miniseries in 1981, the still living Meyer Lansky laughingly told his friends who were watching it with him that the real life Benny Siegel was far crazier than his screen version.
* ''Series/ModernFamily'': Sofia Vergara is in reality a natural blonde, who actually has to dye her hair in order to look like what American audiences expect of a Latina woman's appearance.

** It goes straight into [[FanDumb]] territory when you remember that Picard does not speak in what is Patrick Stewarts original Yorkshire accent ([[https://www.wimp.com/patrick-stewart-recites-a-poem-in-his-native-yorkshire-dialect/ seen here]]).

* ''Series/BrainiacScienceAbuse'' got in a spot of bother for pandering to this trope. The alkali metals (group one on your periodic table) get more reactive as their masses increase. The show demonstrated this by dropping them into water and watching the increasingly loud bangs as the metals liberated and ignited hydrogen gas. Unfortunately when they reached caesium, the large atomic mass meant, pound for pound, it was far ''less'' dramatic than the rest. Rather than show this interesting result to the audience, they repeated the experiment with numerous pyrotechnic charges in the tank. [[http://www.badscience.net/?p=271 "Science Abuse" indeed.]] Funnily enough on a small scale caesium is far more impressive. While the lower number metals fizz and occasionally burn in water, caesium will quite happily ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umn5YG3RBSM make the tank explode]]''.

* Any mention of the character of Spearchucker Jones on ''Series/{{Mash}}'' - including multiple pages on this very Wiki - inevitably includes the "fact" that he was written out when producers were told no black surgeons served in Korea. ''M*A*S*H'' is based on a real unit, the 8055th, which did indeed have an African-American surgeon on staff.

** It goes straight into [[FanDumb]] territory when you remember that Picard does not speak in what is Patrick Stewarts original Yorkshire accent. (Seen here https://www.wimp.com/patrick-stewart-recites-a-poem-in-his-native-yorkshire-dialect/)