History Main / ArtisticLicenseGeology

* In ''ComicBook/TheSuperRevengeOfLexLuthor'', Luthor builds a weather-altering machine which starts a new ice age, and the people of Metropolis treats the possibility of glaciers burying their city as an immediate concern instead of a future threat (the fastest glacier in the world only advances up to 40 metres per day).
* ''ComicBook/TheWarlordDC'': The MagicalLand realm of Skartaris is located in the center of a HollowWorld Earth as a tribute to the ''Literature/{{Pellucidar}}'' novels of Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs.

For earthquakes, for instance, fissures do not chase B actors or swallow entire cities whole without a trace. For volcanoes, outrunning the lava flow in RealLife can be as easy as picking up your pace to a brisk walk, but you ''can't'' outrun the pyroclastic flow -- the heat, ash, and gasses ejected from the eruption -- and you might not even be able to outrun it driving a car, since a pyroclastic flow can hit 700 kph. The primary characteristic of mudslides is that they're inexorable. They may be fast or slow, but they simply don't stop, and they are not easily diverted by such flimsy things as walls, barricades, trees, or buildings. They just pick 'em up and carry on.

* ''Film/{{Outlander}}'': The protagonists trek through lava-filled tunnels in Norway. The Fennoscandian Shield which makes up Norway's land mass is one of the most tectonically stable areas in the world, and has had no volcanic activity for hundreds of millions of years.

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado with the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]] in real life is little more than clumps of sand (or any soil) fused together by the lightning strike. The heat is intense, but far too brief to create anything as elegant as manmade glass (though you still wouldn't want a chunk of it flying at you with tornado-force winds).

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado with the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, even though [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]] in real life is little more than clumps of sand (or any soil) fused together by the quick flash of heat. While you still wouldn't want a chunk of it flying at you with tornado-force winds, it's not nearly as elegant as manmade glass.

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado with the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, but real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]] is little more than clumps of sand fused together by a lightning strike. While you still wouldn't want a chunk of it flying at you with tornado-force winds, it's not nearly as elegant as manmade glass.

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado containing the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, but real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]] is little more than clumps of sand (or some other soil) fused together by a quick flash of lightning. While you still wouldn't want a chunk of it flying at you with tornado-force winds, it's not nearly as elegant as manmade glass.

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado containing the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, but real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]] is little more than clumps of sand fused together by the quick flash of lightning. While you still wouldn't want a chunk of it flying at you with tornado-force winds, it's not nearly as elegant as manmade glass.

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado containing the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, but real-life [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]] is little more than clumps of sand fused together by the quick flash of lightning. While it's still not something you'd want flying at you with tornado-force winds, it's not nearly as elegant as manmade glass.

* ''WesternAnimation/XMen97'': Storm uses lightning to create glass in the Sahara Desert then forms a tornado containing the shards to destroy an entire horde of sentinels. The glass is smooth and shiny, perfect for making into deadly shards. In real life, lighting glass is known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgurite fulgurite]], but it is little more than clumps of sand fused together by the quick flash of lightning. While it's still not something you'd want flying at you with tornado-force winds, it's not nearly as elegant as manmade glass.

* In ''WesternAnimation/CostumeQuest'', nougat is a candy mineral that is mined straight from the ground, to the point that the town of the main characters is a CompanyTown based around it.

-->-- ''VideoGame/DeepRockGalactic''

* In ''ComicBook/TheSuperRevengeOfLexLuthor'', Luthor builds a weather-altering machine which starts a new ice age, and the people of Metropolis treats the possibility of glaciars burying their city as an immediate concern instead of a future threat (the fastest glacier in the world only advances up to 40 metres per day).

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

-->-- ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic''

* In ''Anime/CodeGeass'', when the F.L.E.I.J.A. bomb is deployed it leaves a [[http://codegeass.wikia.com/wiki/F.L.E.I.J.A./ 1300 meter-deep crater]], but the now exposed terrain is uniform and absent of geological layers. It's possible the weapon burns the exposed earth to a uniform appearance, but that appearance is regular soil brown.
* The world of ''Anime/DarlingInTheFranxx'' uses something called "magma energy" as a power source for everything from houses to HumongousMecha. Beyond being extracted from underground it bears little resemblance to magma. [[spoiler:Turns out to be {{justified}}: "magma energy" is actually [[PoweredByAForsakenChild harvested]] {{energy being}}s.]]
* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'': Jaburo is an ElaborateUndergroundBase built in a natural cavern underneath the Amazon rainforest... Which shouldn't be possible, since the entire Amazon basin's earth is made of 4,000 metres of sand and soft clay, with virtually no rocks.

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

* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'': In ''ComicBook/TheSuperRevengeOfLexLuthor'', the eponymous villain builds a weather-altering machine which starts a new ice age, and the people of Metropolis treats the possibility of glaciars burying their city as an immediate concern instead of a future threat (the fastest glacier in the world only advances up to 40 metres per day).
* One dinosaur comic has paleontologists find "the most complete T. Rex skeleton ever", and carbon-date it to make sure it's genuine. Carbon dating is not used on objects older than 30,000 years (by then, any radioactive carbon-14 in the sample has decayed to unusable levels); it might serve to rule out the possibility that it's a modern-era replica but there's probably easier ways of doing that.
* ''ComicBook/{{Giantkiller}}'': Mount Diablo is referred to as an active volcano in the first issue. The real Mount Diablo is not a volcano at all, but was formed in the past couple million years by the folding and faulting of the earth's crust.

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]
* ''Film/{{Volcano}}'' has the titular feature pop out of the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles -- while the area is tectonically active, the faults are not the type that generate volcanoes, being too far below the surface. The LA Basin as a whole has no volcanic features newer than a couple dozen million years.
* ''Film/DantesPeak'', a [[DuelingMovies dueling movie]] with ''Film/{{Volcano}}'', made more of an attempt to be accurate but still pick and chose things to be dramatic (the USGS has a detailed response somewhere). For example, there is fluid lava during what is otherwise a large explosive eruption (the two are not absolutely exclusive, but they are highly unlikely to occur together at the scale the movie shows), and there's a pyroclastic cloud chase scene where the vehicle has way too little lead time.
* ''Film/{{Congo}}'': The volcano part has many geologic sins (diamonds in basalt, etc), but often gets faulted for one part that's actually accurate; the speed of the flow. The Congo is the only place in the world where lava actually can move at freeway speeds due to its consistency (think mud bath, only it would melt your face instead of cleansing your pores).
* ''Film/{{Earthquake}}'' is guilty of this for the magnitude. The quake in the film hits a 9.9 on the Richter scale, and is judged entirely by the massive damage the quake leaves behind in Los Angeles (something that should actually be left to the Mercalli intensity scale). In real life, not only has a 9.9 earthquake never happened in recorded history (the strongest earthquake ever was 9.4-9.6 in Chile, in May 1960), but it's scientifically impossible for one to strike since rock lacks the capability to build up that much pressure before it gives to the quake. Scientific consensus on the San Andreas Fault (the source for most of L.A.'s quakes) finds that the fault is [[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/megaqk_facts_fantasy.php very limited in trying to cause a mega-thrust quake]] (quakes at or greater than 8.0 on the Richter scale).
-->''The magnitude of an earthquake is related to the area of the fault on which it occurs -- the larger the fault area, the larger the earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is 800 miles long and only about 10-12 miles deep, so that earthquakes larger than magnitude 8.3 are extremely unlikely.''
* ''Film/{{Waterworld}}'' explicitly attributes the Earth's submerged status to global warming, but all the ice in the world melting would produce only a 216ft (66m) rise in sea level, which would suck for low-lying coastal areas, but is not nearly enough to create the ocean planet depicted.
%%* ''Film/CrackInTheWorld'' suffered from a fast case of ScienceMarchesOn. It was in line with accepted theory at the time the film was made, but the time the film was released geology was undergoing a revolution, and the plate tectonics theory was finally gaining acceptance, making much of the geology in the movie nonsensical as the title went from being regarded as possible apocalypse to normal state of the Earth. (Geothermal energy was also a very new idea at the time of the film; now countries like Iceland use it routinely, and don't need atomic bombs to access it!)%%Sure, but how exactly is it an example of this? WHAT "was in line with accepted theory"?
* ''Film/{{Outlander}}'': The protagonists trek through lava-filled tunnels in Norway. The Fennoscandian Shield which makes up Norway's land mass is one of the most tectonically stable areas in the world, and has had no volcanic activity for hundreds of millions of years.

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

* ''Film/BloodDiamond'': Danny Archer plans to sell a number of large diamonds, each at least 10 carats, to a diamond company where they will be processed in India and "become like any other diamonds," and plans to do the same with a large pink diamond found by Solomon Vendy. The colour, shape and crystal structure of a diamond reveals its origin, so they would still be identifiable as African and thus possibly sourced in a conflict zone (which they were, in the Sierra Leone civil war). Additionally, India specialises in small diamonds only. It's also very strange for a multinational diamond corporation, large enough to be invited to a G8 summit, to bother with a single, albeit large, diamond, as most of their product would be melee, or medium diamonds of a half to two carats (similarly, the mercenaries are being paid in diamond mining concessions, so they should have no reason to chase after one diamond, though Colonel Coatzee suggests he's doing it because ItsPersonal). However, the filmmakers did extensive research on the subject, even opening their own diamond mine, and it {{show|nTheirWork}}s.
* ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'': Given what we directly see of Naboo's geology, there's no way that the surface could be as verdant, full of life, and most importantly Earth-like as it is. Basically, Naboo is a porous planet with canals filled with water running through the planet's core from one side to the other. The problem is, without a hot, liquid metal core like Earth has, the planet would most likely have no magnetic field, meaning that everything on the surface should be fried by radiation. Furthermore, no hot core means no volcanic activity, which raises the question of how the atmosphere developed.

* Creator/JulesVerne's ''Literature/JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth'' (and its many movie remakes and retellings) is a prime example of this. Verne was more concerned with following the RuleOfCool in this book than the current scientific understanding of the interior of the Earth. His narrator in this story, Axel, is a geology student, and is continually [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] how utterly impossible what they are doing should be, with his explanations being consistent with 19th century geologic theories, and they still stand up pretty well.
* There is a ''Literature/TheHardyBoys'' novel wherein the boys experienced a powerful earthquake that lasted about a minute and threw them off their feet. We later find out that the quake measured "between 3 and 4 on the Richter scale." As any Californian could tell you, you might not even ''notice'' a tremor of that magnitude, especially if your attention was focused on something else at the time. And if you did notice it, your first reaction would not be "Yikes, earthquake!" but "That must be a pretty big truck."

* Very common in Franchise/CthulhuMythos stories. While some elements such as [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10464231/Volcano-raises-new-island-far-south-of-Japan.html islands rising from the sea floor]] might be justified under RuleOfCool, ScienceMarchesOn, and/or [[AWizardDidIt An]] EldritchAbomination [[AWizardDidIt Did It]].
* In ''Wither'', the first book of ''Literature/TheChemicalGardenTrilogy'' by Lauren De Stefano, North America is the only land mass remaining because the government destroyed the other continents with some super weapon, so a only a few small, uninhabitable islands remain. The destruction of all the other continents has no ill effect on North America or the environment in general.
* The volcanic island of Dragonstone in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' is said to have soil so poor that the inhabitants rely on the sea for most of their sustenance, something that infuriated Stannis Baratheon when he was made its ruling lord. But volcanic soil is actually very fertile, which should mean that Dragonstone would have a far easier time growing their food than catching it.

* Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's story ''Literature/TheTerrorOfBlueJohnGap'' ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terror_of_Blue_John_Gap described here]]) has the semi-precious stone [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derbyshire_Blue_John Blue John]] occurring in the wrong part of Derbyshire.
* Doyle's Literature/SherlockHolmes story "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" misuses the term "carbuncle", as it's actually a term for ''red'' garnets cut in a particular style. Given that this is Victorian England we're talking about, a gemstone famous enough to have been named, and the jewelry trade, that it has an incorrect name isn't necessarily an error of research.
* ''Literature/AboveTheTimberline'' takes place in a world where runaway tectonic disruptions (and an ice age caused by magnetic pole reversal) caused an apocalyptic societal collapse that took mankind 1,500 years to recover from. One scientist character describes how "Earth's mantle spun faster than its crust, causing plates to break loose and float above the magma," cracking along fault lines and crashing around like bumper cars. The resultant global geography is so scrambled that special exploratory teams are dispatched into the wilderness with the sole purpose of blindly stumbling around and hoping to encounter the ruins of old-world cities like Washington D.C. or Paris. Needless to say, this is not how plate tectonics works in the real world.

!!!'''Series:'''
* In the miniseries ''Series/TenPointFive'', a volcano erupts without any hint of activity and a ground fissure chases a train, and the very title is not possible, among many others.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresOfPompeii "The Fires of Pompeii"]], the Doctor and Donna {{outrun|TheFireball}} a pyroclastic flow, which at their ''slowest'' usually move at around ''700 kph''.

* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'': Paradise Island didn't appear on any map for inadequately explained reasons. It remained separate from Man's World despite the fact that in "The Feminum Mystique" the Nazis could and did sail directly to it. No one discovered an idyllic island of [[SuperStrength super strong]], beautiful [[ActionGirl amazons]] just because, well...they didn't.
* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': The lightning-fast cloud of ash and smoke from Orodruin is disastrous, but not nearly as bad as a real pyroclastic flow would be—they reach temperatures in excess of 1000F and instantly incinerate any organic matter caught in their path. In other words, None of the characters that survived should have survived, realistically speaking. (For a historical reference, it was the pyroclastic flow and not lava that caused the massive loss of life in St. Pierre after the eruption of Mt. Pelee.)
!!!'''TV Movies:'''
* The made-for-Sci-Fi-Channel movie ''Magma: Volcanic Disaster''. Volcanoes without precursory activity? Check. Fast moving lava? Check. Lava in places not normally found (such as above the actors head's when inside a tunnel)? Check. Among other things.

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

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'': The world is simultaneously based on our own (during a different geological era) and yet [[FlatWorld is flat]] with [[WaterfallIntoTheAbyss water constantly falling over the edges]] ([[{{Literature/Discworld}} no word on giant turtles]]). Landmasses are apparently afloat on the oceans, as evidenced by a tidal wave at the beginning of the game that causes Weyard's version of India to slam into Australia in minutes, resulting in... very little damage, actually.
* ''Videogame/DeepRockGalactic:'' One of the many reasons Hoxxes IV is [[DeathWorld such a fucked up planet]] is that it explicitly violates several laws of physics with its geological processes. The subterranean sandstorms and massive chunks of floating earth are one thing, the gigantic layer of permafrost ''below the continental plates'' that yet manages to still have a molten core is another thing entirely, that has made more than one xenogeologist throw the towel and quit the entire company.

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

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

* In the ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'' episode "Turtles at the Earth's Core" the Turtles meet dinosaurs from "beneath the Earth's core". Since the core is, by definition, at the center of the spherical Earth and thus at the point where the planet's gravity pulls ''to'', there's no such thing as ''beneath'' the core -- pass the core and you'll simply start digging ''up'' in the mantle on the other side.
* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10'': Iron/steel, or "bicenthium alloy", is stated to be exceptionally rare anywhere except Earth. This despite iron being the sixth most common element in the universe. Apparently they didn't realize why Mars was red, either.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/BojackHorseman'' episode "Underground", Mr. Peanutbutter's house (and only that) is swallowed up and buried by a giant sinkhole due to doing too much fracking next to his house. While fracking is associated with earthquakes (see EarthquakesCauseFissures), there's no way fracking can cause a huge, highly localized sinkhole like that, though some kinds of subsurface mining can cause subsidence.
* In ''WesternAnimation/EarlyMan'' the Bronze Age civilization seizes the Tribe's land to mine the bronze deposit under it. Bronze is an alloy.

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