Live-Action Films / Aluminum Christmas Trees

These things in live-action movies are 100% real.

The presence of black cowboys in recent westerns. Many cowboys in The Wild West in the 1870s-'90s were freedmen (or transplanted Hispanic Mexicans, as cowboys were the American development of the vaquero); many black people were attracted to cowboy work because discrimination wasn't as bad in the West as it was in the South, and freedmen often had experience handling animals from their time in slavery. It is their absence from the classic Western format of the '30s through early '60s that is inaccurate, a likely consequence of the fact that the glory days of the Western as a genre coincided almost exactly with the heyday of The Hays Code, which discouraged filmmakers from giving black people strong roles. This omission is hinted at in The Cowboy Way through one of the two main characters' skepticism concerning the existence of famous black rodeo performer Bill Pickett. Then again, very few characters in Westerns are actually cowboys, i.e., they don't drive cattle to market to earn their living.
Movies and TV series, often considered cult nowadays, made by the director Stanisław Bareja after 1970, display many absurdities of living in the People's Republic of Poland that seem surreal even to Polish viewers if they are too young to remember this era.

55 Days at Peking: Because it was filmed in Spain during The Franco Regime, modern Spanish viewers are quick to dismiss the prominent role of the Spanish legation and ambassador as inventions intended to flatter the dictator. After all, Spain did not contribute troops to the Eight-Nation Alliance and was not in a position to intervene in China in 1900, right after losing its fleet and colonial empire in the Spanish-American War. Yet Spain really had a foreign legation in Beijing at the time, it was the place where the peace treaty with China was signed, and the Spanish ambassador, Bernardo de Cólogan y Cólogan, was the designated leader of the foreign diplomats during negotiations because he was the oldest.
The Abyss: The breathable liquid? It's a real thing designed to help scuba divers prevent getting barotrauma.
The Addams Family: You can be forgiven for thinking that the Tombstone pizza brand, as well as its slogan "What do you want on your Tombstone?", were made-up for the movie, to fit with its style of black humor. But nope, it's a real brand. The pizza and its commercials (set in the Old West, with the query usually met with a response of "Pepperoni and cheese" or similar) were popular in the United States when the film was made in the early 1990s, but less so elsewhere, and its popularity has since waned compared to other brands.
Airplane!:
- The "I say, let 'em crash!" Guy seen (and earlier in The Kentucky Fried Movie) was a parody of a segment of 60 Minutes called Point/Counterpoint in which a Conservative and Liberal would debate an issue. Shortly after Airplane! was released, the Point/Counterpoint segment was replaced with the more familiar A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney.^note
- The "smoking or non-smoking" line wasn't just invented for the joke. Airplanes actually did have smoking sections at the time (the FAA didn't begin to ban smoking on flights until 1988). This really applies to any TV show or film made before the smoking ban, including the famous "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" episode of The Twilight Zone, where William Shatner lights up right before seeing that... thing... on the wing.
- The disembarking passengers being accosted in the terminal by religious cultists (notably the Hare Krishnas) seems utterly baffling in the era of The War on Terror and body cavity screenings, but it was a common and unwelcome sight at the time and for many years before and after… until a 1992 Supreme Court decision declared airports to be non-public space, allowing them to ban proselytizing and panhandling.
All the President's Men: Many critics and amateur sleuths believed Deep Throat was an invention of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and was a Composite Character created in order to make it harder to identify one informant in Richard Nixon’s inner circle. Until 2005, when former FBI associate director W. Mark Felt revealed he was Deep Throat. Or at least, Felt claimed he was "Deep Throat". But Felt was 92 years old in 2005, sick, and near death, and some continue to believe that "Deep Throat" was more than one person. They think Felt simultaneously cashed in on the case before dying, and diverted attention from others who also fed Woodward information. On the other hand, he was the main suspect from day one (the Nixon White House was pretty sure it was him and that suspicion cost him the director job) and Woodward confirmed it. Woodward's book The Secret Man reveals that Felt was indeed Deep Throat, and explains their decades-long relationship ^note.
The Amityville Horror: People got so caught up in whether or not the film was fake that people thought the DeFeo murders were made up, and that the house didn't even exist.
Animal House: The freshman beanie that Kent is insistent about keeping on during rush in the opening scene seems ridiculous to younger viewers but was in fact something common at most colleges for freshmen in the era in which Animal House is set; the requirement was eliminated at many of them as part of reforms during the late '60s.
Apocalypto: A number of the complaints about inaccuracy in the Mel Gibson film actually fall into this category.
- "Black panther" is a term for any melanistic (atypically black furred) big cat, and jaguars, which are native to the Americas, do indeed produce melanistic individuals. The big black cat in the film is a female jaguar, not a leopard.
- They also did have a blue paint-like dye that they used to mark individuals before sacrifice.
- The decapitation of prisoners was older, more important and more widespread than heart ripping among the Mayans, and like in the movie, it involved dropping the head down stairs and being caught in somewhat sport-like fashion by people at the base. This happened at ballgame courtyards (like the one the remaining prisoners are taken to later in the movie) rather than in temples, though. The part where they throw the bodies of the sacrifices down the temple's steps is entirely real, however. So the movie is combining and simplifying things here, not making them up.
- The Maya civilization still existed at the time the movie is set (c. AD 1500). Many Maya city-states, though greatly diminished in power and prosperity compared to their Classic counterparts (the ones that collapsed), continued to exist, even well into the colonial era.
Backdraft: Modern viewers as well as those who aren’t familiar with American firefighting might be wondering why the firefighters in the movie don’t wear bunker pants, believing it to be an invention of the movie. In reality, American firefighters, especially on the East Coast, did not wear full bunker gear, including pants, en masse until the 1980s and 1990s. Prior to then, most gear consisted of a long coat that went down to about the thigh and a pair of three-quarter or hip boots that overlapped under the end of the coat. New York City◊ and Boston◊, for example, did not make the switch until 1994-1995. Chicago,◊ where the film is set, infamously did not make the switch until 2006, being the last fire department in the United States to not issue bunker gear.
Back to the Future:
- Back to the Future:
  - As Marty tries to convince his father George to take Lorraine to the dance, George refuses because that would mean that he'd miss his favorite show Science Fiction Theatre. Science Fiction Theatre was an actual sci-fi show from The '50s, a spiritual predecessor to both The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone (in an extended version of the "Darth Vader" scene, Marty name-drops both shows). Coincidentally, one castmember was a Michael Fox, and because he was already in the Screen Actor's Guild, Michael J. Fox had adopted the middle initial "J" to distinguish himself from the elder Fox.
  - Younger viewers might be confused by the gag where Marty struggles to get a drink at the diner, first ordering a "Pepsi Free" and then a "Tab". Pepsi Free was a real beverage created in 1982, and in fact still exists under the name "Caffeine Free Pepsi". Tab was the Coca-Cola Company's first diet cola, introduced in 1963, and was so named because the company used to have a strict rule reserving "Coca-Cola" and "Coke" to only the flagship drink. They finally broke that rule in 1983 with the introduction of Diet Coke, which instantly surpassed Tab in sales, though Tab remained on the market until 2019.
    - Similarly, in Lou's Cafe, someone is heard ordering a "cherry coke." This sounds like an anachronism to some viewers, who remember that the brand Cherry Coca Cola wasn't introduced until the 1980s. However, the term is much older, referring to regular Coca Cola manually flavored with cherry syrup.
  - The DeLorean is now almost universally recognised as "the car from Back to the Future," but it's a real vehicle, made by the DeLorean Motor Company. It's become synonymous with this film franchise, and is probably the only one viewers too young to remember the '80s will see, so lots of people assume it's another of Doc's inventions. The car's inclusion was actually a joke: it was considered monstrously ugly and unreliable, and Doc's line about how he wanted it to "travel in style" was meant to demonstrate how eccentric and out-of-touch he is. It was also chosen because the distinctive gull wing doors contributed to the gag of the 1950s family mistaking it for a spaceship. Of course, the movie actually helped its reputation and image.
- A gigawatt is an actual unit of measurement for power. 1.21 gigawatts is equivalent to 1,210,000,000 watts — however, an actual bolt of lightning contains around 10 gigawatts (10,000,000,000 watts), over eight times more watts than was required to power the DeLorean time machine.
- Doc Brown memorably pronounces the word "gigawatt" with a soft "g", like "jigawatt". The director's commentary notes that the filmmakers were unaware that the word is pronounced with a hard "g" sound. However, "jigawatt" was the accepted pronunciation of the word at the time –- the prefix "giga-" just wasn't used very often, and didn't get cemented as starting with a hard "g" until people started regularly talking about gigabytes. Other words in English also derived from the Ancient Greek word "gigas" are pronounced with a soft "g", such as "gigantic". Screenwriter Bob Gale used the pronunciation after he attended a physics lecture for research and heard the professor pronounce it the same way.
- In Back to the Future Part III, the "Wake-up Juice" given to Doc is an actual legit drink, the Bull Shot, a variant on the well-known Bloody Mary. It consists of one ounce of club soda, two ounces of beef broth, one ounce of tomato juice, one teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, quarter of a teaspoon of lemon juice, three dashes of Tabasco-Habanero sauce, and some dried garlic. The drink seen in the film is actually a combination of two Bull Shot variations (Bull Shot, Bull Shot #4).
Birdemic: Many viewers called "bull" on protagonist Rod's hybrid Ford Mustang. Turns out there is a California company that will convert any vehicle to hybrid or full electric—though it's expensive. So Rod's hybrid Mustang is plausible, though A) the film implies that Rod bought it as a hybrid, and B) converting a muscle car like a Mustang to a hybrid massively misses the point of both muscle cars and hybrids. If released today, the film would undoubtedly have Rod driving a performance electric car. Ford then came out with an all-electric Mustang.
BlacKkKlansman: Viewers may think that seeing David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan as portrayed by Topher Grace, saying "America First" is a not-so subtle jab at American politicians who have used the phrase from time to time. In reality, the KKK had been using the phrase since at least the 1920s.
The Blair Witch Project: Burkittsville, MD is a real town with a population of less than 200. It was flooded with tourists after the film's release, angering the locals.
Blast from the Past: Dr. Calvin Webber (Adam's father) likes him some hot Dr Pepper.
The Blues Brothers: When Elwood says he traded the old Bluesmobile for a microphone, most audience members probably just saw it as an another sign of his weirdness, but there really are high-end microphones that can cost as much as a used car.
Borat: Many viewers did not know that Kazakhstan was a real country. In fact, it is the ninth largest in the world and also the largest landlocked country^note. However, the "Kazakhstan" of the film resembles the non-fictional country In Name Only.
But I'm a Cheerleader: Viewers might not be aware that conversion camps are very real, or might assume that they're a thing of the past when there's still plenty in operation today. Most conversion therapy is very similar to what the film depicts, and historically (and still in some places today) was much worse, delving into Cold-Blooded Torture to get results.
Captain America: The First Avenger: Nearly all of the unusual vehicles and weapons used by HYDRA were based on real designs for German Wunderwaffe during WW2. This is actually lampshaded early in the movie, that they're merely using their new power source to get existing impractical designs to work.
Centurion: Depicts two women fighting in the Pict army, which isn't just for the sake of having Action Girls in a modern film. Women enjoyed higher status in Celtic societies than Roman; while the societies were patriarchal, women could take up arms and fight in battle if they wanted. They weren't a majority but it's perfectly reasonable to assume there were a few.
A Christmas Story:
- The "Red Ryder" model of BB guns really existed in The '30s and weren't just a product of Jean Shepherd's imagination. Daisy manufactures Red Ryder BB rifles even today. They've been in continuous production, too, not reintroduced after the movie became popular. They were advertised in the back pages of children's comic books. While the Red Ryder didn't have "the compass in the stock and the thing that tells time", another model in the product line, the "Buck Jones", did have both a sundial and a compass in the stock. The Buck Jones was a 60-shot pump action, though, not a carbine action, 200-shot. The most likely explanation is that Shepherd merged the two models in his memories. And "You'll put someone's eye out" was a warning that many mothers issued concerning it... in no small part because this was a distressingly common accident in the first part of the 20th century among suburban and rural boys who used such guns.
- Lifebuoy Soap is almost completely forgotten in America now. It's actually still being made. As with so many other "forgotten" products from the '50s and early '60s, it's available from Vermont Country Store. Likewise Palmolive is known almost entirely as a dish soap these days, but they did and still do make hand soap. In Scandinavia, at least, they also make shampoo and conditioner products. Close-Up cinnamon toothpaste and other "forgotten" products are still made and can be found at certain drugstores or online.
Cinderella: There have naturally been questions about "a Black Aristocrat" being too much like Black Vikings. In actual fact, there were instances such as Abram Petrovich Gannibal, the ancestor of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. In 18th-century France, there was Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a Fencing Master and accomplished musician and composer. In addition to this, there is Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, better known as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the father of Alexandre Dumas. Given the film's blend of styles and groups from different periods it is not as out of place as people think.
Clown Motel: The titular motel the film is set in is an actual place in Tonopah, Nevada.
The Color of Money: The game Stocker that Vincent plays is not a Fictional Video Game, but an actual title from the short-lived Bally/Sente.
Colours By Numbers: The World Sudoku Championship featured in this mockumentary is real, as are some of the competitors mentioned.
Contact: Yes, the Very Large Array in New Mexico is real. An astronomer who had been out there on business in the past was watching the movie and overheard someone in the row behind comment on how good the CGI was to put so many dishes into the scene at once. "I work somewhere that people think is a special effect — how cool is that?!" (Although, to be fair, they don't turn quite as rapidly as Ellie makes it look.)
The Core: The hacker "Rat" proves his skills in part by blowing through a gum wrapper to give the protagonist's cell phone free unlimited long distance. This is in reference to "Phone phreaking", where hackers utilize faults in the phone network to modify permissions or gain access to restricted information. The example seen here references the playing of specific notes into a phone with the dial tone active; the note's frequency would register as a command signal from the network and trigger a response.
The Crow (1994): Takes place on the night before Halloween, which is known by the people of Detroit as "Devil's Night". Devil's Night was originally intended as a night of mischief, but starting in The '70s, it was a night where a lot of arson went down, with its peak reached in the mid- to late 1980s, which saw no fewer than eight hundred fires being set in one single night. Things have gotten better in the 21st century, thanks in large part to community groups that formed specifically to prevent the arsons, in an effort known as "Angel's Night".
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America:
- The film contains several faux commercials for some very offensive products, including a brand of tobacco with a name you need N-Word Privileges to say. Disturbingly (as is revealed at the end of the documentary), all of the products (with the exception of the Shackle) turn out to be real (though admittedly no longer existent) brands. ^{another example} Also, drapetomania, a "disease" believed to cause slaves to run away, was sadly once a real (quack) medical theory invented by a psychiatrist from Louisiana.
- The program started by the C.S.A. to "take the native out of the native" by forcing Native American Children to attend boarding schools where they were taught that their cultural traditions were primitive and evil and had to be forsaken is based on similar programs in The United States, Canada, and Australia where indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes. Even if they abandoned their traditions, the alumni of those boarding schools were seen not as civilized human beings, but more like savages that were trained to act civilized.
The Dark Crystal: In the film (and the prequel The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance), the idea of only female Gelflings having wings isn't as bizarre as it sounds, as there are some real life insects (such as the fig wasp) where only the females have wings.
Days of Thunder: Many critics and some viewers unfamiliar with stock car racing thought the name of the main character, Cole Trickle, was an over-the-top, too deliberately Southern name. But at the time Dick Trickle, a legend of the sport, was still racing.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days: The trailers show Greg getting a new cell phone called a "Ladybug" that looks like something straight out of the '90s and only calls home and 911. Some might think that that's just his parents being out of touch, but there exists a real phone called the Firefly that only calls numbers that the parents program into the phone, as well as 911.
Dick Tracy: There were complaints about Madonna still having '80s Hair where she played Breathless Mahoney. The film is set in 1930 — a time when what we now think of as '80s hair was actually a popular hairstyle for women. In fact, Jean Harlow, a sort of proto-Madonna and arguably the Trope Maker for the Dumb Blonde trope, was famous for having frizzy hair much like Breathless' in the movie.
Dr. Strangelove:
- General Ripper's paranoia about fluoridating water is most likely to come across as simply a manifestation of him being insane. However, his suspicion was shared by the ultra-right John Birch Society, and thus was an allusion to an actual conspiracy theory which was shared by people with similar ideology as the fictional character. Paranoia about fluoridating water is still a major thing in the extreme Right and, increasingly, in some circles of the extreme Left.
- If you think it's unrealistic that a general like Turgidson would be so cavalier about killing millions of people in the name of winning the Cold War, you probably don't know about General Thomas S. Power, who was the commander in chief of Strategic Air Command from 1957-64. When the RAND corporation (parodied in the film as the BLAND corporation) advised that SAC not strike Soviet cities at the start of a war, Power replied: "Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!" Additionally, the RAND corporation itself really did come out with studies saying 20 million American dead would be an acceptable loss in a nuclear conflict.
- Turgidson's personality could also have been based on Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay, commander of SAC from 1948-1957 and later Chief of Staff of the USAF from 1961 to 1965. Some of his most famous quotes date after Dr. Strangelove, but are equally chilling. Discussing the period before the USSR developed nuclear weapons he said "Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had acquired the atomic bomb—and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it." He also said at a press conference, introducing him as George Wallace's VP to their 1968 race, "But I have to say, we have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons."
  - Le May was depicted in the movie Thirteen Days and gives viewers a pretty accurate depiction of the real guy.
Enemy of the State: According to Word of God, the government's technology is intentionally ten years behind what the US government had at the time the movie came out in 1998. This was done both for the benefit of the writer and the viewer.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga: The titular song contest is real and has existed since the 1950s, and occupies the same place in European pop culture that the Super Bowl does stateside. It is best known outside of Europe for launching the careers of ABBA and Céline Dion.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Viewers may assume that the film made up the oddly artful and picturesque City Hall subway station in New York City where the final confrontation takes place. In fact, although it is no longer in use, the City Hall Station was real and operated from 1904 to 1945, when its proximity to a nearby station and the logistical challenge of remodeling it to accommodate the length of the newer trains made it impractical to keep it open. The station is now abandoned but can be glimpsed from certain subway routes or from the transit museum, and it is if anything even more visually intriguing than how the movie depicted it.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off: A contemporary viewer born after the '80s might be caught off guard to hear that Ferris's suggestion to run the car in reverse to take miles off the odometer isn't him being naive or a smart aleck. Before the 1970s, there was no mechanism to prevent it from running backwards when the car ran in reverse; this didn't come around until the Federal Odometer Act of 1972. Of course, his suggestion proves to be moot anyway since it inexplicably has an anti-rollback odometer (because the prop vehicle was a replica built for the movie and was legally required to have an anti-rollback odometer).
Final Destination 5: Olivia Castle, who suffers from poor eyesight, decides to undergo LASIK, only for the machine to malfunction badly, eventually leading to her death. With the reveal that the film is actually set in 2000, many viewers questioned the presence of such a device. However, the technology used for LASIK has been around since the 1970s, and was approved for use in surgery by the FDA in 1995. While the portrayal is inaccurate, its presence is entirely possible.
Flower Drum Song: The film adaptation makes it a plot point that Mei Li is a picture bride (her picture is passed around to potential husbands for arranged marriages). Nancy Kwan confirms that did happen, though it was something the older generations did.
The French Connection:
- Just in case anyone was wondering about that scene where the traffickers are testing the purity of their merchandise... pure substances (such as heroin) have fixed melting points, but the melting point will become lowered if the substance is impure. So, if the powder tastes like heroin and melts at the right temperature (as determined by a Thiele melting point apparatus in this case), then it's got to be pure heroin. The trafficker's expert demonstrates all the salient points of the lab procedure, even displaying the mineral oil bottle just to show us that he's using the usual heat transfer medium. On top of that, real heroin was used for that scene.
- Also, the entire plot is based on the real "French connection" case where raw Turkish opium was processed into heroin in Marseilles before coming to the US. Many other countries have also served as drug middlemen.
Gabriel Over the White House: Bizarre or horrific as this may seen, it's not just the film which thinks a dictatorship was a good idea. William Randolph Hearst (as the foremost media owner then) had funded it for that reason, even as incoming President Franklin Roosevelt felt the film would "do much to help" him. There was a movement briefly to have a "Roosevelt dictatorship" and FDR's Vice President John Nance Garner even backed some sweeping emergency legislation that would have given him sweeping power over the executive branch. Although it faded quickly (with the proposed law rejected immediately) this is very hard to imagine nowadays.
Galaxy Quest
- Gwen asks the Thermians, in an incredulous manner, "Surely, you don't think Gilligan's Island [is real]?" The Thermians bow their heads reverently; Mathesar says, "Those poor people." Of course, this is Played for Laughs, but, believe it or not, the U.S. Coast Guard did receive letters and telegrams from '60s TV viewers pleading with them to find and rescue the castaways!
- Guy, a one-episode Red Shirt, still has enough star power to make convention appearances. Go to any fan convention and you'll find people lining up for autographs from people who were even slightly connected to a major show.
Gangs of New York: One of the most memorable background characters is Hellcat Maggie, a vicious and deadly Dead Rabbits warrior woman who has her teeth filed to points and wears Wolverine Claws so she can slash and bite people to death. Sounds like a jarringly-out-of-place Mad Max background extra made up by the screenwriters for the Rule of Cool, right? Wrong. Hellcat Maggie was a real person and she really did fight with those exact weapons.
- She died long before the movie is set, however, and it's depiction of gang violence and other details are highly inaccurate. The 1927 book it is loosely based on is full of author misunderstandings and fabrications.
Gentleman Jim is a biopic of heavyweight boxing champion James Corbett, climaxing with his fight with John L. Sullivan, where he won the championship. The fight lasted 21 rounds, which might seem unbelievable nowadays when modern title fights last no more than a maximum of 12 rounds (non-title fights can go no more than 10 rounds), but back then, when fighting was still outlawed in many states (the Marquis of Queensbury rules had only recently been introduced, and Corbett was the first fighter to win a heavyweight championship under those rules), fights lasted until one of the fighters was knocked out.
Gladiator:
- Almost example: after the producers learned that gladiators did product endorsements much like modern athletes do, there was supposed to be a scene with gladiators endorsing products of the time. It was cut because the idea felt unbelievable.
- Commodus deciding to fight a gladiator in the arena looks like a plot device to let Maximus get his revenge. The historical Commodus did actually fight in gladiator contests, although it isn't how he died (strangled to death by his wrestling partner).
Goodfellas: Henry literally brings an aluminum Christmas tree home after the Lufthansa heist, crowing, "We got the most expensive one!"
Good Night, and Good Luck.: Preview audiences thought that "the actor playing McCarthy" was way over the top. All clips of Joseph McCarthy in the film were footage of the late senator himself. To be fair, though, the editing of the film did significantly increase the "over the top" effect — much of it plays like a greatest-hits compilation of McCarthy's most extreme moments.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Many of the varying scenes of The American Civil War depravity are actually Sergio Leone showing his work, much to the confusion of most of his prop builders, cinematographers and actors who were confused by everything from the long coat Leone chose to dress Blondie in to the train cannon with the spy tied to the front of it and the scene where the soldiers grimly shoot a criminal after standing him next to a coffin.
- Leone did concede one point to his critics: He based this imagery on the classic battlefields of the east, because the real New Mexican campaign was over before violence could reach this escale.
Gung Ho: Like a lot of the other pieces of Japanese corporate culture, "Ribbons of Shame" are very real.
A Hard Day's Night: During the opening sequence, The Beatles are shown running from fans at the train station. Well, except for Paul, who's disguised himself by wearing a phony beard. In the early years of Beatlemania, the Beatles really wore disguises in public to avoid being seen. Even better, the scene really is of the band running from fans, which just happened to be caught on film.
Havenhurst: Elinore Mudgett, the Big Bad of the film, is revealed to be related to a Serial Killer named Herman Webster Mudgett. It would be easy to assume he didn't exist, and was made up for the movie. However, he did indeed exist.
History of the World Part I: The Anachronism Stew in Mel Brooks' film includes a "stand-up philosopher" in ancient Rome. There was a point in time when Romans actually hired philosophers to recite at dinner parties so that the host could look cultured. Which was just another custom they swiped from Greeks wholesale. In Ancient Greece there were traveling philosophers for hire who advertised their guest-entertaining services to wealthy hosts with pretensions of culture.
I Love You Phillip Morris: The entire story counts as one of these; if the film didn't specifically tell you at the beginning that "This actually happened", there's no way anyone could believe it.
Idiocracy: The most popular movie in the year 2505 is Ass, two hours of a close-up of a man's bare buttocks. A film which was nothing but a close-up of someone's ass? That sounds too ridiculous to be true. That is, unless you knew that Andy Warhol made just such a movie decades before Idiocracy came out called Taylor Mead's Ass, a somewhat sarcastic response to one critic who complained about "films focusing on Taylor Mead's ass for two hours." Two years later, Yoko Ono made a short film called Bottoms, later expanded into an 80-minute version, her point being that asses equalize us all.
The Imitation Game:
- The one German operator who used his girlfriend's name (Cilly) in many of his transmissions sounds like a fanciful way of "humanizing" how the codes were broken. It is in fact an entirely true story, but not the solo "Eureka!" Moment for the code breakers as there were many German operators who left telltale words in their messages ("Heil Hitler" also being one of them).
- Joan's apathetic reaction to Turing's sexuality seems far-fetched, but she was indeed reportedly "unfazed" when he admitted it to her.
Invictus: Audiences living in a post-9/11 world often found the scene where a South African Airways 747, bearing the message "Good Luck Bokke",^note flies over Johannesburg's Ellis Park Stadium at the start of the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final to be completely unbelievable. It happened in the real-life match. Twice, in fact.
Iron Jawed Angels: The resolution to pass the 19th Amendment (allowing women to vote) is seemingly decided by one man, who changes his view after reading a delivered message. In real life, Harry T. Burn did in fact change his vote upon receiving a letter from his mother, thus female suffrage was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
It Happened One Night: Much is made of the fact that King Westley, Ellie Andrews' groom-to-be, is a pilot. In the 1920's and 1930's aviation was a new and exciting field and pilots often did become celebrities.
It's a Wonderful Life:
- After the film was released, Frank Capra received several letters complaining about the idea of a high school gym with a swimming pool underneath its floor, saying that no such places exist. (They're called hydrofloors and were invented about 75 years ago; they're not unusual today and can even be installed in private homes.) Reviewers also knocked the scene as being too obviously contrived and unrealistic. The scene was shot at Beverly Hills High School's "Swim Gym", which opened in 1939 and is still used today. Of course, what it would be doing in a podunk town like Bedford Falls is slightly less justifiable.^note The same location and prank were also used in the 2000 teen flick Whatever It Takes, perhaps as an homage to Wonderful Life.
- There is a brief shot of a rotisserie powered by a record player. That may seem improbable today, but those things actually did exist, and, in any case, it looks sufficiently Rube Goldberg to have been Mary's or possibly Uncle Billy's invention.
James Bond:
- The system James Bond uses at the beginning of Thunderball is commonly viewed as the most unrealistic thing James Bond ever does, even in 1965. But the "Bell Rocket Belt" was already a reality then — it had been successfully demonstrated several years before (only trouble is that due to fuel limitations it can only stay airborne for just over 20 seconds). The system James Bond uses at the end of Thunderball is commonly viewed as the second most unrealistic thing James Bond ever does, even in 1965. That device is the Fulton Surface to Air Recovery System, or STARS, a very real and very safe air recovery system, with only one death throughout its history, caused by improper use. The pocket-sized breathing device used by Bond during the movie, on the other hand, was fake but thought to be real, even by the Royal Navy, who tried to get some from the producers, only to be told it was only as effective as the user's ability to hold his breath.
- One of the more ridiculous scenes in Live and Let Die involves Bond running over the backs of a bunch of alligators and crocodiles to get off an island before the carnivores can eat him. It's completely unbelievable... except for being real. According to the commentary on the film, they were planning to have Bond escape using his magnetic watch to pull a boat over, but felt it lacked excitement. They asked the animal handler, Ross Kananga (the namesake of LALD's Big Bad) on the set how he would escape from the island and he proceeded to do the "run-over-their-backs" stunt for the camera. The footage is actually of him doing it!
- Another example of this occurred in The Living Daylights. Most fans assumed the scene with Bond and Kara using her cello case to slide down the mountain like a bobsled was done via special effects, thinking that was absurd; actually, it was a simple stunt that both Timothy Dalton and Maryam d'Abo did themselves, actually using it as such. (It took quite a few takes, however.)
- The helicopter-suspended buzzsaws seen in The World Is Not Enough are in fact used for trimming trees in real life. And it is possible to fly a snowmobile with a paraglider, as seen with the film's parahawks.
- Spectre sees M getting nervous about the UK joining an intelligence-sharing arrangement called "Nine Eyes." The characters treat this as a game-changing development. In reality, the UK is already a member of the "Five Eyes" alliance and has been for decades.
Johnny Mnemonic: Contains a scene where the eponymous character requests "Thomson Eyephones" (a head-mounted display). It tends to make modern viewers snicker because of the obvious assonance to the similarly named Apple smartphone, but it's actually an example where the authors have Shown Their Work. In the early 1990s, the first head-mounted displays were manufactured by a company called VPL, owned by Jaron Lanier. They were called Eyephones, as a pun on "earphones". When VPL folded, all its patents were transferred to Thomson.
Jurassic Park:
- The scene in the first film where Lex unlocks the laboratory doors by flying through the files and folders of a computer using an unrealistic 3D interface (while exclaiming "It's a Unix system! I know this!")? That is a Unix system — IRIX, to be exact — and the program she's using is fsn, an experimental filesystem browser/visualizer (fsn stands for "File System Navigator") that was included in IRIX in the early '90s. You can even download an open-source clone if you run a modern Unix-like operating system (like Linux).
- Similarly, Lex being able to quickly understand and operate the system based on "knowing" Unix is fully realistic. The high-tech 3D file browser still displays the standard Unix file stack, which anyone familiar with the command-line version will quickly recognize.
- In Jurassic Park III, the mercenaries are seen carrying Barret M82A2 Sniper Rifles but they are said to fire "20mm High Explosive Rounds". Rule of Cool right? Except Barret Sniper Rifles that fire 20mm rounds do exist. The Barret XM109 which was developed in the 1994 as part of a sister program to the OICW. It was only a prototype, and thus would not likely be in the hand of mercenaries and unlike the M82A2 it was not a bull-pup, but these weapons still exist.
- Viewers of Jurassic World have noticed the "Pterodactyl with a T. rex head" and assumed it was a genetically modified hybrid like the Indominus rex. It's actually a real pterosaur called a Dimorphodon. That said, the movie's pterosaur differed in a number of ways from the real animal, which had a more arboreal lifestyle and a smoother curve to the snout (it probably wouldn't have been nearly so aggressive as depicted either, at least not towards animals larger than itself).
A Knight's Tale:
- It's easy to assume that Kate, the female medieval blacksmith, is just another piece of the movie's deliberate Anachronism Stew and Politically Correct History. However, according to the law of the Blacksmith's Guild of the time, if a smith died and his widow was trained in the profession, then she was allowed to work as a blacksmith to support herself and any children they had until she remarried. Kate is a widow, in one scene mentioning her late husband.
  - The wife being trained in the profession was actually more common than might be supposed. Since blacksmiths paid taxes to their local lord in arrowheads rather than currency, they often trained their wives to do simple blacksmithing jobs like arrowheads and nails so they could take on the bigger moneymaking jobs themselves. There are even surviving examples of medieval craft works made by widows of guild members- we know this because in addition to their late husband's craft marks, which they were allowed to use, these women added a lozenge — the heraldic symbol for "female" — to assert their identity.
- Ulrich von Lichtenstein was a real person, though his exploits were in fact much more fantastic and flamboyant than those depicted in the film.
The Love Witch: Elaine uses Witch Bottles — bottles full of herbs, sharp objects and bodily contents (like urine and hair) to ward away spirits — as a burial item as well as profiting off of them with the local botanica. Witch Bottles are an actual thing in modern witchcraft.
The Men Who Stare at Goats: The tag line "More of this is true than you would probably believe" pretty accurately sums up the weirdness that the movie is based on. One example that kind of hurt the film is that the real organization covered actually used Star Wars references (such as calling themselves "Jedi Warriors"). Unfortunately, several reviewers assumed that this aspect was a labored Actor Allusion to Ewan McGregor and criticized the film for it.
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc: Has plenty of artistic license when it comes to Joan's life. Some details seem made up for the film but are true to historical fact.
- When Joan first arrives at the court, they disguise the captain as Charles VII and she knows straight away that it's an impostor — and is able to pick the real Charles out from among the courtiers. While there's no confirmation that this definitely happened, it is written in many 15th-century accounts.
- In order to prove her validity, Joan allows her virginity to be tested before the court. Something she did in real life.
- The high hairline on some of the noble women just seems like a stylistic choice. But it was actually the fashion of the time to have a high forehead, and many women plucked the hairs on the top of their head to meet this beauty standard.
A Million Ways to Die in the West: Features the song "If You've Only Got a Mustache", which extols the benefits of having a nicely-groomed patch of lip fur. While it sounds like something Seth MacFarlane would've invented, not only is it a real song, it was written by the prolific American songwriter Stephen Foster, and would even have been a contemporary popular song in the year the film is set.
Miracle at Midnight: Many fans think the Kosters are Allegorical Characters, but they were real people involved in the Danish Resistance, although their story is dramatized.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
- The knights in the film are depicted as wearing mail ^note. This would be a perfectly realistic 6th-century armor ^note. The Romans already knew of and wore it as lorica hamata; and they acquired it from the earlier Celtic tribes of western Europe who they conquered. Other King Arthur films usually depict the knights wearing plate armor, which did not appear until the 14th century.
- Using animals as ammunition in catapults? Yeah, they actually did that in medieval siege warfare, since it was a convenient way to spread disease in besieged castles.^note
- The Cloudcuckoolander monks, who smack themselves in the faces with wooden planks while chanting, are a parody of Real Life flagellants. And smacking themselves in the face with wooden planks is actually very mild compared to what the real flagellants did, who are thought by some to have accidentally invented BDSM via Pavlovian conditioning.
- The killer rabbit has basis in fact. It was inspired by real medieval religious art, which often visually depicted the sin of cowardice by showing a knight fleeing in terror from a rabbit. Those familiar with the Jimmy Carter Rabbit Incident, which happened a mere four years after the film's release, will know that under the right circumstances, a rabbit can indeed seemingly become vicious.
- The Holy Hand Grenade is an obvious anachronism for the sake of humor, right? Actually, hand grenades had existed for the better part of two centuries by the time the film is set in (932 A.D. according to the credits).
- The supposed witch being weighed as a test sounds like a complete joke, and the chain of Insane Troll Logic to reach that conclusion is indeed a fabrication... but not the actual practice of weighing witches. The logic there was that witches didn't have souls and could fly around on broomsticks, so they had to weigh a lot less than normal people. It was mostly a way for someone to escape death, because it was a test that pretty much always turned out well for the accused.
- The Black Knight's challenge to fight anyone attempting to cross his bridge was actually practiced by knights, and appears quite frequently in chivalric romance from the era. One record describes an important road in Spain being blocked for over a month because of a particularly long duel taking place on a bridge along it.
Monty Python's Life of Brian: Although it was intended as a metaphor for the British Left during the 1970s, We ARE Struggling Together is also quite accurate to how Judean groups acted during Jesus' life and the writing of the Gospels. For instance, neither the Sadducees nor the Pharisees liked the Romans, but they also both disliked each other. The "What have the Romans done for us?" scene is very similar to a tractate in The Talmud.
The Mummy Trilogy: Likely most would assume the Medjai, elite protectors of the Pharaohs and their secrets, are just there to be Mr. Exposition and provide back up to the heroes. While them practicing magic curses and surviving as a secret society to this day is presumably not true the Medjai really existed, initially as a culture that the Egyptians often hired as soldiers and guards and later as a general name for a job, namely protecting things and places important to the Pharaohs.
Nacho Libre: The story of a monk who wrestled under a mask to earn money for his orphanage? Too silly to be anything other than a comedy? Tell that to Fray Tormenta.
Napoleon Dynamite: Those introduced to the concept of a "liger" might be surprised to find that they're real animals — after all, Napoleon, who mentions them as his favorite animal and is seen drawing a Stylistic Suck picture of one, has something of a penchant for telling bizarre, grandiose lies to impress people. They are in fact a hybrid of a lion and tiger, though they aren't actually bred for their "skills in magic". They are the largest living cats, however, large enough in fact to cause complications during pregnancy and birth. Not only that, but in 1995 Ligertown, near where Napoleon Dynamite was set, had several ligers and other big cats escape that had to be put down. Escaped Big Cats 20 years later
Nixon: This Bio Pic by Oliver Stone features a scene where Richard Nixon is in Dallas in November 1963 and meets with a shadowy cabal of Texas oilmen and Cuban refugee militia types who, when urging him to run again for president, knowingly hint that they have something to do with Kennedy's assassination. It's not actually suggested that Nixon himself had anything to do with the assassination (he notably turns them down and appears very unsettled by them), but given Stone's previous filmography this would naturally seem to be a conspiracy theorist rabble-rousing. Furthermore, the fact that Nixon is shown to fly out of town on November 23rd would appear to be just a thuddingly obvious bit of symbolism on top of this that is almost laughable in how unbelievable it is... except that Richard Nixon genuinely did happen to be in Dallas for business in November 1963, and genuinely did happen to fly out of town mere hours before Kennedy arrived and was assassinated. His reasons for being there were entirely legitimate, of course, and he probably didn't have a meeting with a shadowy cabal of political assassins, but the stranger-than-fiction nature of the coincidence has caught the attention of many a conspiracy theorist since, hence why Stone was likely unable to resist including it.
Oppenheimer has an unusual casting example. The real J. Robert Oppenheimer was the son of German Jewish immigrants, and the casting of the very Irish, decidedly non-Jewish Cillian Murphy was met with mild, generally benign confusion, especially because of Murphy's famously pale blue eyes. However, the real Oppenheimer also had very pale blue eyes, which acquaintances often described as one of the most striking aspects of his appearance. There are just so few color photographs of Oppenheimer that most people assume he, like most people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, had brown eyes.
Outlaw King: Robert the Bruce is shown being crowned by a woman, which he actually was in real life. Kings of Scotland were traditionally crowned by a representative of Clan MacDuff, but at the time the head of the clan was a both an enemy hostage and underage. The Scots held an initial crowning without him, but re-did it a day or two later when Isabella MacDuff arrived to ensure that Robert was crowned properly. Interestingly, her own husband was fighting on the English side.
Paranormal Prison: Sara, the scientist half of "The Skeptic and the Scientist", has for the purpose of finding ghosts developed a device designed to detect ghosts via Synchrotron radiation. While that sounds like something that was made up for this movie, it should be noted that that really is a thing.
Pearl Harbor: While viewers rightfully criticize many elements in the attack as inaccurate or pure inventions for sake of Rule of Cool, the sailor crying "I can't swim!" while hanging on a sinking battleship for dear life is not. At the time, the U.S. Navy still did not require enlistees to know how to swim, and the old attitude that sailors swimming after a sinking would just prolong their suffering was still recent.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Early in the film, Del Griffith is seen reading a paperback book called "The Canadian Mounted" while he and Neal are waiting to board their flight to Chicago. While it has long been assumed the book was a prop created as an Actor Allusion for John Candy, it is indeed a real pornographic book that was published in 1981. By virtue of its publisher going bankrupt, it was already out of print and in the public domain by the time of the film's release in 1987. Reprints and replicas of the book are now readily available to buy online.
Pirates of the Caribbean:
- Similarly, the commonness of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything would imply that real pirates were all bloodthirsty ravenous wild men. Only a few of them were that terrible, but many liked to be thought of that way because people who're frightened out of their wits are much more likely to give up their valuables. In other words, yes, The Princess Bride's Dread Pirate Roberts' reliance on reputation was sort of used in real life.
Rampage: For all the Hollywood Science-fueled dumb action, viewers might be surprised that the CRISPR gene editing technique that creates giant monsters actually exists — though biotech experts will be happy to point out what the writers did make up.
Red Sparrow: The film, which is set in modern Europe, has classified information transferred on a number of outdated medias, including 3.5 inch floppy disks. Not only is this practice still common in the US and Russia, but older media like 5.25 inch floppy disks and VHS tapes are still widely used for communications between elected officials and military purposes, including nuclear weapons systems. This is in part a security measure known as "Security by Obsolescence" — the idea being that a thumb drive can be read by any computer with a USB port, but a compact cassette full of classified info is a paperweight to anyone that doesn't have access to a rare computer peripheral from the '80s, adapters to plug it into a modern system, drivers to make it run on a modern system, and the reader program for some homebrew file type from the late 1970s.
The Quiet Man has a scene where Mary Kate is speaking to the priest in Irish and stumbles over 'sleeping bag', not knowing the word for it and says it in English. Not just a comedy gag; Ireland was oppressed by Britain for hundreds of years, and the Irish language was squeezed out of everyday use. When Ireland received its independence in the 20th century, there were suddenly loads of modern conveniences they had no Irish words for — so they literally had to make them up.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights: The blind manservant Blinkin getting caught reading Playboy in braille is a hilarious sight gag, but it was a real issue of the magazine. Playboy published a braille edition monthly from 1970-2017, which for several years was the best-selling braille magazine in the world, despite not containing any pictures (the full-relief centerfold Blinkin was fondling was added for comedic effect).
The Rocketeer:
- The bizarre-looking, dog-shaped Bulldog Cafe looks like something out of a cartoon, but restaurants just like it were fairly common in midcentury Los Angeles. See, for example, the hat-shaped Brown Derby or the actually still extant Randy's Donuts of Inglewood, which looks exactly like you'd think. The reason you've probably never heard of such places is because they were built for novelty rather then durability, meaning most went out of business once the fad blew over.
- The swastika-emblazoned zeppelins going on friendship tours through the US prior to World War II can seem a bit strange at best, like a weak excuse to have the climax take place on such a zeppelin at worst. Except they were totally a real thing; The Hindenburg was one such zeppelin and its infamous crash actually happened at the end of one such tour, marking the end of airships being used for passenger flights. The crash in question happened in 1937, only about a year prior to when the movie takes place, which explains the palatable disdain the protagonist shows for the tour featured in the film (which pointedly did not happen in Real Life for that very reason), even before its role in the villains's plot is revealed.
Rush: The six-wheeled Formula One race car was not just real, but actually quite successful. Driver Jody Scheckter won a race with the Tyrrell P34 and finished third in the 1976 driver's championship.
Singin' in the Rain: A lot of jokes about the Troubled Production seem random and made-up, but are really references to real life silent film stars like John Gilbert, whose careers died when they couldn’t adjust to talkies. For example, that bit where Don throws out his script and replaces a whole monologue with him just saying “I love you” over and over like a robot? Gilbert actually did that in one of his movies, without a hint of irony.
Sneakers: As with the entry for Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Whistler's braille Playboy is a real thing. In addition to the photos, Playboy published a great deal of literature, much of it non-pornographic.
The Sound of Music: Some people think Georg von Trapp being a former navy captain for Austria was made up, since Austria is a landlocked country. But prior to the breakup of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, they did have a navy as they had a coastline along the Adriatic Sea (which is now part of Italy and Croatia). He was well decorated for his performance during the Boxer Rebellion at the turn 20th century and his naval uniform is preserved at the Military History Museum in Vienna. He had been an ace submarine captain in WWI, so naturally the Germans would have their eye on him for their developing U-Boat arm.
Spider-Man: Far From Home: Peter Parker has to wear a black stealth suit to avoid people suspecting that he is Spider-Man, and his friend Ned Leeds, on the spur of the moment, comes up with the name "Night Monkey". This is presented as an Atrocious Alias, but in reality there are species of nocturnal monkeys in South America known as night monkeys. Nagapies, an African strepsirrhine primate, also get their name from the Afrikaan word for "night monkey", but are more commonly known in English as "bush babies".
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace reveals that Naboo elects their queen. Real-world nations have elected monarchs, including medieval Ireland and early modern Poland. There are still elective monarchies, including Malaysia, Cambodia (where the King is elected by other members of the Royal Family), and Wallis-and-Futuna, a French territory in the Pacific Ocean that is divided into three traditional kingdoms each led by a king elected among the local aristocracy. However, it should be noted that in these cases, it's never a truly open democracy, and a mere election of one of several high ranking aristocrats. In some North American native bands, the children of elected chiefs are officially titled princes and princesses, although that title only matters while their parent holds office.
Sucker Punch takes place in the '60s and briefly features a security guard wearing what looks like modern Apple earphones — but are actually period-appropriate transistor radio earphones. If you look closely, you can see that there's only one earpiece.
This is Spın̈al Tap: At the end, the band members, whose career is in the toilet in America (to the point where they're playing to an unenthusiastic audience of approximately 20 people on a small stage at a California amusement park), head to Japan and perform a concert in Kobe, where they become a massive success once again and reignite their career. This is a common enough occurrence of Germans Love David Hasselhoff that "big in Japan" is a common expression for bands whose popularity has waned in their home territory but they keep touring because distant markets are still profitable. In the specific case of Japan, the country has a fondness for Western hard rock and heavy metal; there are many cases of American or British hard rock bands — some of whom were only B- or C-list names in their heyday — developing devoted fanbases in Japan. This led to several bands, just like Spinal Tap, who were considered has-beens that could only book shows at state fairs in the US, but could play to sold-out arena audiences in Japan.
To Hell And Back is about World War II badass Audie Murphy, played by himself. The climax of the film involves Murphy saving his squad by climbing atop a burning tank destroyer and holding off some German soldiers alone with the mounted .50-cal machine gun. Over the top, right? Yes, but he really did that, only in the real incident there were more Germans (who also had more tanks), there was three feet of snow on the ground (Murphy remarked that it was the first time in months his feet had been warm, due to the fact that the vehicle was on fire), and he already had a leg full of shrapnel and a godawful case of malaria flaring up, and he was awarded the Medal of Honor for it. In fact, the film had to scale back or even omit many of his war stories because they would be too unbelievable to the viewer.
Trading Places: The Duke Brothers try to corner the frozen concentrate orange juice market by using an advance copy of an orange crop report (or so they think). Now, to modern viewers, this is a blatant case of insider trading, but using misappropriated or "insider" information to invest in commodities, as opposed to the stock and bond market, was not illegal at the time (although a government courier could still get in trouble for unauthorized release of government information). In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, the law that changed this, Section 136 of the Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act, ^notealso called the Dodd-Frank Act was enacted in 2010, and informally known as "The Eddie Murphy Rule". The chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission specifically referred to the film when first publicly proposing the rule change. This scene was also inspired by the "Silver Thursday" crash on March 27, 1980, when the Hunt Brothers of Texas tried to corner the silver market, but failed to meet a $100 million margin call.
TRON: The humongous bank vault door may look like a slightly over-the-top prop. It (along with the laser lab and computer room) is real and can be found at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. The door does weigh four tons; it serves to allow heavy equipment to access the laser lab. The false bits: it opening by itself (it's opened by hand — the hinges are nearly frictionless and perfectly balanced — one fit man can do it); the fancy but hackable electronic lock (it's locked by a simple manual mechanism inside — its purpose is to stop radiation from getting out, not thieves and spies from getting in); and the reaction closeup shot facing away from the door (this was shot in Disney Studios' parking lot). Even in the film, the real opening mechanism is visible (standard-looking panic bar controlled latch mechanism) once the door finishes opening.
The Untouchables (1987): Al Capone brutally beating an associate with a baseball bat seems like a massive instance of Historical Villain Upgrade from the film. But, in reality, not only did Al Capone really do this... he attacked three associates during a dinner party this way. At the same time! Capone didn't kill them outright, though; he beat them senseless and then had his bodyguards finish them off with bullets.
Victories:
- It takes place on the last day of World War I, and the protagonist is a German Ace Pilot. He's shown having deployed a parachute when his plane was shot down. Although parachutes weren't widely used in the war — higher-ups afraid that the safety net would encourage pilots to abandon their planes at the first sign of trouble — they were in fact used in the last few months. The German Army realised they couldn't afford to train any more replacements, so they issued parachutes to the remaining pilots.
- It's a plot point that Otto doesn't believe the war is really over, because the guns still fire. Seems like something for Rule of Drama — but the artillery did indeed keep firing until the 11 o'clock ceasefire. And it was indeed so that the British Army didn't have to haul away the spare shells.
Wayne's World:
- Believe it or not, the "Suck Kut" is actually a parody of a real product called the Flowbee. It was invented in 1988 by Rick Hunt, and the Flowbee, as Wayne so eloquently put it, "certainly does suck," but it was exactly the kind of dodgy product you would see advertised in infomercials on the Real Life equivalents of low-budget late-night cable access shows like the Show Within a Show, Wayne's World, and believe it or not, you can still buy them.
- It seems like a gag made up for the film, but some music stores actually had "NO STAIRWAY" signs before the movie came out due to the number of people who would test out their guitars with "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. Some stores kept similar signs up well into the 2000s.
- In the second film, during Del's story, he tells them that Ozzy Osbourne won't perform until he gets a brandy glass full of brown M&Ms. This is based loosely on a real thing. Van Halen had, in their standard contracts, that they had to have a bowl of M&Ms backstage with all of the brown ones removed. They didn't really care about the M&Ms, though; the demand was a Hidden Purpose Test to check whether their rider had been followed thoroughly, because other parts of the rider included exacting safety-critical issues regarding the pyrotechnics and the band's stage dressing (speaker stacks, lights, etc), which were much larger and heavier than most venues were used to at the time and could easily injure the band, crew, or audience if they weren't properly handled.
Who Killed Captain Alex?: When the Lemony Narrator comments that everybody in Uganda knows kung-fu, it seems like he's joking. While obviously the majority of people don't know kung-fu, there is actually a shaolin kung-fu school in Uganda, with a number of the actors having studied there, and many of the actors knowing various forms of MMA and entering tournaments regularly.
Wilder Napalm: Wilder's job in a tiny photo development shack in the middle of a mall parking lot may seem bizarre to modern viewers, but before the advent of digital technology caused their extinction, these little parking lot booths really did exist.
The Wizard of Oz: Contains a scene where Dorothy falls into the pigpen and everyone panics. Most people who aren't farmers see this as Narm, and don't realize the very real risk of being killed by pigs should you ever get stuck with them. Historically, pig herding and related occupations were considered dangerous for these reasons: Adult pigs run as long as 6 feet (183 cm) snout-to-tail, weigh up to 770 pounds (350 kg), and they will eat anything they can get their jaws around—small animals, other pigs, and yes, people. In The Middle Ages, pigs were tried and executed for eating children.
The Wolverine: The Yakuza gang that Wolverine is fighting mostly uses low tech weapons like knives and bows, rather than guns. Rule of Cool and a way of avoiding the bad guys just shooting him, right? Wrong; Japan has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, to the point that they’re a rarity outside the military and even powerful criminal organizations usually only have a handful. The Yakuza really do mostly stick to stuff like knives, rarely bringing out guns except in extreme circumstances.
Wonder Woman (2017): World War I vets actually did wear masks fashioned out of metal to cover up severe facial trauma. Although they were held up by strings run around the ears or attached to eye glasses, whereas Dr. Poison's appears to be attached with some sort of adhesive.
Zoolander: The "Derelicte" look is a spoof of a real fashion design exhibited by John Galliano in 2000, where models dressed like the homeless, even wearing trash found in the streets of New York.

Aluminum Christmas Trees / Live-Action Films

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