Shown Their Work / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

Creators showing their work in live-action movies.

Contrast ArtisticLicenseHistory.Live Action Films.

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Movies with their own pages:

• Jurassic World Dominion
• Midway (2019)
• Outlaw King

Creators:

• Jet Li: While he has won in contests, Li freely admits to having zero actual fighting experience and that in real life, he'd probably lose; nevertheless, as a trained martial artist Li's moves have a real sense of weight and deadly force (pick any Jet Li movie and note how he doesn't over-extend himself, re-centers after every move, and doesn't present a weak spot to an enemy except as a Defensive Feint Trap); Jet Li movies that feature Wire Fu and the flashier (i.e. impossible in real life) stuff are explicitly set in fantasy or sci-fi settings.
• Many Michael Mann movies fall into this category, but special mention must go to Heat and Collateral. In the DVD commentary for his 1981 movie Thief, Mann explains that several former Chicago thieves and police detectives consulted for the movie and even acted in several of the roles (most of the former thieves portrayed cops in the film, and vice versa), lending their technical expertise and knowledge of real-life criminal and law enforcement tactics to enhance the accuracy and realism of the film.

Other movies:

• Along with Arthur C. Clarke, Kubrick made the same effort with 2001: A Space Odyssey, in regards to space travel and general scientific accuracy, even though the atomic-powered spaceship does not have radiator fins to get rid of the reactor's waste heat. The makers intentionally left them off, because after a decade teaching the public that there is no air in space, they didn't want them wondering why the spacecraft has wings.
• The Apollo 13 movie. There are a few technical inaccuracies and blended characters and such, but these are primarily in service to the Artistic License and Rule of Drama. Ron Howard (the director) and Tom Hanks, in the "making of Apollo 13" documentary which was part of the collector's edition, were referred to as the "accuracy police" by someone who worked on it. The actor who played the flight director compared working on the film to cramming for finals - getting all this information in their heads and focusing on it the night before they did it. They even had Dave Scott, commander of Apollo 15, there every day to make sure that they flipped the right switches and everything.
  Scott: "I'm really impressed with the authenticity of the way they're doing this. They're so interested in getting this accurate and precise down to not only the word, but the inflection of the word and the meaning behind the word."
  • The misquote of Lovell saying "Houston, we have a problem" rather than "Houston, we've had a problem" has been stated to have been intentional, with the reasoning being that they didn't like the use of past tense, for whatever reason (perhaps Rule of Drama, to keep the audience's tension in the moment).
  • The set for Mission Control was so faithful to the original that at least one real-life Mission Control tech from NASA, who was brought in to evaluate the set, caught himself expecting the elevator from the NASA building when he left through the side door.
• April 9th screenwriter Tobias Lindholm based his script on historical records and interviews with veterans of the German invasion in 1940.
• During the closing credits of Argo the moviemakers show off a little by juxtaposing shots from the movie with photos of the actual people and events the story was based on. Some of them are amazingly close to reality.
• The exchange between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner in The Avengers regarding the Coulomb barrier and the quantum tunneling effect is at the very least in the neighborhood of plausibility.
• Blood Of The Vampire is set during the 1880s, during a time when blood types had not been discovered yet; Dr. Callistratus even points that out to the protagonist when hiring him.
• For Das Boot, the filmmakers painstakingly recreated both the interior and the exterior of a German Type VII U-boat. Only one minor allowance to the set was made (a section of the control room wall could be removed to allow cameras), but that was only used once. Also, the film was made mostly in chronological order. The cast was kept indoors throughout the shooting so that their increasing pallor would reflect the complexion changes a real U-boat crew would go through.
• In Bridge of Spies, attorney James Donovan cites Mapp v. Ohio, the precedent that any evidence obtained during the illegal search of Abel's apartment cannot be used in court. Furthermore, when the judge tries to shoot this down on the grounds that Abel is not an American citizen, Donovan cites (by name) the case Yick Wo v. Hopkins, the precedent that constitutional protections apply to anyone living in the U.S., not just American citizens.
• Captain America: The First Avenger has some accurate things despite being heavy on Stupid Jetpack Hitler: the scene on the Italian front presents units that were on that front, two of the HYDRA bases were Peenemünde, site of the developement of the V-2, and the Riese Facility, where Germans were rumored to work on some superweapon. As an added bonus: the real-life bombing of Peenemünde was codenamed Operation Hydra.
• The writers of Contagion (2011) consulted real-life epidemiologists when writing their script. If you know anything about epidemic disease, it's possible to appreciate the movie on a whole additional level.
• The Dark Knight:
  • The SWAT team's tactics when entering the building the Joker's minions have occupied are in fact, the actual procedures a real SWAT team would carry out under the same situation: the officers approach the suspects with weapons drawn and at the ready and identify themselves, demanding that the suspects surrender and put their weapons down. Until the suspects present a threat to either the officers or innocents, they have to hold fire. More than one reviewer questioned why SWAT wasn't opening fire, not realizing that this was how they really operate.
  • Commissioner Loeb's funeral procession is very realistic, thanks to the fact that the police officers you see are actual off-duty Chicago Police Department officers. Additionally, the CPD supplied the bagpipe marching band.
• In spite of being a bit narmy (but being a lovely film), Dave shows "President Mitchell" "experiencing" a stroke while giving a speech in surprisingly well-acted detail, with Kline accurately essaying the sudden loss of function on the side of the face opposite the affected hemisphere of the brain, with associated slurred speech and impaired motion, followed by stuttering and loss of concentration, and finally (simulated) loss of consciousness.
• Devotion (2022): The F4U Corsair really was infamously difficult to land for exactly the reasons depicted in the film: the same overpowered engine that made it one of the fastest naval prop fighters ever built, also made it prone to torque spins to the left if you gunned the engine too hard at low airspeed. Coupled with the cockpit being positioned unusually far back and giving it a big blind spot below the nose—dictated by Vought placing the main fuel tank in front of the cockpit—it was extremely tricky to land. Jesse has to touch-and-go on his first try at the carrier landing test because he can't see the carrier well enough, and Mohring spins out and fatally crashes in the water.
• Don't Think Twice, being a film made by improvisers, consistently shows its work, from the principles and structure of improv classes, to name-dropping improvisers like Viola Spolin, Del Close, and Paul Sills, whose names will mean nothing to large chunks of the audience.
• Before making Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick and several of his collaborators read dozens of reports made by the Air Force and the RAND Corporation. Dr. Strangelove himself is caricature of Wernher von Braun, Edward Teller, Herman Kahn and John von Neumann (but not, as often thought, Henry Kissinger, who wasn't widely known outside of academic circles at the time). Interestingly it was Kahn who suggested the Doomsday Machine, which was exactly the kind of defense that Herman Kahn fought against in his work. This attention to the smallest technical and military details is where the film gets its infamous nervous humor. Additionally, at the time of the filming, the interior of a B-52 was highly classified. The film crew made up the layout and look by extrapolation from the older B-29, and laid out the floor plan based on the external measurements of the 52. They did such a good job, the Air Force was concerned briefly that they had an insider source.
• Free State of Jones: Although there are some minor inaccuracies (and lots of gaps that were filled in, as the historical record for these events is thin) the film is among the most accurate ever released about the Civil War, with numerous historians consulting (one even being a descendant of Newton Knight himself).
• Gattaca has a close to perfect depiction of a leg-lengthening device. It's also in general one of the most realistic depictions of genetic engineering in all of fiction. Years after it was made, most of its ideas about genetics continue to hold true, and its basic premise of a class-based liberal eugenics society is terrifyingly plausible.
• Ghostbusters (1984) goes to great lengths to show its work, at least when it comes to parapsychology. The script didn't invent ectoplasm: according to parapsychology, it's the residue of telekinetic contact, and having it appear as a result of spectral contact isn't much of a stretch. Virtually every paranormal event Egon and Ray reference, from the symmetrical bookstacking case to The Tunguska Event, are all real events (although Ray misstates the year of Tunguska), and the way Peter handles Dana's possession, though played for laughs, follows the advice of both exorcists and secular psychologists about never letting the alternate personality intimidate or take control of the situation. And if there's any doubt that Dana's apartment building was indeed built as a portal for the fictional Sumerian god Gozer, it's dispelled by the fact that the top of the building is an accurate recreation of a Sumerian ziggurat. Most of this research comes from co-creator Dan Aykroyd, whose enthusiasm for the paranormal inspired the movie in the first place. In fact, his father, paranormal investigator (real life ghostbuster) Peter Aykroyd, wrote some of his research material.
• Ghoulies name-drops demons from the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Malleus Maleficarum despite not being the kind of movie where the writers would normally care.
• Godzilla (2014):
  • According to this news article◊, Gareth Edwards and his crew prepared for the monster fights by studying footage of animals fighting, so Godzilla's fighting style is based off of those of real life animals such as bears and komodo dragons.
  • There's also the tsunami scene which begins when all of the water on the beach is retreating far beyond where it normally would, heading out to sea. This is an actual sign of an incoming tsunami.
• The makers of the film Gojira did a lot of hard work to make the aftermath of Godzilla's attack on Tokyo look eerily similar to what Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like after they were hit by the atomic bomb. Considering the original film is an allegory about the horrors of atomic warfare, yeah...
• The film of The Good Earth is painstakingly accurate to the actual look of turn-of-the-century Chinese rural life, notably including in the beginning a scene of Wang Lung's neighbors operating a traditional Chinese foot-powered water mill, despite being filmed in 1937. (Originally they wanted to cast only Chinese actors, as well, but the studio declared that apparently American audiences weren't ready for that.)
• The makers went to great lengths to accurately build a German POW camp for The Great Escape. Of course, it did help that several of the actors had been prisoners of war during WW 2. Donald Pleasence, who had been in a German POW camp, made a few suggestions to John Sturges, who wasn't aware of that fact, and was told to keep his opinions to himself. However, when the director learned that Donald Pleasence knew what he was talking about, he was asked for advice all the time.
• In Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Star Lord flies through the cold vacuum of space in what amounts to a space helmet and street clothes. He also removes his mask to save Gamora. The media in general likes to depict exposure to space immediately resulting in your blood boiling over, your skin instantly freezing, your eyes popping out of your head, etc. None of that actually happens right away. This movie shows what actually happens accurately, with the two surviving long enough to be picked up.
• Gung Ho's depiction of Japanese executives dealing with American workers was so accurate that Toyota actually uses the film to show Japanese managers that are bound for the USA how not to do things. Even the "Ribbons of Shame", which most viewers probably didn't know actually exist.
• Guyana: Crime of the Century: Despite the many liberties the film takes regarding the events that led to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, there's one relevant detail that the film gets correct—the final meeting is shown taking place at night, which it really did (it began right around sunset).
• Hatari!! notes that Little Wolf needs AB Negative blood to survive; the doctor is rightly worried, because such blood is very rare (though, luckily, a would-be team member has it). Later in the film, Sean tells Dallas (and, by extension, the audience) about the traits of the Masai people.
• One of the reasons Heaven's Gate cost so much was that director Michael Cimino was obsessed with getting all the period details right. (A promotional tie-in with Kodak film quoted him as saying, "If you don't get it right, what's the point?") One legendary anecdote had Cimino deciding that the street on his main set wasn't wide enough, and then having both sides of the street torn down and moved back three feet, at great cost and time wasted. Unfortunately, it all backfired horribly — the trope was so abundant that people refused to accept its little quirks as "real" at all. Cimino tended to abandon generic verisimilitude in favour of being "accurate", in turn ignoring a lot of things that people expect (or want) to see in a western. In particular, there was widespread criticism regarding Nate's Final Speech being written from inside a burning cabin (which was actually one of the few scenes in the film true to historical fact) as well as the infamous roller skate dance scene.
• Since it was a Deconstructive Parody, the creators of Hot Fuzz spent a good deal of time in research and interviews of actual police forces, which doesn't become fully noticeable until you see the "Fuzz Fact" commentary. For instance, they were spot-on about all the politically-correct vocabulary guidelines, and the "unofficial punishments" of making officers buy donuts and ice-cream for minor offences such as forgetting their hats. The scenes where the officers are filling paperwork were added specifically because the cops they interviewed lamented that paperwork is the biggest facet of the job and the one least seen in the media.
• No funeral pyres to see in Immortals; Theseus buries his mother exactly the way the Greeks buried their dead in 13th century B.C.: the completely shrouded corpse laid to rest in a vault inside a massive tomb... which is where the film's MacGuffin happens to be.
• Inception is a film that runs on Applied Phlebotinum, but that's not to say everything is handwaved away. Christopher Nolan consulted with several PhD or MD-holding psychologists and somatic experts to come up with the various things characters do within dreams. The DVD and Blu-ray releases of the film include a documentary called "Dreams: The Cinema of the Subconscious", in which these experts are interviewed. Among them is notable "lucid dreamer" Alan Worsley, who was the first to use eye-movement as a signal to those in the real world that he was aware that he was dreaming. The concept of the "totems" is also based on "reality-checking", which is how lucid dreamers tell if they are in a dream or reality, since the brain can't differentiate between the two.
• Insecurity has a very realistic depiction of hacking. The writer and director is a professional computer programmer, and the actors were capable of writing authentic code on-screen. If you know a little about computers, it is a very rewarding movie.
• For In the Loop, director Armando Iannucci ensured he could create a realistic portrayal of the US State Department by illegally infiltrating it. He later described this extreme research as "probably international espionage".
• Into the Storm (2009) is practically impeccable in historical accuracy. They get even tiny details (such as the name of Churchill's butlers and his favorite film) entirely correctly.
• Iron Man 2: Vanko's tattoos were modeled after real Russian prison tattoos, which have different designs depending on things such as the length of the prison sentence.
• It Happened Here: On one occasion a group of Bundeswehr tank officers training in Britain were surprised to see German WW2 era soldiers marching through Parliament Square; they inspected the troops and pronounced them "absolutely correct". There also actually were British SS members. Although the exact name in the film (British Legion of SS) is false, the real Legion of St. George, later British Free Corps, actually existed. However, it never reached more than fifty people overall. Their instigator, British fascist John Amery, was hanged for high treason.
• In Jacob's Ladder, for all of the chiropractor scenes, director Adrian Lyne ensured there was a real chiropractor on-set, who would work with actor Danny Aiello so as to ensure authenticity. According to Lyne, chiropractors often approach him and thank him for going to the trouble of getting what they do exactly right.
• Jane Got a Gun:
  • The film goes to some effort to only use firearms available in the year it is set, 1871, meaning that there are no Colt SAAs (Peacemakers) as these didn't enter production until 1873. Instead the film features several guns seldom seen in westerns, including the Colt Walker, the Colt 1860 Army, the Starr 1858 Army, a Remington 1858, and a Henry 1860 rifle.
  • Notorious outlaws actually were displayed upright in their coffins once killed in the Wild West, as occurs with John Bishop at the end.
• Jurassic Park (1993) is quite famous for its realistic depiction of dinosaurs (so far as the dinosaurs were understood at the time the movie was made). Not only did the movie have spectacular effects and animatronics but their movement, according to experts, was also modeled quite realistically. Bipedals run like bipedals and T. rex takes the right stance when lowers its head to feed or bite the car's tires in its first attack. The animators did in-depth research about the movement of the dinosaurs and tested things on themselves like running and jumping obstacles, before animating the scene with the flock of Gallimimuses (being bipedal species). The film's only big liberties are with the sizes of some dinosaurs, and the ways in which science marched on regarding other aspects.
• Jurassic World:
  • The film features sauropods with correctly designed forefeet, plunge diving female Pteranodons with short crests and a Mosasaurus with teeth on her palate and the beginnings of a fluke on her tail.
  • The hybrid dinosaur Indominus rex was very deliberately made to be as accurate as possible rather than being a Mix-and-Match Critter like its original draft, the Diabolus rex, would've been (descriptions of the D. rex imply that it would have essentially been a tyrannosaur with raptor-like sickle claws). The end result is an entirely fictional species which still looks like it could have plausibly existed in the fossil record—the only exceptional difference from most other theropods is its enormous arms, and otherwise it looks very much like real dinosaurs such as Allosaurus or Giganotosaurus.
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a Film Noir pretty much dedicated to Raymond Chandler, contains numerous allusions to his books and Philip Marlowe series; it's especially notable, however, in that each of the movies' chapters are titles of a Chandler work: "Trouble Is My Business" (novella), "The Lady in the Lake" (novel), "The Little Sister" (novel), "The Simple Art Of Murder" (essay), and "Farewell, My Lovely" (novel).
• Historical changes/inaccuracies aside in Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe's The Last Samurai, a lot of details — from architecture to Ujio's simple tea ceremony — was studied meticulously, as noted in the Official Movie Guide. When the Japanese extras were brought to the village set in New Zealand, many of the older ones teared up because of how accurate the set designers and builders had created the buildings, citing that the housings looked like how their grandparents' villages did.
• Legally Blonde: While there is some artistic license in regards to law, the movie has been praised for its accurate depiction of law school, especially the part in which professors use the Socratic method to dig into cases and teach students not just to memorize the material, but to argue for and against it.
• The Little Hours: The film actually has many accurate details regarding monastic life and humor of the Late Medieval era. Many nuns were indeed sent to convents unwillingly by their families, for education or because of poverty. As a result, some were pretty unenthusiastic at their life and didn't take it too seriously (e.g. having sex with men or each other). The chores which they're shown doing are the kind of things nuns would really do. Bawdy humor with nuns, priests or monks was very common-what we see in the film is actually pretty mild compared with many works then, and that includes The Decameron that inspired it as well. The main differences of course are the dialogue, a Jewish woman being a nun, and the witches' sabbath (which wasn't even a trope until centuries later) but otherwise it's pretty authentic.
• Lucky Bastard is a found-footage horror film that takes place on the set of a porn shoot. The filmmakers labored long and hard to accurately depict what happens during such a shoot, both in front of and behind the camera: production snafus, rampant piracy, and the blasé attitudes of all involved.
• Steve McQueen's 1970 Le Mans would have made a perfectly good documentary. Half the film is the real race anyway, and posterity would've loved to have Steve McQueen interviewing the drivers of the time.
• Major Payne has a great one where Payne scares all the kids, save for Stone, into running through an obstacle course by pulling the pin of a grenade and ominously counting. While the grenade seems to take far too long to explode (in real life it's roughly 5 seconds), he doesn't actually release the safety lever until he throws it: in real life, the "countdown" for a grenade doesn't start until the lever is released, and all the pin does is keep the lever in place. The amount of time the grenade takes to explode after being thrown is very accurate to real life, and not only does Payne correctly hold the grenade (keeping the lever firmly held down with the thumb), but he also uses the proper throwing technique, making a sweeping motion with the arm fully extended. While it still a very dangerous thing to do, he clearly knew exactly what he was doing and Stone, albeit for the wrong reasons, was absolutely correct that they weren't in danger of that grenade going off.
• Mandalay: Tanya's surname, Bodoroff, is a modified version of the Russian surname Bodorov. Back then, Russian emigrants tended to tinker with their surnames a little so they were easier to pronounce and spell in the receiving country. The -off ending, in particular, is the French version of the Russian ending -ov. Tanya is a Russian refugee, so it all checks out. Additionally, the modifications also eliminate the gendered versions of Russian surnames, which in this case would be -ova. So it makes sense Tanya's last name is just Bodoroff instead of Bodorova.
• The makers of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World extended Patrick O'Brian's already-extensive shown work by digging deep into history for minute costume and hairstyle details (subsequently rendered in period-appropriate materials with period-appropriate techniques), the inner and outer workings of period-specific tall ships (they fired actual cannons to get the sound effect right), and cultural miscellany to illustrate the backdrop of the film. All extras and actors filmed aboard the ship were put through a "boot camp" to prepare them for their shipboard duties, and most of the filming actually took place at sea aboard a replica of an 18th-century tall ship.
• The Matrix Reloaded features a brief glimpse of Trinity hacking a power grid mainframe. Compared with most films' dumbed-down portrayals of "hacking a computer", this instance is remarkably realistic, despite being on-screen for only a few seconds, and references actual hacking tools and known security vulnerabilities (circa 2001). It is likely the creators felt the need to "get it right" since the concept of computer hacking is a central theme in the Matrix films.
• The Galaxy Song in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is pretty damn accurate for being a joke in a humour movie. Eric Idle has performed that song several times since it was in the movie, and where people have given him better approximations for the distances and speeds mentioned, he sometimes works them in. Remember, they were graduates of Cambridge.
• Many of the details in Monty Python's Life of Brian were accurate to the letter, such as the fact that it was considered sophisticated in Roman society to have a speech impediment (but not so among the common folk), everything the Romans did for the civilizations they conquered, and the Latin grammar.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail contains some allusions to real aspects of the Arthurian myth. Terry Jones was an Arthurian scholar.
• My Cousin Vinny, despite being a comedy, is actually very accurate in its depictions of the U.S. legal system. The procedures are all correct, and the responses to Vinny's Courtroom Antics are far more realistic than in most films. Even the strategies and techniques both attorneys use are largely in line with what's considered effective courtroom practice. The movie is listed by the American Bar Association as one of the top "Courtroom Films".
• Napoléon (1927): All the scenes in Corsica where photographed in the exact locations where the incidents occurred.
• The story of the Titanic in A Night to Remember was based on the official findings of the inquiry into the disaster and the book of the same name by Walter Lord, and is rivalled only by James Cameron's film as by far the most accurate depiction of the disaster. The only real error it makes is showing the ship sinking in one piece — but statements that it broke into two pieces were, at best, disputed at the time the movie was made, and that the Titanic broke into two pieces before it sank was only confirmed in 1985 when the wreckage was discovered. And even today it's debated whether the Titanic came apart above or below the surface. In short, this film's depiction of the sinking is as accurate as it could possibly have been for the time it was made.
• Never Cry Werewolf: In folklore, there actually are ways to willingly become a werewolf using rituals and be able to transform at will whenever they wanted. Originally werewolves were often viewed as evil sorcerers and they did this by magic (in the witch hunt era they were treated as a subset of witches). Being transformed via bite was actually rare in folklore because werewolves rarely left their victims alive.
• Of Gods And Warriors is set in a generic Viking period, and in the DVD Bonus Content the director says that it is not a historically accurate film. However, the costume designer says that she had found out that real Vikings wore colourful clothes, and colours other than brown are widely worn.
• Once showcases Glen Hansard's knowledge of the minutiae of busking, such as cover versions earning far more than original songs.
• Out of Darkness: The film is very up-to-date with modern archeology on Paleolithic lifestyles and practices. The "animation" coin that shows a man killing a deer is based on a real token, and the Neanderthal burial at the end is faithfully recreated from real Stone Age gravesites.
• Pacific Rim: Detonating a nuclear bomb underwater results in a void being created by all the water being pushed away. The void bubble eventually collapses and the water comes rushing back in a few seconds later. Though granted, Gypsy Danger should have been destroyed at that range. Also, Hannibal Chau's tattoos are based on real prison tattoos, intended to have specific meanings.
• At the Pearl Harbor memorial base, there is an informative video that tourists can watch that gives a detailed analysis of the battle, including, at one point, a complete survey of the defenses that they had in place which made them confident that they could resist an attack. The Ben Affleck film Pearl Harbor had a character awkwardly quote it word-for-word.
• The Perfect Host: John tries to get refuge in a Jehovah's Witness woman's home by claiming he's also a Witness. She instantly sees through this, though, because he uses having a cross as proof. Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in them. It's a detail most people don't know about.
• A lot of stuff in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is very well-researched. For example, historical accounts of the real-world Blackbeard do mention him never showing his face to the crew, singeing his own beard to inspire terror, and possibly indulging in sorcery.
• Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black drop the names of real 16th & 17th century fencing masters during the Chatty Duel in The Princess Bride.
• Rambo III: Soviet helicopters had "excellent aircraft" marking. This award was given to maitenance crews for meeting exceptional standards in keeping aircraft working and combat-ready.
• Rambo IV:
  • Many reviewers criticized the fourth Rambo film for its "excessive" Gorn in the finale and for Rambo not dying from nuclear fallout after running from the mushroom cloud-producing Tallboy explosion. The problem is, the movie depicted both of these things as very true-to-life. The .50 Browning M2 Rambo uses in the climax really will do that kind of damage to a human body (it fires a big bullet, developed for use on tanks) and the Tallboy bomb was one of the largest conventional —not nuclear— explosive used in WWII and, as such, will indeed form a mushroom cloud. One marine even wrote to Stallone to comment on how impressed he was with the realistic depiction of the machine gun's effects.
  • It's been confirmed by many that the movie is not far off from the actual reality on the ground. To twist the knife further, while filming on the Thailand side of the country's border with Burma, Stallone commented that the cast and crew got to see the brutality first hand. Rambo's motto — Live For Nothing, or Die For Something — has become the rallying Battle Cry for Karen warriors in real life and many of the Karen people have thanked him for showing the world just how absolutely horrific life in Burma has been for them. Stallone has called this one of the things in his life that he's most proud of.
• Ripper: Letter from Hell includes a lot of details of Jack the Ripper lore not included in other popular works. In particular, it acknowledges that Martha Tabram, although not one of the 'Canonical Five', might have been the Ripper's first victim.
• Robin Hood (1991): Viewers aware of noble ranks may not understand why Robert Hode, an earl, answers here to Baron Daguerre. However, Daguerre was a tenant-in-chief of the king, getting land directly which he then gave to lesser nobles, regardless of rank. The ordinary ranks were subordinate to this.
• In the original RoboCop (1987), a sequence depicting Alex Murphy's transport to a Detroit hospital doesn't use actors for the team that brings him into the operating room — it's an actual trauma team using real terminology ("Let's shock a flatline and quit...") and proper medical and diagnosis procedures. And if you're wondering why they have accents from the southern US, that's because that scene was filmed at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where the rest of the movie was filmed.
• In The Scorpion King the turncoat Tekmet is trying to impress some harem girls with the bow he stole from Mathayus, but finds he's unable to pull the string back more than an inch. Unlike most depictions of archery in film and TV, this one realistically shows that a very powerful bow really does require an exceptionally strong user such as The Rock to wield effectively. This is especially true with traditional, non-compound, bows, as the lack of a pully cam system means that the draw gets heavier the farther you pull.
• Shadow in the Cloud: There were in fact female pilots serving who volunteered in the British forces during the second World War. They served in the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). The film ends showing real footage from training films of women who served in the war.
• Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009) shows an incredible amount of knowledge of, not only the original novels, but 1800s London and some other Holmes media. Considering Guy Ritchie and the screen writer are fans and that many of people who worked on the film have shown a good deal of knowledge on the books, it should be of no surprise. Sadly, due to the many unfaithful adaptions of Sherlock Holmes, many people have taken accurate things as Holmes being a bohemian, Holmes's skill at boxing, sword fighting and martial arts, Watson being a lady's man and a man of action, Holmes using a revolver, Holmes's sense of humor, Holmes's sunglasses and hat, Watson's pet pitbull, and so on as being inaccurate when the makers of the film should be getting credit for showing that they know their Holmes.
• Sneakers is a very accurate depiction of cryptology and hacking. It, in fact, literally shows its work: in one scene, a character is using an overhead projector and transparencies. The mathematics there were written by the movie's consultant, Dr. Len Adleman. As in, Rivest-Shamir-Adleman encryption. Even the magic decryption box is fairly plausible. Like every cryptographic algorithm ever invented except one (one time pad cryptography), public key cryptography has yet to be proven secure. If someone figured out how to reduce the time complexity of prime factorization from exponential to polynomial time, they might be able to decrypt things that we currently consider to be completely secure.
• When Mark Zuckerberg was asked how accurate The Social Network was compared to his real life, the one positive thing he had to say was that the movie got his wardrobe right.
• In Spider-Man: Homecoming, student Michelle doesn't want to go in the Washington Monument because she doesn't want to "celebrate a monument built by slaves." Her teacher starts to say "I don't think it was built by...", and a (black) security guard shrugs noncommittally—so the teacher lets her stay behind. The Monument's foundation and first 150 feet were built in 1848-55, which makes it highly likely that slaves were involved in its construction—but unlike other famous D.C. buildings (like the White House), we have no actual records to prove that slaves were used. So, the guard's shrug was correct.
• Spotlight built a full scale replica of the Boston Globe's newsroom and the basement Spotlight office in an abandoned Sears. When the actors's Real Life counterparts visited the set, they rearranged their desks to reflect how they would have looked in 2001. The film also literally shows the work of checking through volumes and volumes of clerical directories, complete with 2001-accurate Excel spreadsheet.
• In the 1994 film Stargate Daniel Jackson corrects a translation of a text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The filmmakers could have just used random gibberish, but instead they used actual hieroglyphics here, and they do actually translate to what Daniel Jackson says.
  • He also attributes the translation issues to someone using "Budge" and questioning why they are reprinting his books. Sir Ernest Budge was a late-Victorian, highly prolific egyptologist who was very highly regarded and wrote several primers on hieroglyphics, but modern scholars have derided as deeply flawed and very strongly coloured by his conservative Victorian social values. Egyptologists in the audience would have been rolling in the aisles, anyone else would have gone "Huh?"
  • Later, Daniel complains about having problems with Ancient Egyptian vowel-sounds. Vowels are not recorded in hieroglyphic writing.
  • Daniel drops an obscure ancient-astronauts talking point during his failed lecture, when he claims that Colonel Vyse faked his discovery of Khufu's name inside the Great Pyramid. This theory was proposed in 1980 by Zecharia Sitchin, an ancient-astronauts theorist who more notably invented the Nibiru conspiracy theory.
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones has a minor example early in the movie. The two Jedi interrogate bounty-hunter Zam Wesell to find out who hired her, but she's incapacitated by a dart before she can talk. Then we hear the sound of the gun responsible. This might seem like it's just because it's more dramatic if the shot comes unannounced, but in reality supersonic projectiles will reach the target before the sound of the shot, with a noticeable delay if fired from long-range. This is part of the reason they're so deadly as it gives the shooter time to relocate.
• Sucker Punch: The girls keep their rifles on their shoulders, roll in their steps rather than bouncing, and never cross lines of fire when clearing a room (and clearing the room they went from cover to cover, interlocking fields of fire). The firearms savvy troper will recognize EoTech holographic sights, historically accurate firearms (even the Samurai's 20mm version minigun), and a suppressed M4. Even handling a semi-automatic firearm, Baby Doll only crosses her thumbs in back once, but with hands that tiny it's believable she didn't catch the Colt Hammer Bite (when the slide comes back in the cycling of the action and cleaves any flesh in its way).
• Sweeney Todd: During the shaving duel between Todd and Pirelli, the flashy manner in which the latter handles his razors not only places more stress on the blades, resulting in them going duller faster, but also is much more dangerous to the person getting the shave. This shows that Pirelli is much more stage performer and con artist than an actual barber, preferring to entertain a crowd than actually get the job done.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) has a scaled-up but otherwise beautifully accurate version of the New York storm drain system as a major set piece.
• The Terminal portrays secondary language acquisition very correctly. In addition, Viktor Navorski's native language is very consistent with what Eastern European languages are like (it's a dialect of Bulgarian). Tom Hanks' wife, Rita Wilson, is of Bulgarian descent and so Hanks went to her for voice coaching.
• Terror in a Texas Town: Hanson explains to Pepe that you don't use a harpoon to kill a whale. The harpoon is used to hook the whale. The weapon used to kill it is a lance.
• Titanic (1997): The re-creation of the doomed ship is so authentic that, when James Cameron flooded the set to film the ship going under water, real-life Titanic salvagers derived a new explanation of what happened to the spiral staircase based on what happened to the set. They even went so far as to make corrections after the movie hit theaters. When Neil deGrasse Tyson commented that they got the night sky wrong in one scene, he was asked for a correct depiction of the sky at the time and place where the sinking occurred. When he furnished one, they re-edited the footage of that scene to include the correct night sky.
• The military chatter heard throughout the Transformers Film Series is real. Michael Bay specifically asked his extras (most of whom are played by real US soldiers) to simply say and do exactly what they normally would do in the situation presented in the script. It also features many accurate military maneuvers and procedures quoted and carried out. The shot of Devastator "waking up" had to be re-rendered by ILM because, as Michael Bay pointed out, the motion blur and Depth of Field weren't consistent with an I-MAX camera, which is what the other shots in that scene were filmed using. This is the same Devastator that destroys computers when they try to render a frame of him.
• Tremors shows some good research in Burt Gummer; he and his wife debate the utility of a .223 AR-15 vs. a .375 H&H bolt gun, and the Wrong Goddamned Rec Room has not only a Dillon progressive reloading press but a very large vibratory case cleaner. Also, as one would expect from a man like Burt, he's completely aware of and obeys proper gun safety measures. They also do pretty well with their geology terminology.
• In the 2010 remake of True Grit, at the climax Rooster Cogburn attempts to Suck Out the Poison after Mattie Ross is bitten by a rattlesnake. Despite being a commonly-believed recommendation at the time, it is now known that this is in fact one of the worst things you can do in the event of a snake bite. Mattie's near-death and subsequent amputation of her arm are probably because of the bacteria that Rooster introduced to her wound during the sucking, which would have lead to infection and generally more life-threatening situation than the poisoning itself.
• In United 93, all the inaccuracies of 9/11 were accurately portrayed. Rather than stripping down the confusion to make things easier for an audience to follow, all of the misinformed fragments are out there, just as it was in real life due to how rapidly things were unfolding. Different groups referred to the wrong planes by the wrong numbers. There were differing reports on how many planes were out there. After American Airlines Flight 77's impact with the Pentagon, the news reported a fire on the National Mall when there was none. It takes multiple phone calls for the passengers to learn that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been hit by hijacked planes just like their own, which finally prompts them to fight back when their fates become inevitable. All of their phone conversations with family and friends are word-for-word what they said in Real Life, too.
• The Walking Dead (1936): The "glass heart" machine used to revive Boris Karloff's dead character was said to be "nearly a prefect replica" of an actual perfusion pump—a device designed to keep organs alive outside an organism's body—which had been built by Charles Lindbergh, when the legendary pilot and engineer was working with a Nobel-winning scientist at New York's Rockefeller Institute research labs in the mid-1930s.
• The 1983 film WarGames was remarkably accurate in its portrayal of how David does hacking, even if the capabilities of the computers themselves was beyond the reality of the time. Though even the writers acknowledge that Joshua should not have been speaking at NORAD, but the viewer is used to hearing the voice.
• During the production of The Way of the Gun, director Christopher McQuarrie's brother, an expert in firearms training and squad tactics, was brought onboard as a firearms supervisor and consultant - and it shows. Throughout the film, Parker and Longbaugh use effective movement tactics (the "Move-Moving" scene), perform the correct close-quarters entry procedures whenever they enter a room, use tactical reloads and generally perform as a cohesive pair of experienced weapon operators. McQuarrie points out during the DVD Commentary that proper Gun Safety is observed as well. For instance, Ryan Philippe keeps his finger off the trigger when not firing.
• In Whip It, the audience is given the general rules of scoring in Roller Derby in exposition, but not many of the specific rules of play. At several times ry the matches, a jammer is shown waving their arms up and down by repeatedly placing their hands on their hips. This is never explained within the film, but is the means by which a lead jammer can end a jam and prevent any further scoring.
• The creators of the original The Wicker Man (1973) did extensive research on the religion of pre-Christian Celts.
• The rocket launch sequence in Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon — in spite of the fact that rockets don't need to be submerged in water - was extremely accurate and done entirely to justify the studio's hiring of German rocket scientists for the production^note Indeed, real rocket launches are now in part modelled on Lang's depiction. This probably makes it the best scene in the film as it contrasts with how much Lang's wife/coauthor Thea von Harbou made up convenient things about the moon: she depicts it with normal gravity, gold-filled caves, and a perfectly breathable atmosphere (what's more, it's a perfect half-atmosphere which exists only on the far side of the moon). All these ideas would have been considered ludicrous even at the time of the film's release.
• Wonder Woman (2017):
  • The armour that the Amazons and Diana use in the opening is inspired by actual classical Greek armour. Granted, the armour that inspired Diana's was likely the armour of an archer, not a melee fighter.
  • The outfit that Diana settles on in London is very similar to the uniforms that serving women used, as surgeons, police, firefighters, or other positions.
  • The movie displays pretty accurate World War I equipment, especially for the Imperial German army, such as Fokker E. III planes, Maxim machine guns, a 7.58 cm Minenwerfer mortar and even a Stirnpanzer◊ (additional metal protections that were worn on steel helmets), which are all accurate for 1918.
  • After Ares's defeat, several German troops remove their gas masks to reveal themselves as boys in their mid-teens. By this point in the war, this practice was sadly common to both sides, as entire generations of older men were destroyed in previous battles. Germany especially needed Cannon Fodder since it didn't benefit from fresh troops like the Allies when the USA joined in the war in 1917, and thus had to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
  • The German army lacking food is brought up twice in the film. This refers to the Allied naval blockade of all German ports, which was one of the most decisive factors in the Allied victory and seriously crippled the German war effort.
  • While it may seem a rather obvious error for there to be a British tank at a German military base, by this time in the war, the Germans had managed to capture or recover about forty of them and incorporate them into their own army, as the Germans were far behind the British and French in both design quality and production quantity of tanks.
  • Steve's watch. Prior to the Great War, wristwatches were almost exclusively for women, with men favoring pocket watches, generally on a chain fitted into their Waistcoat of Style. In the military, however, this quickly became impractical, as the chain could get snagged, the watch could get dropped, and in any case it needed a free hand to read. Many military actions require precise timing, such as coordinating artillery barrages with advancing troops and aerial navigation, and Steve is seen to be a pilot before he became a spy. Even the construction of his watch is accurate: before there were specifically-designed wristwatches, there were leather wristbands made to hold a conventional pocketwatch.
  • The group photo that was first seen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was taken with a real late 19th century camera, the actors had to pose for a long exposure time. The end result is that the photo looks "authentic" without having to add any modern filter.
  • The boats used by the German landing party at Themyscria are labeled "Schwaben"; likely the warship they came off from (and sank in the background). SMS Schwaben was a real warship with the Imperial German Navy. (But was a different design from the one on film and served the entire war in the Baltic Sea, and survived until 1921.)
• X-Men Film Series
  • The screenwriters of X2: X-Men United did research on how to blow up a dam for the climactic scenes of the movie; this went mostly unremarked upon in the film (though no doubt the director and effects artists got some use out of it), but was described at some length in the novelization.
  • A minor instance in X-Men: First Class; Xavier's paper on mutation that we hear mentions that Neanderthals were probably exterminated by their "mutated" cousins Homo sapiens. While modern research indicates that it was more likely the two interbred, at the time of the film (the 60s) the theory was not yet established at large. Notably in X2, Storm recites the interbreeding theory to the class at the start of the film, making this double as a Call-Forward.

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