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1[[quoteright:339:[[Creator/MCEscher https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/waterfall_detail_escher.png]]]]
2[[caption-width-right:339:M.C. Escher certainly used this for his art.]]
3
4->''"To some extent, it's understandable that space adventures play fast and loose with physics. After all, who wants to watch Han Solo spend years on the journey to Alderaan, only to find that the planet has twice Earth gravity and he can barely stand up, much less swagger?"''
5-->-- ''[[https://web.archive.org/web/20171027020431/https://io9.gizmodo.com/367792/bad-movie-physics-a-report-card Movie Physics Report Card.]]'' on movies like ''Franchise/StarWars''
6
7Writers often play fast and loose with physics --sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. This is usually acceptable when it makes for good storytelling and/or [[RuleOfCool just plain awesomeness]], and one should always keep the MST3KMantra in mind. However, an JustForFun/{{egregious}} violation of the laws of physics can result in loss of WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief, especially in a story that tries to be taken seriously, or if the error could have been avoided with minimal revision.
8
9When this is done properly, it can make for awesome action sequences and way-cool visuals --think ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' or ''VideoGame/BioShock'', for example. Done badly, it can ruin the atmosphere entirely.
10
11Some scientifically-minded individuals have a website devoted specifically to detailing these failings in movies: [[http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics.]]
12
13Soft science fiction uses ArtisticLicense for physics extensively, as do many video games, war films, and horror movies.
14
15Hard science fiction uses it too, but will often provide an in-universe explanation that goes beyond "it just does." There will often be some give or take to make up for the conservation of momentum or energy involved, which often makes for an interesting puzzle or workaround for the characters.
16
17Often [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] with the line "HowIsThatEvenPossible".
18
19Sometimes people think this trope is applied when RealityIsUnrealistic.
20
21A SisterTrope to ArtisticLicenseBiology, ArtisticLicenseChemistry, and CartoonPhysics (which fit RuleOfFunny more than RuleOfCool). See also GunsDoNotWorkThatWay and [[UsefulNotes/{{Energy}} this Useful Notes page on energy]].
22
23----
24!!Subtropes:
25[[index]]
26
27* ThreeSixtyDegreeSwingSetSwing: Swinging over the bar on a normal swingset without falling.
28* AcousticLicense: Being able to hear a conversation in a scene full of noise.
29* ArbitraryWeaponRange: Weapons have maximum or minimum range, even in outer space where they shouldn't.
30* ArtisticLicenseEngineering: A made-up machine that is inefficient, dangerous, or physics-defying.
31* ArtisticLicenseExplosives: Explosions don't work the way they do in real life.
32* ArtisticLicenseMartialArts: Martial arts are portrayed in an unrealistic way.
33* ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics: Factual errors in the portrayal of nuclear physics.
34* ArtisticLicenseSpace: Inaccurate portrayals of space.
35* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: A blatant violation of the SquareCubeLaw, these creatures should not be able to move.
36* BabyPlanet: A planet that is too small to have the gravity it displays, often having a breathable atmosphere and being able to sustain life.
37* BatmanCanBreatheInSpace: Characters spending time in space without any source of oxygen.
38* BlownAcrossTheRoom: Being shot sends a person flying backwards.
39* CarMeetsHouse: A vehicle crashing into a building is PlayedForLaughs with no serious injuries.
40* CartoonJuggling: How different types of juggling are shown in cartoons. The Artistic License comes from how sometimes, the juggler will be drawn throwing the props lower than they should be able to given the amount of them.
41* ConvectionSchmonvection: Even being near a fire or heat source can be dangerous, as heat spreads.
42* DoNotTouchTheFunnelCloud: People are safe in tornadoes as long as they don't touch or enter the funnel cloud itself. In reality, even the surrounding winds can kill.
43* ElectricityKnocksYouOut: Electricity causes unconsciousness.
44* FastAsLightning: Superheroes or other beings [[ShockAndAwe with electric powers]] are also frequently capable of super speed.
45* FastKillingRadiation: Nuclear radiation killing people faster than what is possible in real life.
46* FasterThanLightTravel: Travelling faster than light, usually in space.
47* FishbowlHelmet: Space helmets resemble fishbowls.
48* FlamingMeteor: As meteors are mostly ice and rock, they do not catch fire easily.
49* FloatingContinent: An area that's floating in the sky, defying gravity.
50* FreezeRay: A gun that generates coldness, despite coldness not being energy but rather the absence of heat energy.
51* GiantRobotHandsSaveLives: Falling on a hard surface like a giant robot's metal hands would cause injury, if not death.
52* GravityIsAHarshMistress: Various inaccurate portayals of gravity.
53* {{Hammerspace}}: Characters produce items seemingly out of nowhere.
54* HamsterWheelPower: It would take a lot of small animals to be able to power even the simplest devices. Less ludicrous if it's a human or larger animal.
55* HollywoodDensity: Things don't weigh what they ought to.
56* HollywoodGlassCutter: A device that can cut glass-- such devices are impossible in real life.
57* HollywoodMagnetism: Magnetism is portrayed inaccurately.
58* HomingLasers: Since lasers are made of light, they do not have any way to change direction and home in.
59* HumongousMecha: A giant robot or robot-like vehicle used as a weapon.
60* HyperDestructiveBouncingBall: An item bounces around and causes lots of damage. Usually PlayedForLaughs.
61* IceBreaker: The actual fact of "things become more brittle when frozen" is exaggerated.
62* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: Clothes that either break the laws of physics just existing or can't be destroyed for the purposes of looking good.
63* ImpossiblyCoolWeapon: A weapon that's impossible or inefficient in real life, but works in fiction.
64* ImpossiblyCompactFolding: An item that can be folded to ridiculous extremes.
65* ImpossiblyGracefulGiant: A giant object or creature, such as a Humongous Mecha, {{Kaiju}}, or WalkingTank, is unrealistically fast and agile.
66* ImprobableFallingSave: Catching a falling person without their weight and momentum injuring or pulling the catcher down with them.
67* InASingleBound: A character can jump impossibly high.
68* IncredibleShrinkingMan: A character shrinks.
69* InstantIceJustAddCold: Characters get frozen in ice, even though there was no water, or the water hadn't frozen until the character landed in it.
70* JumpPhysics: Jumping in video games breaks the laws of physics.
71* LadderPhysics: Unrealistic ladders in video games.
72* LavaIsBoilingKoolAid: In real life, lava is very thick and heavy and ''extremely'' hot, but in fiction, it flows like water, is no heavier than water, and the heat can easily be dealt with.
73* LawOfInverseRecoil: Large guns lacking recoil, and smaller guns having a stronger recoil than normal.
74* LightningGun: A gun that fires electricity, even though in real life, electricity needs a difference in electrical potential to flow.
75* MagnetismManipulation: Magnetism as a superpower, which is essentially [[MindOverMatter telekinesis]], but with metal.
76* {{Mecha}}: A vehicle with arms and legs.
77* NewBodyOldAbilities: A character has changed bodies but can still do all they could before.
78* MissingBackblast: Rocket launchers don't damage anything behind them.
79* NoArcInArchery: Arrows or other projectiles moving without the influence of gravity.
80* NoConservationOfEnergy: A character can do things without using up any energy.
81* NotTheFallThatKillsYou: A character can survive a long fall by avoiding hitting the ground.
82* ParasolParachute: Using an umbrella or parasol as a parachute.
83* PerpetualMotionMachine: A blatant violation of the law of conservation of energy.
84* PlasmaCannon: Plasma used as a weapon.
85* ProjectileToast: Toast flies out of the toaster, which would require an absurd amount of potential energy.
86* PunyParachute: A parachute that's unrealistically small.
87* PureEnergy: Energy is portrayed as being "stuff" when it's actually the ability to do work.
88* QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything: Accomplishing all kinds of crazy stuff with quantum mechanics.
89* ReactionlessDrive: A spaceship has no visible means of propulsion.
90* SandIsWater: Sand behaves like water.
91* ScientificallyUnderstandableSorcery: When magic ''does'' obey the laws of physics (or tries to).
92* SeaSinkhole: A circular "hole" in the ocean.
93* SelectiveMagnetism: Magnetism only happens sometimes.
94* ShrinkRay: A ray that can shrink things.
95* SlowElectricity: Electricity runs slower than in real life.
96* SlowLaser: Lasers move slower than the speed of light.
97* SlowLight: Light moves so slow that you can see it.
98* SoftGlass: When someone breaks glass, they don't end up injuring themselves with shards.
99* SoftWater: While water is softer than solid ground this won't do you any good if you fall from too high.
100* SpaceshipSlingshotStunt: Though only to the extent that it's treated as something insane and awesome. Gravity assists are actually a very common space maneuver in real life.
101* SpinTheEarthBackwards: Even if it was possible to do such a thing, it wouldn't allow you to go back in time.
102* SquareCubeLaw: Scaling an object up or down changes its properties, which fiction sometimes ignores.
103* TheStarsAreGoingOut: If the stars would go out, it would possibly take years for us to notice, thanks to the speed of light.
104* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: A Philosophy that uses the scientific method to figure out the "quasiphysical" [[TheLawsofMagic laws]], [[MagicAIsMagicA mechanics]] & [[ThisIndexHasMagicProperties properties]] of "Magical Phenomena".
105* SuperSpeed: A person can run unnaturally fast.
106* SwirlyEnergyThingy: A spinning vortex.
107* TimeZonesDoNotExist: A planet has no time zones.
108* TremorTrampoline: An earthquake bounces people and things around too much to be scientifically possible.
109* UniversalUniverseTime: As planets have different orbital and rotation times, it would be difficult to think up a standard.
110* UnrealisticBlackHole: Fictional black holes behave like giant space vacuum cleaners.
111* VariableTerminalVelocity: How fast you fall depends on who or what you are.
112* VideoGamePhysics: Video game tropes that are physically impossible.
113* WaterfallIntoTheAbyss: A waterfall on a floating island.
114* WaterGeyserVolley: A character is lifted up by a geyser, even though real geysers are very hot and would blast you to the side.
115* WireFu: A character does an unrealistic fighting move because their actor is actually suspended from a wire.
116[[/index]]
117
118----
119!!In-Universe Examples (that don't fit into a subtrope):
120
121[[foldercontrol]]
122
123[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
124* ''Manga/OnePiece''
125** In episode forty, a Fishman believes that dragging Sanji to the bottom of the ocean will cause him to explode from the inside...this Fishman clearly doesn't understand the way pressure works, or that there is the word "implosion."
126** Admiral Aokiji, who can instantly freeze part of the ocean. Even waves that come crashing down on him are frozen in place.
127** And Admiral Kizaru, whose Light powers frequently cause inexplicable explosions.
128* One of the main elements of {{Humongous Mecha}}s in ''Anime/{{Diebuster}}'' is called "Physical Canceller". It allows for such feats as making a FreezeRay of negative million degrees - with character remarking that it should be impossible.
129* ''Manga/CaptainTsubasa''. That aspect of the series, specially of the anime, makes for ''a lot'' of running gags in the Spanish fandom. [[http://www.lawebdefisica.com/humor/oliver/ There's even an article trying to explain why the characters seem able to bend physical laws to their will.]] So far, they've reached the conclusion that Captain Tsubasa's Japan is a little asteroid orbiting the Sun, which would explain why you can't see the goal until you reach the penalty area or how [[InvincibleHero Tsubasa]] is able to [[InASingleBound jump twice the goal's height]] to score with his [[ThatOneAttack Scissors Kick]], due to Asteroidal Japan's smaller gravity.
130** Also that, [[WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief since the football often leaves an intense yellow trail behind itself]], the laws of thermodynamics prove that in Asteroidal Japan, leather is fire-resistant. Why Asteroidal Japanese firefighters don't use it for their uniforms is [[WildMassGuessing anyone's guess]].
131* The same applies to ''TheKickers'', another soccer anime. Particularly a certain group of 3 people, whose trick shot includes jumping up, then doing multiple somersaults while staying in air for sometimes multiple anime minutes, somersaulting dozens of times in the process.
132* The [[http://www.absoluteanime.com/ghost_in_the_shell_sac/tachikoma2.jpg Tachikomas]] in ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'' are {{Spider Tank}}s that share the same size and weight of a small-sized car. They have wheels on their legs that can extend out into three-point toes for walking. Just standing up would present a balance issue if not for their AIs compensating that, but these same 4 small points of contact allow them to grip to a ceiling or a vertical plane such as a wall or the side of a building with very few problems. ''This'' is usually aided by the use of their synthetic thread-like wires, but they don't always need them to do so.
133** On top of this, they're also capable of jumping from high places without leaving any form of impact wherever they land, and they can climb over a chainlink fence without bending it even a little. Nobody questions how a machine of its ''size'' is capable of defying such common physics.
134* ''Manga/MyBrideIsAMermaid'' pretty much runs entirely on a combo of RuleOfCool and RuleOfFunny in regard to physics. For instance, in one episode, Nagasumi, [[ItMakesSenseInContext in the form of a mindless giant]], gets tricked into climbing on a space shuttle, which launches, carrying him to the moon in a matter of seconds. He gets back by getting hit by a magic lance that Sun throws ''all the way from earth''. It's that kind of series.
135[[/folder]]
136
137[[folder:Comic Books]]
138* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules'': Hercules, of all people, feels the need to point out everything wrong about Ego compared to how planets are supposed to be structured.
139* A 1950s comic by Creator/JackKirby has a MadScientist who hates humanity planning to fly into space to drop a bomb that would destroy Earth. He does so, but when he launches the bomb it doesn't fall as he expected, it merely floats where he dropped it off. Then he realizes ''he forgot there's no gravity in space!'' (That itself was wrong. The bomb, the spaceship, and he himself fall at the same rate around the earth). The bomb explodes, destroying the spaceship and killing the scientist, but leaving Earth unharmed.
140[[/folder]]
141
142[[folder:Fan Works]]
143* In [[https://www.deviantart.com/pencilhead7/art/Shield-throw-703365862 these]] [[https://www.deviantart.com/pencilhead7/art/Cap-s-Shield-704065946 two]] crossover fan-comic strips, ComicBook/WonderWoman expresses curiosity at ComicBook/CaptainAmerica's shield, asking if it's magic. Cap explains about how it absorbs and disperses kinetic energy, but Wondy [[LampshadeHanging points out]] the flaw in this explanation: it would simply drop to the floor on hitting a wall, not bounce off it.
144-->'''Cap''': Well, uhh... I don't know the exact science behind it...\
145'''WW''' ''(grinning)'': So... [[DoingInTheScientist it's magic.]]\
146'''Cap''': [[SureLetsGoWithThat Yeah, let's go with that.]]
147[[/folder]]
148
149[[folder:Films - Animation]]
150* ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory1''. In this case, optics. Woody uses Buzz's helmet as a SolarPoweredMagnifyingGlass to light a fuse. Unfortunately, Buzz's helmet is made of plastic, not glass, so it shouldn't be able to focus the sun's light the way glass does.
151* In ''WesternAnimation/TurningRed'', when Mei pulls her friends into her room to shush them, their spines seem to bend 180 degrees backwards in order to fit through the window.
152[[/folder]]
153
154[[folder:Jokes]]
155* A physicist is on trial for running a red light. He takes the stand in his own defense, and discusses the Doppler effect, eloquently explaining how the frequency of light one sees changes as one moves toward or away from a light source. Therefore, he argues that the red light appeared green to him. Unfortunately for him, his cross-examining prosecutor was a former student of his whom he had failed. The prosecutor asks, "How fast were you driving -- a hundred thousand miles a second? Within a factor of two, perhaps?" After some explanatory exchanges about the parts omitted by the physicist, the judge dismisses the red-light running charge and [[MortonsFork convicts him of speeding]].
156[[/folder]]
157
158[[folder:Literature]]
159* Used as a plot point in the Polish sci-fi book ''Paradyzja'', written by a [[Creator/JanuszZajdel real-life physicist]]. The eponymous Paradyzja is a xenophobic nation inhabiting a miracle of technology: a gigantic space station that rotates around its axis to generate gravity. [[spoiler:Except not really. Paradyzja is actually just a bog-standard huge building located on a planet's surface. School students in Paradyzja are deliberately taught wrong physics so they don't notice the lack of a Coriolis effect, and visitors from outside are forbidden from bringing many harmless household objects that could be used to conduct a simple, telltale experiment - when the protagonist accidentally leaves his earphones dangling off the table, he gets a strict warning.]]
160* In ''Literature/TheStarchildTrilogy'', the authors decided to throw out the widely accepted Big Bang Theory, not because they didn't think it was true, but because the alternative "Continuous Creation" theory espoused by astronomer Fred Hoyle (and, basically, no one else) let them imagine new life spontaneously appearing in the void between the stars, to take advantage of the energy available from the new hydrogen appearing there in Hoyle's theory.
161* ''{{Magazine/Analog}}'' magazine has a long-running series of short-short stories with the series title of "Probability Zero", stories [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin which sound plausible but aren't]], because of deliberate (and usually subtle) scientific errors. Many of them fall into this category.
162* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/TheFoundationOfSFSuccess": (ConversationalTroping) Despite being known for his hard science fiction, this work specifically advises potential authors to use "tesseractic fallacies in slick and mystic style", meaning it's okay to misuse scientific jargon [[PanderingToTheBase to attract fans]].
163* This becomes a vital plot point in ''Literature/LittleMushroom'', when the scientist characters grow increasingly bewildered by how the accelerating mutations of animal and humankind are defying all known physics laws -- the mutations can cause organisms to gain a lot of unexplained mass and don't require genetic exchange, physical contact, or even aerial transmission to occur -- until they learn that the reason this is happening is that [[spoiler:the scientific laws they took for granted are actually governed by mutable string theory-like frequencies and the frequencies have been changing into ones that are causing Earth's particles, including even inorganic materials, to gradually "mutate" or fuse together]].
164* PlayedForLaughs in ''Literature/SurvivalInAnotherWorldWithMyMistress'', which frequently lampshades the fact that Kousuke's video game-like super crafting abilities don't make any sense: among other things, he can create an infinite water source ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}''-style, violating conservation of mass. This frequently confuses Ira into near-catatonia just by watching, while other characters--including Kousuke himself!--mostly try not to think too hard about him having SkillScoresAndPerks in what is otherwise very much not an RPGMechanicsVerse.
165[[/folder]]
166
167[[folder:Webcomics]]
168* In ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'': [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff600/fv00515.htm Sam Starfall fails physics forever]], but then [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff600/fv00516.htm so did Ecosystems Unlimited]].
169* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'':
170** Discussed in [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-12-14 an author's note]], about the problems of portraying space combat.
171--->'''Author's Commentary:''' I suppose someday when I'm in a hurry I'll just drop a starfield into panels like this, black some bits out, slap some distortion filters on the whole mess, and then ramble about how uninteresting space combat is to look at.
172** There's also the time an AI archive blatantly misunderstood quantum physics, and ended up believing that, due to the amount of knowledge it had and the Uncertainty Principle, it had "quantum-locked" the galaxy to death unless it was destroyed. [[FacePalm Petey was more than a little annoyed]].
173--->'''[[DeusEstMachina Petey]]:''' The only quantum mechanics models that work that way are found in poorly-researched science fiction.\
174'''Archive:''' Location ''or'' velocity. Never both.\
175'''Petey:''' I know where you are, ''and'' how fast you're moving. Because you're not an electron.
176[[/folder]]
177
178[[folder:Web Original]]
179* ''WebAnimation/HomestarRunner'': In the ''WebAnimation/StrongBadEmail'' "space program", the Strong Badian Administration of Some Aluminum Foil plans a mission to send "fifteen Earth dollars" into space where, [[LampshadeHanging "according to our vague understanding of the theory of relativity"]], it will "age" into one million dollars in gold bullion. Then it's rendered moot when Strong Bad and the Cheat spend the fifteen bucks on a CD of humorous sound effects.
180[[/folder]]
181
182[[folder:Western Animation]]
183* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', when Bart, Milhouse and Martin are reading about how Radioactive Man was formed Martin says in astonishment, "I'd have thought being caught in a nuclear explosion would have ''killed'' him!"
184** "Well, now you know better."
185* ''WesternAnimation/SuperFriends'' 1973/74 episodes
186** "The Shamon U". Superman uses the vanes (sails) from a windmill to blow a space cloud away from Earth, despite the fact that there's no air in space for the vanes to work on.
187** "The Weather Maker"
188*** The title villain uses a WeatherControlMachine to somehow cause the water of a pool to freeze solid without the extreme weather conditions (such as a blizzard) that should be necessary to accomplish it. And to compound it, the water in the pool somehow completely thaws out a few seconds later, which should take hours to occur.
189*** An iceberg splits off a glacier and falls into the water, then sinks completely under the water and continues descending. This is impossible, about 10% of the iceberg should stay above the surface. Made worse by the fact that when an iceberg appears later, the narrator specifically says that icebergs can have '''up to 90%''' of their bulk below the water.
190[[/folder]]
191
192
193
194!!Other Examples (that don't fit into a subtrope):
195
196'''Note that this is not a trope so much as a series of things that may be goofs, may be a one-time use of artistic license for RuleOfCool, or may be a "proto-trope" in its larval stages, which will one day be common enough to be a trope of its own. As such, please list examples by "type" of physics violation, so we can catch these proto-tropes as they form.'''
197
198'''Also note that this is not a forum. If an example is actually not a violation of physics, remove it. Don't debate it here.'''
199
200[[folder:Violation of Laws of Inertia and/or Momentum]]
201[[AC:Advertising]]
202* There's an Allstate commercial that demonstrates how smooth a car ride can be by showing cars driving with various objects on their roofs without falling off. However smooth the rides may be, inertia and wind resistance would lead to less-than-ideal outcomes.
203
204[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
205* ''Manga/{{Spiral}}'' has a moment where Ayumu's {{sidekick}} tosses [[spoiler:a key]] down to him from a moving train. Needless to say, it falls [[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Inertia straight down]] in ''slow motion''.
206* In ''Manga/HunterXHunter'', one arc has the protagonists and their allies playing [[SeriousBusiness dodgeball]] against an enemy. The game is won by one character making the ball stick to the enemy's wrists, while the enemy was trying to deflect the ball thrown by the protagonists back towards them, volleyball-style. According to the story, doing so made the antagonist be pushed back by the force of the ball until he was out of bounds, while deflecting the ball and changing the velocity of the ball to the opposite direction would have allowed him to hold his ground. [[spoiler:The Law of Conservation of Momentum weeps.]]
207* More or less ''every'' [[ShonenDemographic Shonen]] anime which features [[KamehameHadoken humongous energy beam attacks]] falls prey to this. These attacks typically display little or no momentum transfer, while also showing massively destructive effects otherwise. This generally ignores conservation of momentum. Even if the beams are assumed to be pure electromagnetic energy, [[http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-57894.html photons still carry momentum]]. The recoil of even a city-smashing beam should suffice to throw the shooter around like a gnat in a typhoon, unless he's about as heavy as an aircraft carrier. And with the [[EarthShatteringKaboom planet-destroying attacks]] shows like ''Franchise/DragonBall'' regularly throw around...it gets much worse.
208** ''Dragon Ball'' is however one of the few that did actually use the beams to create momentum in the shooter, albeit rarely.
209** Also, it stands to reason that the shooter is always much more massive than he appears. After all, he has concentrated incredible amounts of energy inside his body, which serves as the power source for these beams, and logically must increase his mass, because energy also has inertia. Super Saiyan 3 Goku weighing as much as an aircraft carrier isn't all that outlandish when you factor in the incredible amount of energy confined in his body. Also, when fired from the surface, the recoil from these energy attacks tends to form huge craters.
210* Applies to nearly every MechaShow which lacks InertialDampening, ''especially'' those which feature {{Real Robot}}s bouncing around like pinballs. Although it's possible that the [[AppliedPhlebotinum phlebotinum du jour]] explains why the robot can move like that, most series fail to fully account for the effects of such violent acceleration on the ''pilot''. Methods used to avert this include, in order of increasing effectiveness, (1) reinforced pilot suits and anti-motion-sickness drugs (''VisualNovel/MuvLuvAlternative''), (2) suspending the pilot in a gel or liquid medium (''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion''), (3) encasing the cockpit in some sort of ArtificialGravity field, possibly phlebotinum-powered (''Anime/SuperDimensionFortressMacross'' and subsequent ''Anime/{{Macross}}'' series, although [[AllThereInTheManual not explicitly stated]]).
211
212[[AC:ComicBooks]]
213* The 1985 ''ComicBook/SquadronSupreme'' series featured a character named Inertia who's power was "stealing one person/object's inertia" and transferring it to another. This would be a cool and interesting power with many uses of its own but seeing this power in action, it's clear the character is actually transferring ''momentum'' or kinetic energy. Inertia is an object's ability to ''resist'' changes in motion.
214
215[[AC:{{Film}} - Live-Action]]
216* In the [[BMovie low-budget]] 1990 movie ''Film/{{Captain America|1990}}'', the title hero is somehow able to redirect the course of a rocket he's strapped to by kicking it ''really hard''. He kicks it so far off course that instead of the intended target, Washington, DC, he ends up in Alaska, somehow not exploding. And moving slowly enough for someone to take a clear picture of him from the ground.
217* In "{{Film/Battleship}}, the USS Missouri is able to perform a handbrake turn using the anchor. For a 45,000 ton displacement ship going under full power to execute such a maneuver, the anchor would need to fuse itself to the bedrock ocean floor, otherwise it would just drag along the floor slowing the ship somewhat, and be made of some super strong adamantium type material in order to not just snap off.
218* In ''Film/HalloweenResurrection'', a victim (played by Creator/KateeSackhoff) is decapitated in one stroke...with a foot long kitchen knife.
219* One of the many giveaways as to the staged nature of the Amazonian tribesman's murder in the 1976 {{mondo}} film ''Film/SavageManSavageBeast'', presented in the film as "found footage," is the fact that he somehow falls ''backwards'' despite having been shot from behind.
220
221[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
222* Some very bad simulations of microgravity were used on ''{{Series/Bones}}'', when Booth and Brennen interview an astronaut-in-training on board the "Vomit Comet". Not only did the microgravity-drifting actors push buttons and reach for objects without gripping the walls for stability, but when the plane leveled out and the characters settled back down, Booth's feet came down next to a pen and index card that were ''already lying on the floor''.
223* An episode of ''Series/DoctorWho'', "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingofRiverSong The Wedding of River Song]]", a train is seen driving into the Great Pyramid of Giza, here named "Area 52". Problem is that it's travelling too fast to stop safely within the pyramid - which it apparently does. [[note]]Then again, considering that the universe was in a massive TimeCrash at the moment, it's possible the Pyramid was using [[BiggerOnTheInside certain Time Lord technology]].[[/note]]
224* An episode of ''Series/MythBusters'' shows a real world example of what happens when you try to violate this law: The build team builds a giant pressure cannon, and when they test fire the cannon, it ''nearly flies backwards off the table it's on.'' Grant points out they'd forgotten to take the mass of the hook they were shooting into account when they calculated how firmly they needed to anchor the cannon down; Kari flat out says "we forgot the Newton's Laws."
225* ''Series/TheXFiles'' showed a falling elevator whose passenger was crushed to the floor - but two objects in freefall accelerate at the same rate (9.8 m/s[[superscript:2]]), so he would have felt weightless. In any case, the only way he could be crushed to the floor would be if the lift were accelerating ''upwards''.
226
227[[AC:VideoGames]]
228* ''VideoGame/MarioParty3'': In Tick Tock Hop, jumping off a rotating clock hand would send you flying outwards in real life, as once you go airborne, you travel according to you linear speed, not your rotational speed. That being said, realistic physics would make the minigame unplayable.
229* ''VideoGame/VectorThrust'''s Angle of Attack limiter is usually engaged to limit aircraft stress, but the player can toggle it on and off at well. When limiters are off aircraft start to behave like they're in space- you get things like planes flying backwards or sideways.
230* The Trains in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' come to a stop much faster than any real-life train. Taking only seconds to go from full speed to completely stopped. Most egregiously seen in the mission "Pouring Forth of Oil III." In real life it can take a full mile for a train to come to a complete stop even when using emergency brakes. And that's with modern braking technology.
231
232[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
233* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfSuperman'' episode "Rain of Iron". A villain on Earth fires an iron ball at an asteroid in space. The ball bounces off the asteroid and flies back to Earth. If an iron ball hit an asteroid it would just embed itself, not bounce away like a rubber ball.
234* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'', "Sonic Rainboom", shows Rainbow Dash managing to break the sound barrier and create the titular rainboom, saving Rarity and the knocked-out Wonderbolts from falling to their deaths. However, she then does a 90-degree turn while still moving at about the speed of sound. A fan did the calculations and showed that Rainbow Dash (and the ponies she was carrying) would have experienced well over 1,600 times the force of gravity. On Earth, this would not only kill a living person instantly, it would probably liquefy his body. On Equestria, however, all ponies survive unharmed.
235** Another fan did calculations based on a couple of other incidents, concluding that many things in Equestria, such as Applejack and random cloud-like swarms of butterflies, are actually composed of dark matter given the way they negate or transfer momentum.
236** The cloud-like swarm of butterflies, however, is easily explained when you recall that Fluttershy is a pegasus pony. She can walk on actual clouds, which are a lot less dense.
237*** In any case, it stands to reason that all of this is really just a function of the [[AWizardDidIt inherent magical nature of ponies]].
238* Any situation where say, a car is driving to the left, a man falls off the car and drifts to the right of the screen, then enters a stationary scene rolling toward the right which is the opposite direction they should be going. A result of the animator confusing relative change in motion between the man and the car, and the man and the floor.
239* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/SheRaAndThePrincessesOfPower'', a spaceship stops mid-flight when it runs out of fuel. Creator/NDStevenson acknowledged that the season was going to piss off astrophysicists on Twitter.
240[[/folder]]
241
242[[folder:Ignoring Friction]]
243[[AC: ComicBooks]]
244* The first issue of ''Comicbook/NemesisMarkMillar'' has the main character stand in front of the outside of an airplane...while it's in mid-flight. Before you ask, no, Nemesis doesn't have superpowers. Yes, the comic is supposed to be realistic.
245* Franchise/TheFlash. While they address the issue of wind friction by giving him an immunity to the heat generated by it, he should have tremendous difficulty with acceleration (positive, or negative) at the speeds he travels. Obviously ignored because the story of a character limited to the speed of a drag racer wouldn't be as much fun.
246
247[[AC:Film - Live-Action]]
248* In the ''Film/{{Eraser}}'' movie mentioned above, the EM-1 'railgun' is said to propel the bullet (roughly the size of a .50 FMJ) to a speed ''close to the speed of light''. Many of the issues of this statement are already discussed below, but a projectile traveling that fast would ''explode'' the moment it exited the barrel due to friction from coming into contact with the atmosphere.
249
250[[AC: LiveActionTV]]
251* In an episode of ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Daleks are fought (in space!) with WWII front-engine prop planes, [[HandWave "modified" according to unspecified Dalek technological blueprints]], that apparently still use the propellers for thrust, and which are able to perform complex maneuvers with no air.
252** Despite a handwave mentioning gravity bubbles in the episode, implying that there was a field of air around the planes, it still does not explain away Newton's laws of motion. We still wind up with a closed system with the propellers just mixing up the air inside the bubble.
253
254[[AC: VideoGames]]
255* The physics engines in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion Oblivion]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim Skyrim]]'' apparently don't support friction, which often leads to [[WreakingHavok silliness]] when it interacts with dead bodies.
256** The same is true for ''VideoGame/JurassicParkTrespasser''.
257** In Lava Tile Isle from the first two ''VideoGame/MarioParty'' games, there is no way the platforms would have enough traction to stop on like normal, yet still slide out from underneath you while moving.
258[[/folder]]
259
260[[folder:Ignoring Mass/Momentum/Etc]]
261[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
262* In ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', at one point in the third arc Satoko freaks out and manages to push Keiichi and his chair all the way across the classroom. Even the reverse would be very difficult, but Keiichi is a guy twice her size. Physics say "this can't happen". [[RuleOfDrama Artistic demonstration of Satoko's breakdown says "screw physics".]]
263
264[[AC:ComicBooks]]
265* In the first arc of the ''ComicBook/XWingRogueSquadron'' comics, an arc plagued with bad editing, a Wookiee swings a wooden stick at a TIE fighter in flight and shreds the wing that he hit. He's not even knocked off balance and the stick is still intact and in his hand, but the TIE explodes. TIE fighters ''are'' a bit fragile for starfighters, but they're still space-capable fighters whose wings work as limited armor. And, in the books of the series, they're able to fly quickly through a forest snapping the branches of trees without taking on damage.
266
267[[AC:{{Film}} - Animated]]
268* ''WesternAnimation/{{Up}}'': Where Carl ties hundreds of balloons to his house to fly away. The problem is Carl's house's apparent loss of momentum. Realistically, it would be almost impossible to get going, and then would drag you a hundred feet when you try to stop. Also, the wind would move it better than you, so you'd just be dragged the way the wind blows. And air pressure is far enough from constant that the house wouldn't stay even like that. They also manage to steer the house with control surfaces that are tiny in comparison to the wind resistance of the house, and the balloons, and there's no apparent effect the direction the house is facing would have anyway, especially seeing as it should have no airspeed as it is unpowered.
269* Stitch in ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch'', who possesses super-strength, is able to pull a semi-truck to a stop. In ''WesternAnimation/StitchTheMovie'', he actually keeps a spaceship from taking off by grabbing onto it. In truth, regardless of how strong he is, a creature of Stitch's lightweight could never do these things [[RequiredSecondaryPowers unless he also had super-anchoring powers]].
270** Stitch is dense, and therefore [[SuperDrowningSkills can't swim]]. He's the size of a small dog, and doesn't appear to weigh much more than one either; the six-year-old Lilo is able to lift him with minimal difficulty. Density is a function of both size and mass, so if he's able to pass for a dog in all respects, weight included, he should have the same approximate density as Lilo does.
271
272[[AC:{{Film}} - Live-Action]]
273* In ''Film/SpiderMan1'', the Green Goblin cuts the cable of a cable car and grabs it to present Peter a SadisticChoice. When an object hangs from a horizontal cable, it puts lateral force on the cable (to make it form a V shape, if that helps you visualize). A cable car weighs ''several thousand pounds''. Even if we could HandWave the Green Goblin being able to carry that weight, it would have simply pulled him off the platform he was standing on.
274* In ''Film/MeMyselfAndIrene'', Charlie's 'sons' manage to take off in a helicopter that, in reality, would have been unable to hover, let alone fly, with the weight of the three in question on board.
275* It's not like Creator/TheAsylum is known for being on the deep end of the Mohs Hardness Scale, but their 2014 film ''Asteroid vs Earth'' hinges on stupidity that may not even be quantifiable. Faced with an Earth destroying asteroid 1/4th the size and weight of the moon, one of the characters correctly informs the military that firing nukes at it won't work. He soon loses these "did his homework" points by raising another plan, that requires that nukes be set off in and around the Ring of Fire in the Pacific. By doing so, he hopes to create a magnitude ''18'' earthquake that will move the planet out of the way of the asteroid. That would be 18 on the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_scale Richter Scale]]. Pothole included for reference: every step up on the scale releases 31 times more energy. A little math shows that an earthquake of magnitude 18 would release a force equivalent to 12 '''zettatons''' (zettaton = 10 ^ 21 tons) of TNT. The crater from the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs only released 100 teratons (teraton = 10 ^ 12 tons). At this point, the plot is a non issue: no matter what is done, everybody on Earth is going to die.
276* Made the subject of [[RuleOfFunny a joke]] in ''Film/{{Airplane}}'', when the eponymous jet casually flies along and knocks over WZAZ's rooftop radio-transmission tower without suffering any damage to itself.
277* Effects artist Steve 'Spaz' Williams downright stated that in animating the jeep chase of ''Film/JurassicPark'' he opted to "throw physics out the window and create a ''T. rex'' that moved at sixty miles per hour even though its hollow bones would have busted if it ran that fast".
278* ''Film/WorldWarZ'': The zombies are able to breach the wall in Jerusalem by stacking on top of each other like army ants to form a crude human pyramid (and much later, are shown doing the same thing against a skyscraper to reach the roof). This ignores that, unlike ants, which weigh a tiny fraction of a gram individually, humans weigh a ''lot'' more than that; the zombies at the base of the pyramid should have been crushed into meaty pulp by the weight of hundreds upon hundreds of bodies on top of them.
279** The zombies also breach the wall specifically by hurling themselves over the top to reach the other side. Zombified or not, that wall is about a hundred feet high, unless the virus made them into supermen, they should've suffered crippling physical injuries falling that far onto bare concrete, preventing them from being a real threat (or at least until there were enough immobilized zombie corpses piled up on the other side to cushion their fall). Although... it's not as if [[Literature/WorldWarZ the original novel]] was exempt from this trope either (see "Pressure" section).
280
281[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
282* The novel ''Literature/{{Airborn}}'' has airships that use hydronium gas for their lifting power. This miraculous gas is specifically mentioned to be even lighter than hydrogen - an atom made up of a single proton. Let's see if we can figure out how many protons something lighter might have...
283** Also despite presumably being some kind of exotic matter, it inexplicably smells like mangoes. Exotic matter particles shouldn't really be participating in organic chemistry at all, let alone convincingly imitating a host of different aromatic compounds. (Although it's actually pretty clear by the second book that nuclear physics works somewhat differently in the world of ''Airborn'', [[spoiler:considering that there are at least one species that gets its energy from some kind of nuclear reaction which consumes ''water'' (or possibly one of its components) and produces hydronium as a byproduct]].)
284** Then there's the scene in the first book where the main characters have been left to die in a pit that's gradually filling with natural hydronium, which is deadly because it displaces all other gasses (like oxygen) very quickly. They escape with the use of a makeshift balloon...which shouldn't have worked, since the hydronium in their balloon wouldn't have been any less dense than the hydronium of the shaft, thus the balloon as a whole would still have negative buoyancy.
285
286[[AC:VideoGames]]
287* A common feature of WackyRacing games is the ability of lightweight racers to somehow keep as much control of their road vehicles on snowy terrain as they would otherwise. By all rights, however, [[VideoGame/DiddyKongRacing Tiptop and Pipsy]] should have their handling in the Car significantly lowered in comparison to that of heavyweights Banjo and Krunch, for example.
288
289[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
290* In ''WesternAnimation/AlvinAndTheChipmunks'', the opening depicts Alvin surfing in a bathtub, on a wave created by an electric fan. The wave supports Alvin, maintains its wavy shape, and stays in place for several seconds without collapsing.
291* An episode of ''Franchise/GIJoe'' had the Joes get their aircraft carrier stuck in a derelict graveyard, and the only way to get out was to rig up a sail on it. RuleOfCool idea, but aircraft carriers are ''far heavier and more massive than wooden sailing ships'' and would need one heck of a sail or sails, a very strong mast connected to the superstructure of the carrier and a ''very'' strong wind to get moving.
292* In one episode of Literature/MayaTheBee 3D series, insects are lifting a tree trunk with a lever by pushing the shorter arm. This would make the necessary force bigger.
293[[/folder]]
294
295
296[[folder:Radiation and Light Don't Work That Way]]
297* In general:
298** "Blocking" [[BeamOWar a beam weapon with another beam weapon]] is extremely common in almost every fictional genre. Even a cursory knowledge of how radiation works will tell you that clashing beams would simply pass through each other. Yes, even if it's plasma instead of 'light' as such, plasma is most similar to a gas in behavior.
299** X-ray vision or other alternate spectra used to "see-through" things. X-rays themselves will pass through flesh, and other spectra have a number of issues of diffraction, etc. Essentially there is a very good reason that humans and most other omnivorous species see in the visible spectrum, other wavelengths aren't really useful for looking at solid objects.
300[[AC:ComicBooks]]
301* In Franchise/TheDCU Daxamites are vulnerable to ''lead radiation''--for those not familiar with the periodic table, lead is generally considered a ''stable'' element in its most common isotopes, meaning it is not vulnerable to spontaneous radioactive decay in the same way that, say, uranium is. (This has been retconned into a severe allergy to lead, even in trace atmospheric amounts.)
302* Marvel's radiation seems to imbue, activate or catalyze superpowers if you happen to be a main character. At other times radiation is a non-lethal stand-in for some unknown magical force (for example, waves from Radioactive Man's radiation deflects Thor's Uru hammer). Radiation injuries, in any, may be represented as first to third-degree burns or minor heat injuries, but most depictions neglect long-term radiation poisoning, radiation-induced cancer, and radioactive contamination of the surrounding area. Specific LampshadeHanging, as in ''Comicbook/{{Ruins}}'', is an exception.
303* ''Comicbook/TheIncredibleHulk'': Gamma radiation is depicted as lethal to most any InnocentBystander, unless you happen to be the one lucky enough to survive, and survivors do not generally suffer from high amounts of radiation exposure. Gamma rays do not seem to penetrate through matter or the Earth to cause damage and destruction to any and all lifeforms, as such a detonation on the Earth's surface would likely do.
304
305[[AC:{{Film}} - Live-Action]]
306* ''Film/Plan9FromOuterSpace''. Everyone should know that particles of sunlight are [[SoBadItsGood "made up of many atoms"]]!
307* ''Film/{{Eraser}}'' features the EM-1 portable 'railgun'. It is fitted with an 'X-ray scope' allowing the shooter to see the target through walls. Human targets are conveniently presented as skeletons with a pulsing heart clearly visible. First, anything we see is either ''reflected'' radiation (the visible range of electromagnetic radiation) or radiation emitted by the observed object (like heat detected by a thermovisual camera). X-Ray meant to pass through steel and concrete ''twice'' are unlikely to reflect off anything one may encounter in your normal surroundings (X-Ray machines are essentially slide projectors with the body acting as the slide). An X-Ray capable of passing through concrete would also pass through bone with ease, and no mind is paid to the massive dose of radiation this would give out.
308* In 2009's ''[[Film/StarTrek2009 Star Trek]]'', after dumping the warp core at close range into a gravity well to gain some slight distance via propulsion, the ship and crew are immersed in a wave of sparkling light that can penetrate physical matter and biological tissue with no consequence, showing how coming into direct contact with an anti-matter reaction is both non-lethal and at worst, mildly pleasant.
309
310[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
311* In the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Allegiance", someone invisible is running around causing trouble. Carter is asked to come up with a way to make him visible and decides that the right way to do it is to get the [[AppliedPhlebotinum naqahdah reactor]] to emit a burst of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength between 400 and 700 nanometers. While this may sound like TechnoBabble, it actually means [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum something]] -- her plan is to make him visible by ''shining a light on him''. Given how closely the numbers involved match up, it's unclear whether this is a goof or just a ''[[GeniusBonus very subtle]]'' ExpospeakGag. Or both.
312* In ''Series/{{Sliders}}'', after launching a nuclear rocket at a comet to destroy it before it hits Earth, Quinn is surprised when it doesn't explode on impact, however, Arturo explains the delay is down to the limited speed of light. However, the light coming from the rocket approaching and hitting the comet should be delayed too, so it should still appear to explode on impact.
313* In ''Series/TheFlash2014'' episode "Family of Rogues", Cisco uses "ultraviolet imaging" to detect Captain Cold's cold gun, explaining it's the "opposite" of using infrared to trace heat. In reality, ultraviolet and cold have nothing to do with each other; you detect cold by doing an infrared image and looking for places where the heat isn't, since that's all cold is.
314** It's more than one kind of wrong. Infrared imaging is used to trace heat because it's the radiation emitted by objects at ambient temperature. Visible light is emitted by objects that are ''hotter'' (i.e. white-hot). Ultraviolets are even further ''up'' the scale, and would only make even hotter objects visible.
315[[AC:TabletopGames]]
316* 2nd Edition ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' states that red reflect armor blocks red lasers and nothing else, while blue reflects blocks all laser frequencies from red to blue. They explicitly lampshade this license, explaining that the game mechanics work this way because they don't want to deal with multi-prismatic armor (like they did in 1st edition).
317
318[[AC: VideoGames]]
319* In ''VideoGame/UnleashTheLight'', some of the {{Light and Mirrors Puzzle}}s require you to mix light colors to activate the pyramid. However, it follows the subtractive rule of mixing (done in pigments) instead of the additive rule (done in light), so mixing yellow and blue light would make green light, as if you mixed yellow and blue paints.
320
321[[AC: WesternAnimation]]
322* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'': "Raising the Bar": James Cameron's communication with the ship is impossible, as radio waves of cell-phone-transmission frequency can't reach more than a few meters below the sea surface.
323* In ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'', Batman dissolves a chunk of Kryptonite in acid, thereby apparently making all the radiation go away. The Kryptonite hasn't disappeared, it's just reacted with the acid, and if you dissolve a real radioactive material like this (for example plutonium in hydrochloric acid) the resulting compound (plutonium chloride) is still radioactive.
324* ''WesternAnimation/TotallySpies'': The infamous [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbTV4M0MUoI double laser scene.]]
325[[/folder]]
326
327[[folder:The Speed of Light Is Faster Than That]]
328[[AC:ComicBooks]]
329* In a 1960s comic, the Flash once ran across a room and back faster than light could cross it once. While this itself isn't a big deal (any Flash can exceed the speed of light billions of times over without trying [which in itself is a bit wonky]), he did it while he was [[TalkingIsAFreeAction holding a conversation]]. [[AWizardDidIt Speed Force powers GO!]]
330
331[[AC:Films]]
332* ''Film/XMenFilmSeries''
333** In ''Film/XMenFirstClass'', before Banshee's first flight attempt, you have Dr. [=McCoy=], allegedly a scientist, telling Banshee, "We need the sound waves to be supersonic!" Right, you need them to be faster than the speed sound... travels... at... huh? To be fair, he probably meant "ultrasonic" (i.e. above the range audible to humans).
334** In ''Film/TheWolverine'', while fighting atop the bullet train, Wolverine charges at a mook many feet behind him by leaping up so that he remains in the same place while the train speeds by under him. In reality, Wolverine and the mooks are already moving at the same speed as the train, so jumping would at best provide only minimal deceleration through wind drag, as opposed to Wolverine temporarily flying like he's Superman.
335
336[[AC:Literature]]
337* In ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' and its SpinOff / POVSequel series ''Literature/TheLostStars'', humans have faster-than-light travel but not communication, and FTL travel doesn't work within a solar system--so in the many space battles, characters' information is limited by the speed of light. Usually, this is done properly, but on a couple of occasions, characters on ship A see distant- ship B's ''reaction'' to event C (such as a fleet arriving from hyperspace) before A actually sees C (and they'll even have time to wonder what caused B to act as it did). Geometrically, that just can't happen--no matter where A, B, and C are, A will be able to see C before it can see B's reaction to C.
338
339[[AC:{{Video Game}}s]]
340* In ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'', you can travel faster than light with the infinite fuel cheat, but without mods that add warp drives, the [[GoodBadBugs Deep Space Kraken]] will get you.
341
342[[AC:VideoGames]]
343* ''VideoGame/MarkOfTheNinja'': During thunderstorms, you risk being seen by guards in a flash of lightning. However, to prevent the player from being caught by surprise, the thunderclap actually sounds ''before'' the lightning flash, not the other way around.
344
345[[AC:WebAnimation]]
346* ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'': Wiz was extremely flabbergasted when discovering the speed at which WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants unravelled the entire observable universe using only a single piece of string: 8.2 x 10 ^ 78 times faster than light, which Boomstick points out is as many times faster than light as there are atoms in the universe.
347
348[[AC:WesternAnimation]]
349* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewAdventuresOfSuperman''. In several episodes, the narrator says that Superman is traveling faster than the speed of light (186,000+ miles per second) within the Earth's atmosphere. That means that in ''one second'', he could fly around the entire circumference of the Earth (~25,000 miles) seven times! It then shows him moving for ''several seconds'' through the Earth's atmosphere.
350
351[[/folder]]
352
353[[folder:Wonder Twins Power! Energy in the Form of Heat!]]
354[[AC: {{Film}} - Live-Action]]
355* In ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'', James Bond destroys a number of attacking speedboats over a large area simply by dumping fuel in the water and lighting it; however this would have no effect if the boats were moving at high speed since they would be cooled by the splashing water (and its evaporation) faster than they could be heated; likewise, the bow-wave of the boats would extinguish the flames immediately around them. Later movies were worse. This ''could'' work if the area of burning fuel was large enough. Depletion of atmospheric oxygen by the combustion would cause the boats' engines to stall and the humans to suffocate, leaving them stuck in the middle...
356* In ''Film/TheWolverine'', a superheated adamantium sword is depicted cutting through room temperature adamantium. While (in the canon) adamantium can only be made malleable by superheating it, superheating the sword would only render ''the sword'' more malleable, not what it's cutting. Given ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'' already demonstrated that adamantium can potentially damage other adamantium under the right conditions, the sharpness and angle of the sword strikes should have been sufficient to do the job, [[spoiler:especially when backed by the strength of PoweredArmor]].
357
358[[AC:VideoGames]]
359* ''VideoGame/AzureStrikerGunvolt'': Tenjian, a superhuman with [[AnIcePerson the power to manipulate ice]], has the ability to freeze things below absolute zero. If we assume that temperatures below absolute zero can exist, they would actually be warmer than any positive temperature.
360[[/folder]]
361
362[[folder:Fire Needs Oxygen, Doesn't It?]]
363[[AC:{{Film}} - Live-Action]]
364* ''Film/IndependenceDay''. In one scene, a traffic jam that fills a traffic tunnel in Los Angeles is incinerated at once, and the protagonists escape simply by ducking into a side door. Even if that somehow protected them from the blast, and from the temperatures of several hundred degrees that would have been generated, the fire would have taken all oxygen from the tunnel, and any survivors would have asphyxiated.\
365\
366The {{novelization}} explains that there was a large floor vent in this room and that it helped serve as an air intake when the fire blazed through, allowing the protagonists to continue breathing. Also, the air stream would shield them from convection and cool them enough to counterbalance the radiation. Maybe.
367
368[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
369* In ''Series/BattlestarGalactica1978'' episode "Fire In Space", there are areas in vacuum that are on fire. And everyone just tries to spray water instead of depressurizing the area, which would kill the fire in a matter of seconds.\
370\
371This is partially justified for some parts of the fire, as there were personnel trapped in some areas with no life suits or escape routes. However, for areas like the Engineering, there's no excuse for not just evacuating and depressurizing.
372* A very weird example in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "In the Forest of the Night" in which Earth suddenly becoming a Forest SingleBiomePlanet is explained as the planet creating extra oxygen to protect itself from a solar flare. The logic appears to be that the resulting fireball uses up a set amount of oxygen, and then stops, rather than continuing to combust for as long as there's oxygen available.
373
374[[AC:VideoGames]]
375* ''VideoGame/DeadSpace1'' has a funny little story about this one. One of the weapons is a flamethrower, and in trying to [[ShownTheirWork show their work]], the flamethrower doesn't work in a vacuum. However, they also did their research about mechanical engineering as well, and the flavor text for the flamethrower states it uses hydrazine fuel; this ''does'' burn in a vacuum and is used in rocket engines in RealLife. This is corrected in [[VideoGame/DeadSpace2 the second game]].
376* In ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'', Scientist Keely wants you to ignite flammable gas in Vault 22 to destroy a [[GardenOfEvil botanical]] [[ScienceIsBad experiment]] GoneHorriblyWrong. Keely explains that you need to detonate explosives right next to the ventilation system pumping the gas because "the gas becomes semi-inert on exposure to oxygen".
377[[/folder]]
378
379[[folder:Large Objects Appearing In or Disappearing from Orbit]]
380[[AC:ComicBooks]]
381* ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis has several Earths appearing and disappearing in space without having major gravitational effects from their close proximity. Superman's yell is powerful enough to travel from the surface of one Earth to another. And a human-sized body flying straight through the diameter of a sun is depicted as somewhat difficult and straining for a superhuman.
382* ComicBook/TheSentry comes very close to the Sun a few times, for example, in The Collective arc of ''New Avengers''. At that close distance, the Sun is still depicted as having a smaller curvature than the Earth, while the Sun's surface depiction neglects many layers of the Sun that would severely change how it would be perceived by a human-sized observer at such a close distance. Even up close, it's still a small ball of light in space.
383* In ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'' the Green Geni are [[PlanetSpaceship traveling on an extraterrestrial body]] with enough mass to maintain its own atmosphere, but it getting closer to the earth than the moon does not seem to affect anything on either body.
384
385[[AC:{{Film}} - Live-Action]]
386* ''Film/IndependenceDay''.
387** The very presence of something as large as the mother ship in orbit should have caused flooding, earthquakes, and other severe problems with the Earth. And that's not getting into what the effects of it actually exploding in orbit would be. When it exploded, this would have been definitely been an "Extinction-Level Event" (to borrow the term from ''Film/DeepImpact'').
388** Also, it was supposed to be 1/4 the size of the Moon. Even taking into account that a lot of the ship is empty space, passing that close would have distorted the orbit of the Moon. Indeed the gravitational effects should have been detectable months before as distortions of the Moon's orbit around the Earth (which is continually being measured and can be done so with extreme accuracy). Plus the effect on the tides on Earth itself. And for that matter, the reflected sunlight from the mothership should have made it detectable by telescopes long before it even crossed the orbit of Mars, and once it was in Earth orbit, it should have been visible to the naked eye and have been at least several times brighter than the full moon.
389* ''Film/AnotherEarth'' isn't about people running for their lives on the appearance of a twin of Earth appearing and coming in close to our planet - it's about grief and redemption with the second Earth representing hope, but it still doesn't follow physics precisely:
390** The other Earth is always portrayed as "full" in the sky during the day (The way the Moon is full); it would have to stay on the night side of Earth to do that unless it was only being viewed at sunrise and sunset.
391** A second Earth-sized planet that near would really throw off Earth's orbit. It would also impact other planets' orbits, though to a much lesser (but still detectable) extent.
392** Even if the planet had been hiding behind the Sun the whole time before it appeared, we would have already been able to infer its existence from its effect on the other orbits in the inner solar system.
393** If a planet were coming that close to Earth, people would be more worried about a collision.
394** Ocean tides here on Earth are the result of the moon pulling on the Earth. Another Earth so close as to be bigger than the moon in the sky would send ocean tides over huge swaths of populated land.
395** And if it's ''that'' close, our own moon would have crashed into it.
396* ''Film/TheFifthElement'': Based on the stated size of an evil planet, at the orbital distance it is said to have parked by the time it was stopped, a ''substantial'' part of it would have actually ''been within Earth's atmosphere''. To say nothing of the tremendous tidal forces a body of its size would have exerted.
397* In ''Film/TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'', Cybertron, which is far larger than Earth, is brought less than 1 Earth-diameter away from Earth via the space bridge. At that distance, Cybertron should have torn Earth apart.
398
399[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
400* At the climax of the ''Series/DoctorWho'' story "The End of Time", the entire planet Gallifrey appears next to Earth and apparently has no effect on either the Earth, the Moon, or their orbits. Gallifrey itself appears to already be moving the necessary orbital velocity, too, since it doesn't immediately start falling towards the Sun. This is somewhat justified in that Gallifrey was still phasing into our time from the Time War and wasn't physically there -- but that's a whole 'nother [[TimeTravel issue]].
401** In "Kill the Moon", the Moon gets heavier without explanation, then explodes, hatching some [[BuffySpeak space dragon...thing]], which then lays an egg exactly the same size as the old Moon, all but the first[[note]]which drove the plot in the first ten minutes then was never mentioned again[[/note]] with no apparent repercussions. There are at least three different categories of this trope just in that sentence, [[NoEndorHolocaust without even accounting for the debris]].
402* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'''s grand finale had Clark shoving the planet Apokolips out of orbit. It was large enough to fill a large portion of the sky. Then there's the issue of how Clark suddenly had the power to both move a planet and counter the planet-moving engines, but that's another trope.
403
404[[AC:{{Video Game}}s]]
405* An accidental case happens in ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'', where the [[GoodBadBugs Deep Space Kraken]] can cause this sometimes.
406** PlayedStraight in a certain GameMod that allows you to move anything to anywhere you want to.
407
408[[AC:Western Animation]]
409* ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' three-part episode "The Ultimate Doom" revolves around--just like ''Dark of the Moon''--the planet of Cybertron teleported into Earth's orbit. While this does cause various cataclysmic effects to happen on Earth, none of them are remotely realistic (why would one planet suddenly appearing next to another cause a volcano to become active?), neither planet's gravitational pull rips the other to pieces, and Cybertron isn't affected at all despite the numerous disasters occurring on Earth's surface.
410
411[[/folder]]
412
413[[folder:The Wedge Principle (no, not about underwear)]]
414[[AC:ComicBooks]]
415* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]], [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 Vol 2]], [[ComicBook/WonderWoman2006 Vol 3]], [[ComicBook/WonderWomanRebirth Vol 5]] & ''ComicBook/SensationComicsFeaturingWonderWoman'': While Di does occasionally use her lasso to spread her points of contact with a large item, like a ship, when lifting it she usually does not and the structures ought to snap and collapse under their own weight from the way she's carting them around. The lasso ''is'' magical, and that magic is stated to make the lasso itself indestructable not whatever it's wrapped around. In ''ComicBook/TheLegendOfWonderWoman2016'' a plane she lassos does fall apart.
416* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'''s arch-enemy isn't Luthor or Brainiac, but the laws of physics. Due to the wedge principle, picking up anything substantially larger than himself would also trouble Superman, because he is exerting all force on one tight spot. The object would collapse under its own weight and/or drive Superman into the ground like a tent stake.
417** The worst offender has to be ''Film/SupermanIVTheQuestForPeace'', when he pushes the moon with little effort.
418** Same in the movie ''Film/SupermanReturns''. They [[ShownTheirWork did do enough homework]] to show him expending most of his effort trying to "brake" the plane's fall after failing to stop it by grabbing a wing --meaning Superman knew he'd rip right through the fuselage and cabin if he tried to stop it cold in midair-- but none of that research transferred over to the part where he then sets the plane gently down by holding its nose, or when he lifts half of a huge luxury yacht out of the ocean by a single piece of its framework.
419** The physical complications listed above have caused some fans to speculate that Superman's power is not actually physical strength and invulnerability, but rather a form of telekinesis. For a while ComicBook/PostCrisis, that ''was'' the canon explanation of his powers in the comics. It still is the explanation of the powers of Gladiator.
420** And again canon ever since ''[[ComicBook/TheDeathOfSuperman Reign of the Supermen]]''. It was explicitly stated that Superman had a "field" around him that was difficult to recreate properly when they [[ComicBook/{{Superboy}} cloned him]]. That field is the source of his invulnerability, flight and super-strength, and he subconsciously wrapped it around anything he was trying to lift in one piece. Superboy was just able to use the field in a more complex manner. [[HowDoIShotWeb Eventually]].
421* This has actually been parodied in an old [[ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse Donald Duck]] comic by Carl Barks, where Donald, granted superpowers, tries to lift a sunken ship into the air, only for it to snap in half and slam into him from both sides.
422* It was also parodied in an old comic strip by Magazine/{{MAD}}'s Creator/SergioAragones in the ''Mad Super Special Fall 1981: The Comics''. An ocean liner has run into a rock and is sending out SOS signals. Superman tries to rescue it by picking it up from underneath, in the middle of the ship's keel. When he does so, the ship breaks in half.
423* Speaking of Aragonés, he parodied this trope again in ''ComicBook/SergioAragonesMassacresMarvel'': In the ComicBook/FantasticFour segment, the Thing lifts a huge machine by a small point, until ComicBook/DoctorDoom points out that [[LampshadeHanging it would be physically impossible]]. The Thing immediately crumbles into the floor, pondering it's a bad time to learn Physics.
424* In WesternAnimation/{{MAD}}'s "[[ComicBook/TeenTitans Teen]] {{Film/Titanic 1997}}" [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz71HuUqTjI sketch]], a version of Superboy with strength and fight and without TK tried to lift the titular ship out of the way of the iceberg (from the front, or bow). It promptly snaps in half.
425
426[[AC:Tabletop Games]]
427* ''TabletopGame/{{Aberrant}}'' actually points out and justifies this in-continuity. Regardless of how a power appears to work, it is actually a "quantum effect" which may incorporate various side effects to make it work like it should. This happens subconsciously, allowing Novas to make their powers work like they think they should work. A mentioned example is a Nova lifting a battleship, which should at most result in the ship breaking instead; the Nova subconsciously wraps the ship in a stabilising quantum effect so it can work "like it does in the comic books".
428
429[[AC:Western Animation]]
430* Similar to the Superman example above, Tracy of ''WesternAnimation/FilmationsGhostbusters'' also has problems with physics. Example: In "The Curse of the Sleeping Dragon," a test of strength involves lifting a temple's pillar, thereby raising the roof. Tracy does this, but in real life, it would cause the rest of the temple to collapse! In the episode, it doesn't.
431* ''WesternAnimation/SuperFriends'' 1973/74 episode "The Shamon U". Near the end, Superman picks up a full-size sperm whale from a city street and carries it back to the ocean. There's no way the whale could survive that much force being applied to such a small point on its body. It would have been ripped apart.
432[[/folder]]
433
434[[folder:Relativity (it's not about KissingCousins)]]
435[[AC:Film - Live-Action]]
436* ''Film/WomenOfThePrehistoricPlanet'', more well-known since being featured on ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'', has a scene in which an alien spacefarer foots his mouth badly while trying to explain Relativity. He proclaims, "It's due to a warp in the time paradox." Nobody has to be a theoretical physicist to know that the "time paradox" should have been "space-time continuum." Paradoxes have nothing to do with how fast time passes on an object traveling through space.
437
438%% Homestuck is not an example of this section; Andrew advanced at least 4 different reasons why it could make sense in comic and not violate the laws of physics.
439[[/folder]]
440
441[[folder:If It Burns Up in the Atmosphere, You're Fine]]
442[[AC:Films - Live-Action]]
443* In ''Film/DeepImpact'', blowing up the second piece of the comet would not only not help, but it would also arguably make things much worse. If every piece still impacts the Earth (as in actually is stopped by the Earth or its atmosphere), you are still dumping all the kinetic energy of the comet chunk into the Earth's atmosphere! That's a '''huge''' amount of energy, dumped in practically all at once. It would still create a massive explosion, dwarfing all of our nuclear bombs combined. About equal to 10,000 times the global nuclear arsenal.
444
445[[AC:{{Video Game}}s]]
446* Early versions of ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram'' [[PlayedStraight played this straight]] because reentry heating was only effects that didn't affect your craft. Later versions [[AvertedTrope avert this, though]].
447[[/folder]]
448
449[[folder:Bridge to Nowhere Has Nothing on This]]
450[[AC:Films - Live-Action]]
451
452Any film[[note]]''Film/TheCore, Film/StarTrek2009, Film/XMenTheLastStand, WesternAnimation/MonstersVsAliens'', to name a few.[[/note]] that shows a damaged or collapsed suspension bridge tends to demonstrate a lack of understanding from the visual effects department of how such bridges would actually fail. In many cases, big-budget films depicting the mass destruction of a city will feature a scene showing the destruction of a famous bridge, the most common victim being the Golden Gate Bridge. Generally, the central span is shown as collapsing and the towers are pulled inward as if pulled down by it. However, a suspension bridge uses cables under constant tension to transfer the weight of the span to anchors or counterweights located at either end of the bridge, so the towers are normally kept in balance between the weight of the span pulling inward and the anchors pulling outward. If the span collapses, the towers would bend ''outward'' since the anchors would no longer be balanced by the span.
453
454!!Examples:
455* ''Film/IRobot'': The depiction of a damaged suspension bridge crossing Lake Michigan demonstrates a lack of understanding of how such bridges actually work.
456* ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'' has suspension bridges being cleanly severed in the middle, with the rest of the bridges remaining as they were.
457* ''Film/{{Godzilla 2014}}'' shows that special effects artists still haven't figured out what really happens if you sever a suspension bridge's cables.
458* In ''Film/IAmLegend'' the main spans of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges are destroyed but the back spans remain intact with main cables in tension.
459* In ''Film/XMenTheLastStand'' Magneto breaks the Golden Gate Bridge at the anchorages and tower bases and transports it to a new location in San Francisco Bay – still standing.
460[[/folder]]
461
462[[folder:You Can Survive the Impact If You Have Protection]]
463[[AC:Films - Live-Action]]
464* In ''Film/RoboCop2'', both [=RoboCop=] and [=RoboCop=] 2 fall over 100 stories -- but survive undamaged and unharmed, due to the durability of their mechanical parts. While their parts may certainly have been that tough, their organic parts still would have felt the crunch of a very sudden stop inside those metal shells.
465* Likewise, Indiana Jones in ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' can survive being hurled hundreds of feet because he's inside a refrigerator. He can also apparently survive [[Film/IndianaJonesAndTheTempleOfDoom falling hundreds of feet from a crashing airplane, down the slopes of a snow-capped mountain and off of a cliff into a rapid river as long as he's on a flimsy inflatable raft the entire time...]]
466* ''Film/IronMan1'': Tony Stark survives a fall from hundreds of feet in his Mark I. Granted, some people have survived falls from that height but they typically didn't have a horizontal velocity to combine with the vertical from an arced blaster jump. He doesn't even seem to be injured. He later gets shot mid-flight ''by a tank'' and hits the ground without even a cracked rib.
467
468[[AC:Literature]]
469* In Jules Verne's ''Literature/FromTheEarthToTheMoon'', the astronauts get to the moon by being shot out of a 900 foot long cannon. In order to reach sufficient speed to reach the Moon while traveling the length of the cannon, the ship would have to accelerate at 22,000 gravities, which would squash the astronauts inside it flat no matter what precautions were taken.
470* Jules Verne, CS Lewis, and probably others committed this sin about spacecraft leaving the earth: the travelers felt their weight gradually decrease as they got further from the earth. Both the spacecraft and the travelers inside would be in free-fall (literally falling) and be effectively weightless.
471
472[[AC:Video Games]]
473* In ''VideoGame/UnrealTournament2004'', you can partially negate damage taken from long falls by pointing your Shield Gun towards the ground and activating said shield.
474[[AC:Webcomics]]
475* Similar to ''Unreal Tournament 2004'' above, in ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'', Fighter is able to negate all falling damage while carrying all the others by blocking the ground with his shield. (Think of the ground as being a ''really'' big rock thrown at them, and he can block any attack...)
476[[/folder]]
477
478[[folder:Under Pressure (and not just the writers)]]
479[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
480* The second episode of ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'' has the Gundam Deathscythe fighting underwater with as much agility as if it were on land. The depths were far enough to be the giant robot equivalent of deep sea diving using specialized diving suits.
481
482[[AC:Films - Animated]]
483* ''WesternAnimation/BattleForTerra'': In one scene, two humans are watching a room in which an alien is in an alien-atmosphere-pressurized room. Then a human is put into the alien's room, and one of the other humans has to decide whether he wants the human or the alien to live by changing the atmosphere or leaving it alone. He ends up choosing the human, but then, seeing the alien's breather mask, tells his robot to save her. The robot cuts open the glass, at which point the whole window explodes outward as the air in the pressure room escapes -- even though this was ''after'' the atmosphere was adjusted to the same human-friendly levels it would be like outside the room.
484** The phrase ''cubic pounds of air'' is used. Twice.
485
486[[AC:Literature]]
487* The ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'' series: There's one part where suction cups are used to temporarily fix two objects together... in a hard vacuum. Suction cups do not work in a hard vacuum (since they rely on the pressure differential between the outside and inside of the cup).
488* ''Literature/WorldWarZ'': In one sequence, zombies are described walking along the ocean floor. Suspension of disbelief present with actively decaying corpses walking at all, they should be crushed flat as a pancake at such a depth. This is even lampshaded in-universe, but no explanation on how inconsistent their durability is is ever given.
489
490[[AC:Live-Action TV]]
491* In ''Series/DarkSideOfTheRing''[='s=] episode on the infamous Plane Ride from Hell, Wrestling/CurtHennig was presented as nearly killing everyone on board when he tried to open the emergency exit door when the plane was 30,000 feet in the air. At that altitude, the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the plane is so great that opening the emergency exit is outright impossible. The plane's exit door would need about 24,000 pounds of pressure to open at that altitude; by comparison, only a few human beings in history have ever lifted over a thousand pounds. So even if Hennig was the strongest man in human history, he still wouldn't have even come close to opening the door.
492
493[[AC:Video Games]]
494* The old arcade ''VideoGame/{{Xaind Sleena}}'' has an underwater stage ("Guwld Soa"/"Neptune" depending on the version) in which the action takes place in the seabed, but everything is as on the surface including the ship descending/ascending to leave/after retrieving the protagonist once the stage is clear.
495
496[[AC:Western Animation]]
497* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', the ship is pulled underwater and manages to withstand the pressure all the way to the bottom (they're specifically stated to be at "the exact center of the Atlantic Ocean"). There's a bit of a lampshade hanging here since when the Professor is asked how many atmospheres of pressure the ship can withstand, he says (with some sarcasm) "Well, it's a ''spaceship'', so anywhere between zero and one." (Futurama ''loves'' to play fast and loose with physics in general, so this isn't the worst example of bad science even in this episode.)
498[[/folder]]
499
500[[folder:Plate Tectonics Is Not About Dinnerware]]
501[[AC:Films - Live-Action]]
502* ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' attempts to justify its scientifically predictable doomsday with an obscure geological theory of crustal displacement formulated in the 50s. The film even throws in an appeal to authority by claiming that Einstein agreed with the theory. The latter is true, and the film depicts at least vaguely accurately what crustal displacement in action might look like. What it fails to address though, is the fact that the theory was formulated before plate tectonics theory was developed, something that didn't happen until the 60s. What does this mean for the movie? Oh, only the fact that the two theories are mutually exclusive, and since plate tectonics is now proven true, the other can't be. Furthermore, Einstein, while brilliant, was ''not'' an expert on geology. You wouldn't trust his opinion on plate tectonics any more than you would trust him with open-heart surgery.
503
504[[/folder]]
505
506[[folder:Gravity Blunders]]
507
508[[AC:Fan Works]]
509* ''Fanfic/MyImmortal'': At one point Draco Malfoy walks out of the flying car while it is still in the air. He is perfectly fine afterwards.
510
511[[AC:Film]]
512* In ''Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000TheMovie'', it's played for laughs when Mike releases the ravaged Hubble Telescope from being stuck on the Satellite of Love... and watches in horror as it suddenly drops out of orbit and burns up on the way down. He even points out that there's no way that should have happened.
513* Disney's ''Film/TheBlackHole'' depicts a black hole as an inhospitable wormhole space cave without the effects of gravity or density.
514* Chinese blockbuster ''Film/TheWanderingEarth'' has a very loose take on physics - the setup is that humanity has turned the Earth into a spaceship by strapping a bunch of rockets to it. The plot itself kicks off as the Earth is flying past Jupiter, only for Jupiter's gravity to randomly increase, knocking out Earth's engines and pulling it in. Needless to say, planets do not randomly increase in gravity.
515
516[[AC:Literature]]
517* ''Literature/RebornAsASpaceMercenaryIWokeUpPilotingTheStrongestStarship'' hardly strives for scientific accuracy in general, but one thing it actually gets right is the minor plot point that carbonated beverages don't behave well in microgravity (because the carbon dioxide bubbles don't rise to the top without gravity), so soda (protagonist Hiro's TrademarkFavoriteFood) is almost impossible to find, providing him with early motivation for his mercenary career.[[note]]He plans to save up to buy a house on a planet surface so he can drink soda freely.[[/note]] However, while this would make sense on a spaceship where ArtificialGravity is subject to failure, the {{Space Station}}s in TheVerse all appear to use CentrifugalGravity, which can't fail that way.
518* In George R.R. Martin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', the Wall is stated to be 700 feet high, yet people on the ground can fire arrows from ''wooden bows'' at defenders on top of the Wall and hit with enough force to kill. Not even modern compound bows could accomplish this feat. For reference, the average skyscraper is between 500 and 900 feet. This might be a good time to mention that the difficulty of accurately firing a bow 700 feet is nothing compared to the issue of not possibly having the strength to propel an arrow 700 feet UPWARDS (think back to elementary school science -- one word, gravity). Though it is mentioned that, of the thousands of arrows fired at the Wall over the course of one battle, only ''one'' actually managed to hit anybody, and that guy only died because he fell off the edge.
519** Most of the folks who spend time at the wall aren't even literate, never mind capable of trigonometry, and nobody has a 700ft. measuring tape lying around- given the state of disrepair the wall is in, it could be that it was 700 ft. tall once, isn't anymore, and people keep on repeating that number to each other so that way they feel safer from the ravening hordes below.
520** It's said that, when George RR Martin saw a video game that faithfully recreated the size of Wall as described in the book, he admitted that he "made it too big". This would explain why the action around it behaves as though it were much smaller.
521* In Iain M Banks' ''Consider Phlebas'' a crew is about to land on a ringworld, and the Captain tells them not to use their antigravity units: "Anti-gravity works against mass, not spin." Never mind what new physics they have to accommodate warp drive and antigravity, acceleration by gravity and acceleration by movement are still functionally identical, and what works on one must work on the other.
522** ... unless the technology was ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Literal "anti-gravity" would be a repulsive effect based on mass. If a person is standing on the interior surface of a ringworld, the majority of the ring's mass would be ''above'' him, resulting in anti-gravity technology having the exact (apparent) opposite of its usual effect, pushing him down against the ground. This sort of anti-gravity technology would, however, be useful for walking on the ''exterior'' surface of a ringworld.
523* Averted in Robert A Heinlein's ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress''. Soldiers brought from Earth to repress the rebellion on the Luna penal colony resent being there because it is nearly impossible for anyone to return to the Earth after more than a few months on the Moon because their body has acclimatized to 1/6 Earth gravity. The soldiers are also disadvantaged because their normal walking gait learned on Earth causes them to fly into the air. Also, a delegation sent from Luna to Earth must take long and very inconvenient acclimatization measures just to ''not die'' when they arrive Earthside, and every step is an enormous strain. The older of them can barely even sit up without straining his heart, and he was born and raised on Earth.
524
525[[AC:Live Action Television]]
526* ''Series/{{Smallville}}'':
527** In "Commencement", meteors are said to take 45 minutes to pass the atmosphere, when in real life, this takes less than a minute.
528** A big one in the grand finale. [[spoiler:[[MindScrew Just don't think too hard on how Apokolips arrives on Earth.]]]]
529* One ''Series/{{Bones}}'' episode featuring a murdered physicist who had worked at the Large Hadron Collider had another physicist say under interrogation that he was glad the BodyOfTheWeek was dead because of the [[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/03/29/no-the-lhc-wont-destroy-the-earth/ LHC black hole scare]]. Actual physicists had discredited the idea almost as soon as it was brought up because [[UnrealisticBlackHole Black Holes Do Not Work That Way]].
530
531[[AC:Theatre]]
532* Rossini's opera ''Myth/WilliamTell'' climaxes with the title character standing at the bottom of a cliff, shooting an arrow upward that kills his foe (who was standing at the ''top'' of the cliff).
533
534[[AC:Video Games]]
535* ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion II'' got "Graviton Beam" and Black Holes ''at once''. It gives a weapon with a special effect and something to navigate around, but theories of gravity do not work this way.
536* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' depicts [[ColonyDrop a moon threatening to flatten Termina and destroy the world in the process]]. Even discounting magic, in the unlikely event that the moon were to fall out of its orbit and towards the planet, the gravitational interaction between the planet and the comparatively tiny moon would cause the moon to disintegrate under the pressure of the planet's gravity before it could impact the surface. The planet would still be ravaged by rapidly rising and falling tides and increased volcanism from the crust being pulled by the moon's gravity, but an impact event is nigh impossible.
537* ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion3'' has several puzzles requiring weighted objects to be placed on switches on the ground. During these puzzles Luigi plus Gooigi inside the Poltergust weighs less than Luigi plus Gooigi outside of the Poltergust. In real life, a person carrying another doesn't make the latter lose all weight, especially if they're very much ''not'' a ghost.
538
539[[AC:Western Animation]]
540* The plot for ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' episode "King's Tide" involves a solar eclipse, which is specifically stated to be happening "when the tide is at its lowest". In real life, the fact that the sun, moon, and Earth are in alignment would mean an exceptionally high tide (in fact, that is literally what the term "King's Tide" means). This discrepancy can probably be chalked up to magic given how it instantly drops when the eclipse reaches totality [[spoiler:and the draining spell activates]].
541
542[[/folder]]
543
544[[folder:Not Enough or Too Much Energy Shown]]
545[[AC:Anime and Manga]]
546* Only every shonen fight, ever. Look at any big super-powered fight from your favorite long-running shonen anime and look how many times somebody uses an attack that could break mountains. There isn't a deafening sound, a bone-breaking, or insane knockback from the attack. Also, there shouldn't be any light produced by an attack, no matter how strong it is, nor should the energy from the attack be rooted to where it actually should go (a body, an arm, the mountain, or simply the ground itself). Lastly, despite thousands upon thousands of cracks appearing from these moves, no deafening, ear-splitting earth-cracking is heard!
547* ''Anime/ProjectBlueEarthSOS'' has a glaring example of not knowing their sciences. In the third episode, they launch an old fashioned space shuttle using oxygen and solid fuel. However, the observers are watching this craft take off from a few hundred meters away and are out in the open. Even ignoring the fact that the heat from the engine would likely fry everyone at that range, there is the rather large problem of sound. Space shuttle engines when taking off are loud, really really loud. They are loud enough to stop liquid from being able to flow - NASA discovered they when one of their electrical generators stopped working during takeoff. The sheer volume of the engine stopped the fuel from flowing. That level of noise would kill a human being for various reasons - including all their blood not being able to flow anymore.
548* ''Literature/ACertainMagicalIndex'':
549** Mikoto Misaka's railgun is actually incapable of causing that kind of destruction. Actual lightning travels faster than 1030 m/s ([[WordOfGod the railgun's max speed]]). Assuming that this is so and using the weight of a 500 yen coin (~7 grams), the kinetic energy of each blast at maximum is at 3700 Joules, around the same amount as a .280 Remington fired at 861 m/s. [[RuleOfCool But who cares about that when she's blasting someone off with her electricity?]]
550** There is also angular kinetic energy (rotational energy) to consider since a coin flicked at Mach speeds likely tends to spin like mad. But however much angular kinetic energy Misaka's railgun can realistically possess, the destruction caused by it does still exceed any attainable limits.
551** This may however have been a simple lack of understanding of the amount of power needed to cause that damage on the part of the author. Given that she's supposed to be able to generate an output of 1,000,000,000 Volts, it's entirely probable that the actual max speed of the railgun would be far, far greater than a mere 3 times the speed of sound. On top of that, the fact that all Espers are small-scale reality warpers means that its entirely possible that her power bends, or outright ignores physics, changing them to whatever she desires them to be.
552
553[[AC:Film - Live-Action]]
554* In the ''Film/{{Eraser}}'' movie mentioned above, the EM-1 'railgun' is said to propel the bullet (roughly the size of a .50 FMJ) to a speed ''close to the speed of light''. As the kinetic energy equation [E=(mv^2)/2] shows, the muzzle energy of such weapons would be 1,8x10^18 J, i.e. close to 300 MT TNT equivalent (which is 6 times the yield of Tsar-Bomba, the most powerful nuclear device detonated ever). Even at half the speed of light we're still speaking about the yield greater than the one of the Little Boy. Also, due to relativistic effects, the mass of an object near the speed of light approaches infinity, so the energy would be too.
555** Forget the energy of the bullet: consider the power density of the ''battery'' required to pump out the juice needed to accelerate the bullet over a distance of just over a meter to "nearly the speed of light". Instead of the bad guys trying to sell weapons to some rinkydink rogue nutcase, they should be marketing the power supply to NASA, ESA, the Russians, the Chinese, or anyone else who want to toodle around in space.
556* ''Film/TheDayAfterTomorrow'': The giant wave that washes over New York City should have instantly pulverized the Statue of Liberty and nearly every building it washed over like sand castles at the beach with the amount of mass and momentum a tsunami of such height would have. Instead, the statue doesn't even get shifted, and she gets to be the defining shot of the poster, while the main characters are able to survive the GiantWallOfWateryDoom by hiding inside the library above the water level.
557* ''Film/DeepImpact'' not only shrugs off the energy release by the asteroid hitting the atmosphere even if it's blown up into pieces, but it also greatly underestimates the power of tsunamis. A tsunami wave of that size would have completely levelled the city. There would have been no ruins left, only a flat wasteland.
558* ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet''. The protagonists are fighting a monster, and one of them says that their attack has no effect even though they're hitting it with three billion electron volts' worth of energy. Three billion electron volts wouldn't fry a mosquito, much less a monster; [[FridgeBrilliance no wonder their attack wasn't working!]] (The electron-volt is equal to the energy a ''single electron'' gains if accelerated by a potential difference of one volt. Conversion of everyday amounts of energy into electron-volts thus tends to give very large numbers; Newton's apocryphal apple, for instance, would probably have hit his head with an energy in excess of '''ten quintillion (a billion times itself)''' electron-volts. And not injured him at all.) It might make a bit more sense if they were referring to energy per ''particle'' fired; even something as heavy as stream of uranium atoms, for example, would need to be going at about 20% of Cee to deliver three billion electron-volts per particle. Beta radiation would need to be accelerated to over 99.99%.
559
560[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
561* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Near the pilot's end, a DOS-based computer is used for communications (and, after all, it is in part a Creator/JJAbrams project). That is after an event that took out a big part of all electricity and other energy forms.
562* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' plays fast and loose with the amounts of power its weapons and technology require, sometimes greatly underestimating power output and sometimes greatly overestimating it-[[FanWank maybe.]] It's hard for us to know how much power FTL warp drives and cloaking technology would consume.
563** Photon torpedoes are projectile weapons that rely on a matter/anti-matter reaction to cause damage. And yet for the most part they seem to act more like glowing cannonballs, mostly doing kinetic damage on impact. In reality, when matter and anti-matter come into contact they immediately turn into a great deal of light (most of that being gamma rays) and heat. So [[http://www.st-v-sw.net/images/Trek/Movies/ST6-torpshot-last-2sm.jpg this]] should look more like [[http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/a/a0/Antimatter_explosion.jpg this]].
564** In the ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode ''Riddles'' an alien outpost with 3,000 beings aboard is using 9 million terawatts. For comparison, all of human civilization used about 20 terawatts in the year 2008. That's 2,857 watts per human, 3 ''quadrillion'' watts per alien.
565
566[[AC:Tabletop Games]]
567* ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' rarely gives out hard numbers, but when they do they tend to be ridiculous. One sourcebook had a single line mentioning the power output of an Aerospace Fighter's fusion engine: the math worked it out to be more than 50% of the total energy output for the electrical grid of the entire US.
568
569[[AC:Video Games]]
570* In ''The Day of Σ'' OVA that comes with ''VideoGame/MegaManMaverickHunterX'', Sigma launches several large missiles, think ICBM sized, at [[spoiler:Abel City]]. Several of these missiles touchdown and explode, leaving massive, smoking craters. Obviously, the shock waves from the explosions should've leveled [[spoiler:the city]] outright.
571
572[[AC:Visual Novels]]
573* In the prologue of ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'', a three-meter wide satellite crashes into the Radio Kaikan building in Akihabara after falling from space. The building, however, is still standing with no worse for wear other than some minor structural damage, and the satellite itself, now embedded into the building, is largely still intact. In reality, the crash would've been far more destructive because of the kinetic energy the satellite would've produced from falling through the atmosphere at terminal velocity. It would've completely destroyed the building it crashed into, as well as level surrounding buildings adjacent to it and reduce the city block into a crater. And that's assuming if the satellite is even strong enough to not break apart into pieces upon atmospheric entry. However, the downplay is justified for plot-related reasons: [[spoiler: It's not really a satellite that fell out of orbit as everyone assumes. It's actually a time-machine that came from the future]].
574[[/folder]]
575
576[[folder:Escher Architecture]]
577[[AC:Art]]
578* [[http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/ Cezanne]] tended to tilt the table and play with angles so that more would be visible.
579* [[Creator/MCEscher MC]] [[http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/escher_mc.html Escher]] was famous for his physics-defying artwork. The example image is a detail from his etching "Waterfall".
580
581[[AC:Video Games]]
582* One of the later levels in ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry3DantesAwakening'' has a huge crush on the works of Escher.
583* The Distortion World in ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Platinum]]'' is based on Escher's works.
584* A puzzle in ''VideoGame/GodOfWarIII'' involves using a trick of perspective to navigate an impossible Escher maze.
585* ''VideoGame/TheBridge2013'' revolves entirely around resolving puzzle in Escher-like architecture.
586* A most likely unintentional example turns up in the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil2''. The main lobby of the R.P.D. precinct has a fairly steep incline leading up to the western offices, but if you travel from the western corridor to the offices or back again, you'll encounter no inclines, slopes or steps of any kind along the way; the office doorway somehow shifts you a good four feet in elevation whenever you pass through it. Once you've noticed this bit of {{Bizarrchitecture}}, the police station's [[NobodyPoops lack of restrooms]] suddenly seems a whole lot less screwy.
587* ''VideoGame/MonumentValley'' features several levels with these, including one water wheel that works (when you solve that part of the puzzle) like Escher's above.
588
589[[AC:LiveActionTv]]
590* The Escher Vault in ''Series/Warehouse13'' was ''designed'' by Escher.
591
592[[AC:Western Animation]]
593* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'': Fry and Bender visit an Escher-esque apartment when they are house hunting. Fry comments that he's not sure he wants to pay for extra dimensions he's not going to use.
594[[/folder]]
595
596[[folder:Fire Doesn't Work That Way]]
597[[AC:Webcomics]]
598* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'': Somewhere A Physicist Is Crying. That would be Panel 3 of [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-10-04 this strip]]. And he cries some more in [[http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2010-10-11 this strip]].
599** Turns out this one is simple: A summoner wanted a fire monster, but there's no such thing as "living fire," so he ended up creating a monster that looks like fire but isn't actually hot and can be "extinguished."
600** The comic's 'New Readers Guide' immediately warns us thusly: "WARNING: Often ignores the laws of physics." found [[http://www.egscomics.com/new-readers here]]
601* ''Anime/{{Promare}}'': The Burnish can manipulate and produce fire, which Lio, Guiera and Meis convert into solid matter to create armor, weapons and vehicles, and some non-Burnish characters are even shown to run on fire in its basic form. It's commonly known that you can't make fire into a solid, and you definitely can't run on top of it due to it being a chemical reaction. [[spoiler:Possibly subverted, since the flames are actually [[MakesSenseInContext aliens called Promare]], though this doesn't explain why everyone would constantly mistake them for real fire]].
602[[/folder]]
603
604[[folder:Steam Does Not Puff That Way]]
605Works of fiction that involve steam power sometimes overlook the basic way in which steam power actually works, or ignore the fine details so as to not bog down the storyline.
606
607Specifically, transgressions include:
608* Steam engines are hungry. They use enormous quantities of fuel at a much less efficient rate than internal combustion engines and have to be periodically refilled with water. Not only does this mean that operating a steam-powered machine quite labor-intensive, but the infrastructure needed to meet these demands is also often overlooked.
609* Between the combined weight of the engine, the aforementioned extravagant amounts of fuel, and the water required to make a boiler function, it is often stated that steam-powered flying machines are a flat impossibility (there is no way to make a steam engine efficient enough to overcome all that extra weight). This is not actually true. [[http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/steamplane/steamplane.htm Steam-powered airplanes]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_aircraft have been made and flown.]]
610* Steam power is dangerous. The steam pressure and boiler levels must be constantly monitored to keep the whole thing from exploding.
611* Steam power is filthy, at least when the heat source is an actual fire and not {{phlebotinum}} [[labelnote:or nuclear]] All nuclear power plants are is a ''really'' powerful heat source and a heat exchanger making steam to turn turbines.[[/labelnote]]. Anyone or anything in the vicinity of the machine is going to get dirty with soot and possibly coal dust. The machine in question will also have to be manually cleaned of ash and minerals built up inside of the boiler. Plus the staggering levels of smog and pollution in a steam-based society--the famous London Smog, for instance, came from so many residences and factories burning coal and venting the smoke right into the air.
612** Of course, this only applies to coal-fired boilers. Fuel oil and natural gas burn much cleaner, and when properly adjusted produce very little soot or visible smoke. Even modern coal-fired power plants are equipped to filter out almost all soot and cinders before they reach the chimney...though that doesn't quite remove all the [[DeadlyGas sulfur dioxide and mercury vapor]].
613* The reason steam is used in power plants is that it is very nearly the only way to convert heat into motion, and that motion to electricity is pretty damn efficient, upwards of 80%. This is also why wind and water power are so popular; they convert directly from motion to electricity. The conversion from coal to heating to steam, however, is something much less efficient, about 30% efficient. The reason steam power is used is that it works anywhere and on any fuel, not because inefficiency is a desirable thing.
614
615!!Examples:
616* ''Anime/{{Steamboy}}''. The entire concept of the story - the idea that you can compress steam, and store incredible quantities of it in a tiny sphere, so long as the water you used is pure enough - is pure balderdash. The movie ignores the simple fact that if you compress any gas sufficiently, it will condense into supercritical fluid. The more pressure the gas is under, the more heat is required to maintain it in gaseous form, which would mean that the tale's McGuffin would have to be so hot that it would have vaporised the metal it was made of.
617* Disney's ''WesternAnimation/AtlantisTheLostEmpire'' did a good job with this, at first. The submarine had several shots of a realistically designed boiler and engine room, and later, [[spoiler:after the submarine was incapacitated and abandoned]], the convoy of wheeled vehicles appears to include a giant tank of water. However, the film fails hard when "The Digger" rolls onto the scene. From the outset, this vehicle doesn't seem to have near enough boiler space (the moving parts alone are as big as a pickup!) When it briefly breaks down, it backfires flame--Audry then suggests fixing it ''with a part from a gasoline/diesel truck.'' Worst of all is when it starts making an idling sound like an internal combustion engine--seconds after Milo starts fiddling with the boiler.
618* The spider, the wheelchair, and many other gadgets from the 1999 ''Film/WildWildWest'' film are stated to operate on steam but do not appear to have any provisions for carrying and delivering fuel and water.
619* The three fireplace-sized logs that Doc gives to Marty in ''Film/BackToTheFuturePartIII'' would ''not'' be sufficient to run a steam locomotive for a mile or more. This example overlaps with JustTrainWrong, because the idea behind a steam locomotive is to produce a steady, even source of heat and raise the water/steam temperature incrementally. Since there's such a large volume of fluid [[OvenLogic a significant, but short burst of heat]] probably wouldn't be sufficient to raise the pressure in any significant way. Not only that, but such a dramatic means of powering the train wasn't even necessary. Some trains of the late-19th century were ''more'' than capable of achieving the speeds required by the [=DeLorean=] under the normal capabilities of their boilers, and on properly built and maintained track. However, whether the class of locomotive shown or the underlying track would have supported / survived this effort tends to bring us back to this trope.
620[[/folder]]
621
622[[folder:Buoyancy Matters / Will It Float]]
623
624Many, many, many stories (particularly [=SciFi=] ones) seem to completely forget that there is a huge difference between the support that water, air, and space (vacuum) give to a vessel. Things which are specifically constructed to work in one medium's density absolutely will not work in any other medium unless specific consideration is given to constructing that item with both mediums in mind.
625
626The primary offender is waterborne vessels being raised out of the water, and not immediately breaking apart. The buoyancy effect of water is ''very'' substantial, and ships are specifically constructed to take advantage of that fact. Unless very extensive support is given to the vessel (i.e. practically the entire length and beam of the ship receiving physical support), the stress on the hull will immediately cause it to fracture apart in many places.
627
628In other places, it's exemplified by "zeppelin-like" entities flying around, where the size of the buoyant airbag is ludicrously smaller than required for the size of the supporting gondola (or, more typically, full-sized ship hull) hung below. Even familiar things like ''ice in water'' can vary in whether they're buoyant or not, if it's more convenient for writers to ignore what does, or does not, float.
629
630While many fantasy and [=SciFi=] settings can handwave this problem away (due to Forcefields or the like providing sufficient support, or just plain magic), this is still a considerable problem.
631
632!!Examples
633* The (in)famous "baseball boat" of ''Film/PacificRim'' - where one of the HumongousMecha drags a long, skinny (but still massive) freighter along behind it, like a caveman would drag a club. And then proceeds to use that vessel like a baseball bat. Then again, [[RuleOfCool who cares about physics when a mecha is beating the hell out of a kaiju with a ship?]]
634* ''Film/TheMummyReturns'' with the zeppelin-boat thing, which is a classic case of not-enough-bag for too-much-ship problem.
635* In ''WesternAnimation/TheWaterBabies1978'', the buoyancy of ''ice'' is evidently negated when you cut a chunk of it off an iceberg, as the heroes do to bombard the villain's underwater lair.
636[[/folder]]
637
638[[folder:Space Is Not an Ocean / Space Is Not Like Flying in Atmosphere]]
639
640Writers seem to ignore the fact that pretty much all "typical" effects behave differently in the vacuum and (mostly) non-existent gravity of space.
641
642Specifically:
643* With no atmosphere to provide lift, craft do not "swoop" or "fly" in any way resembling aircraft.
644* Construction of spacecraft is radically different than for aircraft or ships, as stress from maneuvering can come from ''any'' direction, requiring radically different configurations. Designs that look like aircraft or ships absolutely will not work in space (though some leeway can be given to spacecraft that look like aircraft because they are also meant to fly in an atmosphere).
645* Related to the Violating the Laws of Inertia above, writers completely ignore the fact that, in space, objects will continue moving in a straight line, at a fixed velocity, unless some outside force acts upon that object. This is a '''huge''' issue with correctly depicting space combat.
646* Changes in direction require maneuvering thrusters pointing in several directions. A single fixed-direction main engine can not effectively change the craft's direction. Unless the writers are smart enough to show a ship gimballing in different directions before applying thrust. This requires showing the craft continue in a fixed direction, spin about on a central point (while still traveling in the original direction), then applying thrust to change direction.
647** There is an exception to this in the form of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wheel reaction wheels]], which are used to convert electricity into angular momentum. However, these can only be used to rotate a spacecraft, so maneuvering thrusters are still required for translation (moving sideways).
648* As there is no friction (or atmospheric drag) in space, ballistic weaponry has '''no''' maximum effective range. Kinetic weapons (i.e. bullets) do not "arc" in their flight path. There is no "indirect fire" for ballistic weapons in space. (That is, unless there is a nearby gravity well).
649** For similar reasons, engines only need to fire when changing speed or direction, not fire continuously to maintain a fixed speed.
650** Likewise, there is no "Top Speed" of a vessel in space - the only limit to your speed in space is the total amount of thrust you can achieve by burning through your entire fuel supply. Or the speed of light, if you're dealing with relativistic scales.
651** Even interstellar space is not ''truly'' empty, so there ''is'' still "friction" in space ... just not very much of it. If you're going fast enough for it to be a factor, you've got other issues to worry about. In the ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' novels, they ''were'' going that fast, and this was a plot point. Inter''galactic'' space is considerably emptier, so ships were able to travel a lot faster between galaxies than they could within a galaxy.
652* There is no "up" or "down" in space. Vessels do not have to always be oriented in a single direction, and, in fact, there is considerable reason to NOT have them all oriented the same way, even if they're traveling in the same direction.
653** For identical reasons, combat is much more 3-dimensional than even air combat. Rolling or spinning a ship while maintaining a fixed directional velocity is something that is a massive advantage in space combat.
654* Maneuverability (i.e. ability to accelerate in different directions) is almost exclusively tied to thrust/mass ratios. For a variety of reasons (including having to carry around reaction mass in many cases), very small ships will be ''substantially'' less agile than medium-sized ones.
655
656While technically not specifically under this (possible) subtrope, gross violations of the Inverse Square Law for energy intensity are common due to this effect, as the limited ranges common for water/air combat seldom cause the writers to think about how energy intensity is affected by the vastly different distances common in space. For example, it's easy to shoot a laser beam at an opponent a couple of miles away, and not presume too much loss of effect. Shooting the same beam at a spacecraft tens of thousands of miles away, on the other hand, will cause a potential "death beam" to feel like a penlight pointer when it hits the target.
657
658!!Examples:
659* Science fiction films have long treated space flight (and combat) as virtually identical to UsefulNotes/WW2 carriers and ship/aircraft battles. Pick virtually any space opera or space fantasy story, and the spaceflight and space combat physics are '''completely''' wrong.
660** The Star Fury of ''Series/BabylonFive'' is one of the very, very few instances where proper use of maneuvering thrust and gimballing is shown properly. Virtually everyone else shows it wrong. Including all the larger ships in that series.
661** The ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series has a long history of wavering between acknowledging this and the RuleOfPerception, given the series is meant in large part as an {{homage}} to classic space opera. So the [[EncyclopediaExposita Codex]] correctly takes all of these factors into account, and then the cutscene artists make the ships fly around like Spitfires anyway because [[TheCoconutEffect it would look wrong if they didn't]].
662-->'''Joker:''' It takes ''skill'' to bank a ship in space. Don't think that it doesn't.
663* ''VideoGame/EveOnline'' actually subverts this trope in one way while opening up physics issues in others. The region of space in which EVE takes place is described as having a fluidic nature, meaning that ships and projectiles are exposed to drag, sound can propagate through space, and ships that lose power slow and eventually stop, requiring constant thrust and having a relatively low top speed limit. However, this excuse goes out the window with ship designs. In fluidic space, ships would ideally be hydrodynamic for efficiency purposes, while many EVE ships have boxy, inefficient designs and many are ridiculously asymmetrical, which would create very imbalanced maneuverability problems.
664* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' had a strip where the ship made a quick u-turn... in space. The footnote did point out that under ''normal'' conditions any u-turn has to make a wide arc (to avoid breaking the ship on either side of the "pivot point" from stress as different parts are moving in different directions), and even the fact that ships in the Schlock universe have "inertics" and gravity-manipulation to help hold things together, the travel arc still wouldn't (likely) end up as narrow as shown. Net judgment: it doesn't matter, because [[RuleOfCool it looks good]].
665* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Lord Uvo has spacecraft that are shaped essentially like a football with a single source of fixed propulsion at the tail end and no wings to speak of, which he uses to fly and even hover ''in atmosphere''.
666* ''VideoGame/HeavenlyBodies'''s default difficulty setting isn't the largely physically-accurate Newtonian mode, but a modified version of it that allows the player to move through the vacuum of space by flapping their arms. It works like swimming and is there to make it more difficult to go careening off into space with no way to turn back.
667[[/folder]]

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