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Explosions. Gun silencers. Chloroform. All very exciting cinematic tools, but none of them really act the way they do in movies. Today, we're going to break down some of the most egregious lies that movies have taught us over the years. Join host Erin McCarthy as she breaks down some common myths from the big screen. Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss 13 Lies Movies Taught Us | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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Jurassic Park instilled in countless kids the fear of coming face-to-face with a T-Rex
0:05
But it also taught them what to do if that actually happened. As Dr. Alan Grant says to Lex in the film
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Don't move. It can't see us if we don't move. Sorry, but no
0:16
Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Mental Floss, and a T-Rex could almost definitely
0:20
still see you if you didn't move. According to one 2006 study, the prehistoric predator's visual acuity may have been as
0:26
much as 13 times better than a human's. A rationale was offered up in Michael Crichton's original novel, but then completely debunked
0:34
in his sequel The Lost World. So even if you landed in the Jurassic Park universe, freezing in front of a T-Rex wouldn't
0:39
guarantee your survival. The notion that the Dino King can't detect stillness probably isn't the only falsehood
0:45
that movies made you believe. On this episode of The List Show, I'm covering some of the most memorable ones, from how
0:51
easy it is to walk away from an explosion unscathed to how quickly chloroform can actually knock
0:56
you out. Let's get started. In the 2010 action comedy The Other Guys, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg's characters
1:08
are knocked to the ground when a building gets bombed some yards away. As Ferrell writhes
1:12
around in agony, he calls bullshit on how action heroes just walk away from explosions
1:17
without even flinching. Sorry, Denzel Washington. And Antonio Banderas. And Hugh Jackman. Ferrell
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is right. Slowly strolling away from an explosion wouldn't just require audacity. You'd also
1:29
need the ability to defy physics. People get bowled over when a bomb detonates because the
1:34
rapid expansion of gas and change in pressure generate a blast of wind. According to the U.S
1:38
Department of Homeland Security, you have to be a good 1,200 feet away from the blast of a pipe
1:43
bomb in order to avoid potential death. That distance doubles if an SUV or van is chock full
1:49
of explosives. If the vehicle in question is a semi-trailer, there better be at least 9,300 feet
1:55
— that's nearly 26 football fields — between you and it. Or you'll very likely be a goner
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And those are just estimates. As Homeland Security explains, minimum evacuation distance
2:07
is the range at which a life-threatening injury from blast or fragmentation hazards is unlikely
2:12
However, non-life-threatening injury or temporary hearing loss may occur. While we're on explosions, when Luke Skywalker torpedoes the Death Star in Star Wars A New
2:20
Hope, it blows up with a satisfying boom. Star Wars space battles are pretty loud in general
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Bangs, blasts, droids beeping, ships whizzing by, and so on. Sure, it would be weird and boring if all that action unfolded in near silence
2:34
But it would also be more accurate, because sound as we know it doesn't exist in space
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Sound travels by vibrating through adjacent molecules in a medium, like air or water
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Space isn't a perfect vacuum—in other words, it's not completely empty. But its atoms are so few and far between that they can't really conduct sound waves
2:53
at least not in a way humans can understand. Some sci fans have argued that in the case of something like the Death Star the expanding atmosphere is carrying the sound waves with it Or maybe the particles colliding with the ship will you know what I leave that to the theoretical physicists slash superfans
3:09
But in general, space action sequences on screen should be pretty quiet, save for whatever's
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happening inside a spacecraft or an astronaut's helmet, where there's air to carry sound around
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Real astronaut helmets, by the way, aren't lit from within like those in Countdown and
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Interstellar and scores of other space movies. If they were, the glow would create a glare similar
3:28
to the one on your car windshield when the interior lights are flicked on. Not ideal for
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visibility during real space missions, but definitely useful in helping us distinguish
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between the spacesuit clad Sandra Bullock and George Clooney during gravity. The visor of a
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real space helmet typically has a reflective gold coating that protects the astronaut from sun
3:45
radiation while still allowing them to see out of it. Space isn't the only place where Hollywood
3:49
sound editors take creative liberties for dramatic effect. If your knowledge of bald
3:53
eagles mostly comes from the movies, you probably think its call matches its appearance. Commanding
3:59
majestic, even threatening. Not so. As bird expert Connie Stanger told NPR
4:05
the bald eagle has a little cackling type of a laugh that's not really very impressive for the bird
4:11
or for the silver screen. So filmmakers often use the cry of a red-tailed hawk instead
4:16
Maybe America's national bird is cackling about how easily duped we all are
4:20
We've been deceived by Hollywood's version of gun silencers, too. A real one won't silence a gunshot completely. Nor will it make it as quiet as the discharge of a
4:29
Nerf dart. As Ralph Clark, CEO of the gunshot detection software company ShotSpotter, explained
4:34
in a 2017 Washington Post interview, in regard to gun silencers, it is more accurate to call
4:39
them suppressors, as they suppress the impulsive sound of gunfire, not wholly eliminate it
4:44
As the bullet travels through the silencer, it progresses through a series of expansion
4:47
chambers that allow the gas to spread out and cool down so it doesn't explode from the gun
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with quite so much energy. According to the American Suppressor Association, the typical silencer decreases gunshot noise by an average of 20 to 35 decibels
5:01
making it about as effective as wearing earmuffs or earplugs. Muffled enough to prevent hearing damage, but maybe not to help you get away with murder
5:08
So let's say someone gets arrested for murder because their gun silencer made a lot more noise than Hollywood led them to believe it would
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Upon arrival at the police station, they demand their one phone call because that's what the Joker
5:18
did in The Dark Knight and Fletcher Reed did in Liar Liar. Extremely questionable role models
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but whatever. In real life, laws about making phone calls from jail vary by state. California's
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penal code, for example, says that an arrested person has the right to make at least three
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completed telephone calls within three hours of their arrest and can call a bail bonds person
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an attorney, and a relative or other person. In Tennessee, by law, they can't even book you
5:43
in the system until after you've successfully completed a telephone call to an attorney, relative
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minister, or any other person. And they're required to ensure that you get access to a phone
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within an hour. It's often less about the number of calls and more about making contact with one or
5:56
more people That said there no overarching constitutional right to a phone call and not every state has legislation in place that entitles you to one So demanding your one phone call at the county jail might not work as well as it does in the movies
6:09
What if there was a drug that could unlock 90% of your brain that you currently can't access
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You'd be smart enough to make a killing on the stock market, and you could probably finish your
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novel in days. You'd be… limitless. Or at least that's what happens in the 2011 Bradley Cooper
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starring thriller Limitless, which is based on the idea that humans only use a small percentage
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of our brains. The concept also helped inspire the 2014 sci-fi flick Lucy, in which a brain-unlocking
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drug gives Scarlett Johansson's Lucy even more outrageous powers. Telekinesis, telepathy, immunity from pain. You get the picture. The 10% myth is false for a couple of obvious reasons
6:43
For one, it would mean that most brain injuries wouldn't have any impact on people's lives
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If 90% of your brain matter was totally useless, you could probably afford to impale a chunk or
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two without doing too much damage, but that isn't the case. And secondly, two words
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Natural selection. As Britannica explains, early humans who devoted scarce physical resources to
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growing and maintaining huge amounts of excess brain tissue would have been outcompeted by those
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who spent precious resources on things more necessary for survival. In other words, if some
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human ancestors had developed such inefficient brains, they probably wouldn't have been very
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successful at staying alive and procreating. So that kind of cerebral dead weight wouldn't have
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gotten passed down often enough for all of us to still have it today. Thanks to advanced brain
7:24
imaging, we know that even pretty effortless tasks like looking at a picture require way
7:29
more than 10 percent of your brain. But since a lot of that effort happens on an unconscious
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level, it can feel like you're only using a tiny sliver of your mental resources most
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of the time. The 10 percent idea was mentioned in Lowell Thomas's foreword to Dale Carnegie's 1936
7:42
bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People. And scholars generally point to the
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self-help industry as the force behind the myth's ongoing popularity. But any self-respecting
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scientist will tell you, it's bogus. So if someone offers you a drug that they claim
7:55
will make you telepathic or even just really smart, don't take it
7:59
You've seen it in Taken, Blade Runner, and every crime show ever. With just a few clever
8:04
keystrokes, someone enhances a blurry photo or video to the point of immaculate clarity
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This is more or less impossible because it's essentially creating new data out of nothing
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As photo editors know, you can play with contrast, shadow, and other settings to manipulate the
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data already in an image, so it's easier for the human eye to see. But if you have a super
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pixelated image, you can't just fill in the blanks — like facial features — by adding
8:27
a bunch of non-existent extra pixels. Or I guess more accurately, you can fill in those
8:31
pixels however you want, but it won't magically reveal some perfect representation of reality
8:36
that was hiding beneath the grainy original. As HowToGeek explains it, a function that creates something as specific as a human face
8:42
from nonsense data would require actual knowledge of the end product. You would need to know
8:47
the actual person's face in order to find it in the blurry image, which sort of defeats
8:51
the point of this imaginary technology anyway. Even today, there are AI-assisted applications
8:56
that can fill in missing info in static and moving images but they rely on some form of accurate data to inform their guesses And they not perfect In 2020 an image circulated around the internet from one of those applications It showed a low photo of Barack Obama coming out the other end with the former
9:13
president looking 100% white. Whether that was the result of presumably unintentional bias in machine learning or other shortcomings
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of the software, it showed that the process has a lot of room for improvement
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In short, enhancing footage is sort of possible, but definitely not the way Hollywood does it
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Feel free to still say enhance when you're using two fingers to zoom in on an iPhone photo, though
9:34
That's just fun. Another well-trodden trope of crime dramas is that police can't file a missing persons
9:39
report if the person hasn't been missing for at least 24 or even 48 hours
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It's such a common misconception among the public that a number of government websites
9:47
— from Portland, Oregon to New York City — expressly state that there's no waiting
9:51
period before you can report a missing person. The sooner you inform the authorities of someone's disappearance, the better
9:57
As former FBI agent and University of South Florida Criminology Associate Professor Brianna
10:02
Fox told ABC News, the information that law enforcement gets tends to be a little more
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accurate in the first two or three days. After that, people's memories aren't as sharp, and tips from the public begin to dwindle
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You're not doing the detectives or the missing person any favors by letting a day go by
10:18
If you happen to see someone get bitten by a venomous snake, you might be inclined to
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mimic what Elsa Pataki's character does in Snakes on a Plane. Cut the wound open and suck the venom out. Heroic
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And a heroically bad idea. For starters, the cut-and-suck method ratchets up the risk of infection, in part because your
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mouth is teeming with germs. And if you have any sort of open wound in your mouth, the venom could very well enter
10:40
your own bloodstream. Moreover, snake venom typically moves through your body too fast for your suction tactics
10:46
to make much of a difference. You shouldn't even apply a tourniquet, as that can cause nerve and tissue damage
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Instead, call 911. And if you're on a plane, well, I hope Samuel L. Jackson is there
10:56
A chloroform-soaked rag to the face is a pretty convenient way for screenwriters to quickly
11:00
remove a character from a scene. Maybe a little too convenient. Chloroform does knock you out. Real-life criminals like 19th century serial killer H.H. Holmes
11:08
used it to subdue victims, and physicians once used it to anesthetize patients. But
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the slightly sweet colorless liquid doesn't work immediately. As anesthesiologist Satya Kumar told the New Indian Express
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"...the victim will never faint in an instant. It takes a good two to five minutes for the
11:23
to slip into unconsciousness, and even that only if an unusually high dosage is administered
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This misconception has some staying power. It actually predates movies and TV. An 1865
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edition of The Lancet discusses the popular belief that chloroform can produce insensibility
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and clarifies that anesthesia by chloroform is not very quickly or very easily affected
11:44
upon a non-consenting person. And lastly, contrary to what Ray taught Jerry Maguire and the rest of us, the human head
11:50
doesn't weigh eight pounds. It usually tips the scales around 11. Though Ray was a kid
11:55
so maybe his did weigh eight. We've got an upcoming video about the coolest cats in history
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If you've got a nomination for a fantastic feline, ideally from real life, drop it in
12:04
the comments below. Thanks for watching
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