alt title(s): Did Not Do Research
They went to the right movie for a Mexican Disney character, but they picked the Brazilian character instead. Of course, either way, New Mexico is in America. *
"Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not 'Every man for himself.' And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto! I looked them up!"
Writers in film, television and other media
can sometimes be lazy people who cannot be bothered to do proper research on subjects relevant to the plot of their work of fiction. At other times (especially in TV), they just
cannot squeeze research into the 10 days or so they get to write a script. In other cases, putting in too much detail would be distracting and annoying. In any case, the research did not get done.
The result is that depictions of events and concepts taken from history, foreign cultures, or the sciences will often be
heavily distorted, caricatured or inaccurately depicted as being analogous to something more familiar to the audience.
Often these mistakes will be so glaringly obvious to anyone with any sort of basic knowledge of the subject that it will make the entire work seem completely ridiculous.
To avoid making these mistakes, see
Useful Notes. For the situations where the research
is obviously done, see
Shown Their Work.
For situations where the research might or might not have been done, but is ignored in favor of the story, that's
Artistic License. When the science in an old work has since been disproven, that's
Science Marches On; when the historical records changed, that's
History Marches On.
Tropes that fall into this category:
