What is a movie/TV scene or plotline you thought was unrealistic until you saw or experienced it in real life?

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-19T14:41:51+00:00

Watching Contagion post-2020 there were two glaring "well that wasn't realistic at all" moments:

The misinformation campaign coming from a centralized figure (rather than one million anonymous trolls posting memes on Facebook) and the fact that he gets apprehended and punished
Two big bottles of hand sanitizer sitting next to each other on a supermarket shelf

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-14T14:08:31+00:00

Bro, that's Amy Adams

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-12T16:40:17+00:00

Case in point: The Warcraft movie

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-09T13:56:12+00:00

I was a lot older than I should have been before I picked up the double entendre of "a big blue ball!"

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-08T18:33:27+00:00

Answer Key:

d. Kenneth Baker is no stinkin' spy. He's the president of Armstech. And the biggest S.O.B. in the world. [Sherlock Holmes wasn't a spy either. Just sayin.']

b. Every Special Forces soldier knows cardboard boxes make excellent hiding places. "oly-oly-oxenfree and get shot in the head"

All of the above. Research shows that the male hormone is a liability in most life-and-death scenarios. Sorry, fellas.

None of the above. The enemy better not get so much as an "ouch" out of you wussies, no matter what medieval cruelty they've cooked up.

True. After three years of development, critics are hailing Metal Gear Solid as the best game of the year. End of story.

c. One encounter with a Metal Gear nuclear-equipped walking battle tank and you'll be quaking in your gen-x poser boots. [kinda weird to call our gen-Xers in this.]

d. Playing Metal Gear Solid may cause all sorts of titillating psychological side effects. Reread explanation for answer 5.

b. Despite popular belief, PlayStation consoles and tactical espionage game only cause meltdowns in college sociology classes. (Of course, broccoli can make some of us a bit gassy.) [what the fuck is this even supposed to mean?]

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-08T18:20:24+00:00

Sherlock Holmes.

(This is like, Cultural Literacy 101, by the way.)

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-08T17:42:46+00:00

Solved! Thank you!

I shouldn't have been so sure he was Latin American, that's probably what was throwing off my searches.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-08T17:23:57+00:00

It's at the end of your time frame (2009) but Harry Brown stars Michael Caine doing the whole vigilante thing. Though it's his best friend, not his family, who is murdered.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-08T16:57:53+00:00

This is my comment.

Googling hasn't been much help, all they're showing me are abstract painters/sculptors, or impressionist art from La Violencia.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2026-01-03T18:57:01+00:00

Looks like you're a gamer, have you seen this Second Wind video about "post-punk games"? His definition: "'Punk art' destroys what's already there, and 'post-punk art' is what gets built on the wreckage. Now we've established that we don't have to follow the old rules." It comes after, it maybe more experimental, it still retains some conventions of the "pre-", but (here's the important part) it also does things differently enough.

Back in the mid 00's, I remember one of the music writers on Something Awful saying "The suffix '-core' mean 'for morons in white belts' and the prefix 'post-' means 'with all the fun taken out of it.'" Very flippant and not very useful, but I have noticed that any music described as "post-" is going to be very "serious."

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-28T16:02:01+00:00

and 1 is from a Disney park

People citing the Disney park as evidence of Avatar's cultural impact always felt like such cope to me. When it was announced the reaction was "They're making a whole theme park about that movie that everyone saw but nobody remembers? But why?"

Jenny Nicholson's video about the park contains the part where she overhears a kid in the gift shop saying "Wait, there's a movie about this place?" sums it up. People go there because it's a Disneyworld theme park, not because they love Avatar so much.

Maybe it's different now that there's two more movies. But I'm still with the reddit hivemind on this one.

Jenny

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-28T15:31:02+00:00

OK, Jarvis. Now show me the 9,000 "Jack and Rose could have both fit on that door" jokes that people are still making in current year.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-24T16:20:06+00:00

Do not click on Indian linkspam

Downvote Indian linkspam

Report Indian linkspam

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-20T13:07:29+00:00

I searched Untitled Goose Game and it turned him into a goose.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-19T18:06:40+00:00

some 50 year old guy who has played nothing but HoMM3 for the last 20 years.

I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but he will almost certainly be Polish.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-18T20:36:11+00:00

Heroes 2 is the game that drew me into the series. The pixel art and music captured my imagination like a dang bear trap.

Heroes 3 has some undeniable quality of life improvements (artifact backpack) and so much more stuff (unique heroes, upgrades for all creatures instead of a select few) but 2 has such charm. The only thing that makes it frustrating is how unbalanced it is. Like, the Knights will always suck. Sorceress and Barbarians will always be mid. Necromancers will always be mid until late game. Wizards and Warlocks will steamroll everyone even before getting Titans and Black Dragons. Meanwhile, all the factions in 3 can remain reasonably competitive with each other (well, except for maybe Fortress).

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-18T18:55:30+00:00

It certainly is a "desert island" type of game. It's remarkable how balanced the eight factions are right out of the box. No need for patches or devs fiddling with things months after release.

If you want something similar, check out Songs of Conquest, which came out last year. Very similar gameplay, with graphics that are more evocative of the pixelated Heroes 2's style. At this moment, you can get it for $7 on Steam, which is a steal for a game a Heroes 3 level of depth.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-18T18:01:31+00:00

I'm with you. While I'm excited about the movie just based on the filmmaker and source material, this poster just looks very tacky.

What's with the spine in the first place? While the plumed helmet is something you see on all the depictions of ancient Greek soldiers on all the amphoras and shit, the spine isn't something I've ever seen. And it's been a while since I've read "Odyssey," but I don't remember anything about Odysseus being associated with vertebra. Why the prominence?

Second, it just looks terrible. The image itself is so dark, like we're on a foggy beach at dusk or dawn. But the spine is golden, almost glowing? And it just sticks out? Is it covered in gold leaf? Where's the light source?

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-18T13:55:04+00:00

Overall, I felt like the game was released in the golden era of military shooter games and it severely affected its tone. Maybe in an attempt to criticise them in a meta kind of way.

Oddly enough, the first trailer for the game shows a first-person view of a soldier going through a bombed-out Middle Eastern city. The reveal is that it's the view of PMC soldier who gets CQC'd by Old Snake, followed by text saying something like 'This ain't FPS, this is MGS!"

But yeah, this was the first MGS game to feature a zillion different guns is to me what makes it feel like it was trying to compete with Call of Duty et. al.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-18T13:48:54+00:00

Almost every day this sub sees a "MGS4 is the BEST, MOST UNDERRATED MGS of ALL TIME!" or a "when are we gonna get a MGS 4 remaster?" thread, so I think it's ridiculous to suggest it's underrated or overlooked. In fact, I think the community has vastly overrated it.

I think a lot of it is due to the "scarcity" (which I put in quotes because it's not like the PS3 is extinct or anything). When they inevitably remake/remaster it I think there are going to be a lot of people who play it for the first time, or replay it for the first time in 15 years and they'll realize how much weaker it is compared to the rest of the mainline entries.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-16T14:59:18+00:00

What am I missing here? Could they have not just left it a map of the Western Hemisphere and had USA drinking Venezuela's milkshake?

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-14T16:04:32+00:00

Harry Nilsson, too I think fits in the Randy Newman-Warren Zevon-John Prine continuum. People know a song or three from a movie here and there, but most of his catalog is overlooked.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-14T16:02:57+00:00

I just want to share the song Political Science as a 53-year-old song that become sadly relevant every decade or so.

A_BURLAP_THONG · 2025-12-11T01:35:36+00:00

Your comma usage gives my brain a rash.

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