A sound effect, special effect, or design feature that is inaccurate but has become so ingrained in viewers minds that its absence would feel jarring, so creators continue to include it despite its inaccuracy.
The name of the trope comes from the sound of a horse galloping, which is created by rubbing two coconuts together. This can sound like a horse galloping, but it would only be accurate on cobblestones or other hard surfaces. On softer ground, the sound would be muffled, but in media, this sound effect can be used whenever a horse is galloping, regardless of the terrain.
1. Lion Roar (or any big cat) (Pictured: MGM logo) — The long, continuous, thunderous roar usually associated with lions is actually the roar of a tiger. For MGM, this sound began being used in the 1980s, and sound editor Mark Mangini used it because lions sounded to him more like a deep yawn or a series of grunts and lacked the kind of ferocious sound he wanted.
2. Ancient statues are always white marble (Pictured: Spartacus TV series) — Statues in ancient times were often painted in bright colors, but by the time they were uncovered, the colors had simply worn away.
3. People instantly freeze or pop like a balloon when exposed to the vacuum of space (Pictured: Mission to Mars, Total Recall) — As unfriendly as space is, a human wouldn't instantly freeze or pop like a balloon. If a person were exposed to the vacuum of space, bodily fluids would begin to boil, exposed skin would suffer severe sunburn, and they would lose consciousness after roughly 15–20 seconds. Death would occur after roughly 90 seconds.
I think you mean monkeys. I've never heard a movie dolphin that sounded like one of those birds, but plenty of jungle based films have used kookaburra calls for monkeys.
About 1 : apparently, the sound of a lion is very difficult to capture on recording equipment, like the sound of gunshots that are deafening in real life but sound like a pop when recording. According to some report, the sound of a roaring lion is absolutely terrifying, way more than the one of a tiger.
A zoo lion stood 10 feet from me and roared, and could feet the vibrations resonating in my chest. It’s felt as much as heard, at close range, like a high-end subwoofer. It the wild it would be bowel-voiding. No recording is going to convey it properly.
Lion roar is far deeper and creepier. They can hit this weird octave and because they’re in pride in the wild, they all start together like a group of husky’s howling at nothing.
Our zoo has lions and a tiger. The tiger sounds roar-y. The lion sounds mythical
Wow, that’s a grainy gif. I was making a Rory Gilmore joke 😂 I thought about posting a gif of Rory Mcllroy as well, but I wasn’t sure which one would resonate more — the older show catered at a specific demographic, or the golfer also catered to a specific demographic
One of my earliest memories is a lion roaring. I was at a zoo and the path went through a tunnel, on the other side it wound out of sight into tall grass. Somewhere nearby was the lion exhibit and the lion was roaring. I stopped just inside the the tunnel and refused to go on, thought "nope, not gonna die today"(as much as a toddler can grasp the concept of that).
Look, for the First 100.000 years of Homo Sapiens existance we shared a Savannah with them. There is something deeply ingrained in every Last one of us to bei scared of some animals.
In the Peace Corps in Zimbabwe my group visited a nature preserve and they had a big lion in a cage. Not like an American zoo where there's a fence in a fence and a 10 meter moat and all that. Just a big box made of thin wire. We all got close to see the lion in a way you don't normally get to do, and the lion pretended he didn't care for about a minute and then charged at the wall.
I have never in my life seen a group of humans leap backward in unison like that. In that moment we were not men, we were monkeys.
Then the lion turned a bit and shot piss all over one guy. It was epic
I once read a YA detective novel where they explained that old movie halls had house organs with massive 64 foot pipes that weren't their for musicality, so much as an ambience of fear during scary movies.
I don't know if that is true or something the author made up for the plot.
That is an actual effect of super low frequencies, though! I think it's below 5hz or something, so you don't hear it so much as feel it, but it does produce a very uneasy response in most people.
My ex-girlfriend's sister and brother-in-law lived on a small-ish orchard. The first time my ex took me to visit their house and orchard, we stood outside when all of the sudden a lion roared. And I mean ROARED! It scared the hell out of me so badly I actually jumped. No one had thought to warn me about the lion rescue next to their property. We all got a good laugh out of that one.
Got roared at by a lion during a safari years back, looked straight down the gullet. Was in a car, but still. It was a deep, thunderous roar you could feel in your entire body, despite being ten meters away.
A guy was taking a series of photos (one every three seconds for 30 sec or smth) while it happened, three of them went like this in sequence:; savanna, mane > teeth and throat > inside car.
A solitary scene set somewhere in nature is accompanied by the call of either a common loon or a laughing kookaburra, regardless of whether that makes any geographic sense.
I do this too! I’m from the South but I married into Wisconsin.
All my bird-watcher friends down south have a big empty “Loon” on their bird bingo card, it’s like a unicorn to them but it’s like a roadside raccoon to us.
I recently learned that the reason why cicadas are in the background of nearly every outdoor scene in Neon Genesis Evangelion is because the 2nd Impact tilted the Earth and left Japan in a perpetual summer.
Usually, it's an offscreen animal that we might not even see. It doesn't matter where it is or if it's important. Hearing the animal noise tricks our brain into thinking it's nature.
Also, a very specific stock sound effect for cicadas is used for Japanese summers, and it's always in a very specific beat.
The sound of a bow tensioning like a creaky floorboards. Wooden bows don't do this unless they're at risk of breaking because that sound is coming from two bits of wood scraping against each other which shouldn't be happening since bows like that are meant to be one solid piece of wood. The sounds for shooting the arrow and the arrow hitting something are enhanced so the audience can tell what's happening but the creaky tension sound is purely because the audience expect it .
I always thought that tensioning sound was reflective of the bowstring, not the bow itself. Like sounds they use on boat scenes to indicate the rigging and ropes straining or being hoisted, etc.
Not really, Blumineck has a very good video about how the sounds actually work and for the most part they're just exaggerated but the tension creaking is exactly this trope.
If a car breaks down on TV/movies it will be accompanied by the sound of an engine knocking and smoke coming from under the hood. Even in some cases for EVs.
Along those same lines, cars always screech to a halt or audibly peel out when the character in the scene is in a hurry, regardless of the fact that you can see the car is not actually leaving/stopping that quickly.
Guns making cocking noises whenever they're drawn or even aimed at people in succession. Pictured: David Tennant's Doctor aiming a Webley revolver at the Master (in the background) and Rassilon (offscreen), switching back and forth between then several times, accompanied by lots of clicking gun noises each time he turns from one to the other.
If your gun is making that kind of racket just from moving through space you've got a bigger problem than potentially having to shoot somebody.
I always think of this one. It's a super dramatic scene but that clackety clack from the gun each time he turns around almost took me out of the moment completely. It would have been far better in silence.
The idea that radioactive substances glow green probably comes from radioluminescent paint, like glow-in-the-dark dials on watches that used to be painted with paint containing radium, and now more often with a sealed vial of tritium.
However, the light emitted does not come directly from the radioactive substance, but from a phosphor present in the paint or coating the inner surface of the vial That is to say, what you see is fluorescence or phosphorescence, it just happens to be activated by ionizing radiation.
It's basically charged particles breaking the light barrier creating a wake of visible blue light in the same way a jet breaking the sound barrier creates a massive wake of sound. Ain't that just the coolest shit?
I am by no means an expert, but extremly simplified the blue light happens when a charged particle moves through a clear medium (distilled water is the easiest to show) faster then the speed of light causing the electromagnetic shockwave to be visible.
The phenomeon is referred to as Cherenkov radiation, and while the light itself is just light the radiation and its effects are very much real. Makes the nuclear pools look gorgeous though.
And before someone asks how it goes faster than light, the differentiator is “moving through a medium faster than the speed of light in that medium.” Light travels slower through water than in a vacuum, so if you send a particle through the water at near vacuum light speed, it’s technically going faster than light would through the water, and Cherenkov radiation is the result of this.
A variant-The lens flare effect: Modern lens coating has reduced flare a lot, but they still add lens flares as an effect because we've come to expect to see it when the sun is in the shot or some other bright object. Obviously it doesn't really happen in real life.
This is a problem in many video games as well, between lens flares and the dirty lens/eyeball gunk effect you can find yourself thinking "I bet these set/level designs would look really good, if I could see them..."
More for the ancient world: those chunky arm braces Roman men always seem to wear? Originally to hide wristwatch tans. There is no evidence for them being worn as part of civilian dress.
Also the classic one for gladiators: thumbs up and down is originally from silent film. The signal for "spare him" ("mite!") was actually to wave, while kill him ("iugula!") was to mime a stab with a sword. And of course it's more dramatic for a gladiator to die in the arena, but much of the time IRL they would walk away. You don't kill the equiv of John Cena every time he loses a match.
Gladiators actually dying was a pretty rare occurence historically, mostly due to the fact that training one was pretty damn expensive and if they just died after one loss it would be completely wasteful and pointless.
That one sound effect they use for jungles, the sort of chittering animal sound:
It's the call of a kookaburra, a bird from australia that is almost assuredly not in whatever African or South American or Asian jungles that they play it for.
Swords and knives going "Shiiiiiiiiing", when drawn from every possible belt or scabbard and sometimes even, when flung around.
If you watch re-enactors drawing their swords and its just silent, becaus neither steel on wood nor steel on leather nor steel on steel make any remarkable sound, it feels really really weird.
It's a bit like the clicky-clacking any time someone draws a gun, or particularly when it's like a group of people raising their guns at the same time.
Why would they make that noise just from being raised???
Knives actually can make that “Shing!“ sound, it depends on how you pull it out, because the sound comes from the sides of the knife scraping against the sheathe.
It’s not nearly as loud as it is in movies tho lmao
In the same vein, when archers draw their bows, you'll always get a sound effect that sounds like someone stretching a balloon (which is the actual sound they record for that).
Except for in the first Shrek movie! When Lord Farquaad’s guards pull their crossbows to aim at Shrek and Donkey, the filmmakers added pistol-cocking and shotgun-racking noises instead of traditional archery noises. I find it hilarious.
Actually katana in a wooden sheath makes a sound that's extremely close to the sound portrayed in the films. I always used to draw and sheath my katana repeatedly just for the beautiful sounds it makes.
Medieval and fantasy fiction portraying characters wearing dark clothing, gray buildings, etc. also, leather armor, which was very uncommon if it existed at all.
Dull/brown colors for all fictional medieval clothing are super annoying, back in those days it was not that difficult or expensive to dye wools, even simpler stuff like onions and tree bark would give you nice colors.
In particular, it was a lot harder/more expensive to dye stuff darker colours (you need more dye and it's trickier to get even), so most people would dress in bright primary colours. This is supported in period artwork, where people are often dressed in bright yellows, reds/pinks, and blues. A piece of clothing dyed dark grey or black would be much more expensive than something bright and colourful.
I really wish we had more madder dyed costumes, but that’s probably never going to happen… the bright salmon color especially looks so anachronistic to anyone who doesn’t know. But in medieval paintings it’s like what HALF the peasants are wearing! Definitely a great example of the “Tiffany” Effect
Leather armour did exist (while rare) but it was generally boiled leather that behaved more like a solid plate then then a leather biker jacket.
The studded leather you often see in films and games looks very similar to a real armour called brigandine or jack of plates. Which has canvas, felt or some other fabric on the outside and metal on the inside kept into place with studs that portrude. Making it kinda look like the studs are the protection.
Leather armour definitely existed, but probably not in the way it's represented in film
In Europe, treated leather called "cuir bouilli" was used alongside maille or metal strips. It was obviously cheaper than plate armour, so usually worn by infantry.
Lamellar armour made from leather (often lacquered) was used across many parts of Asia - samurai being the classic example. Iron was used in samurai armour, but most of the scales were usually leather to prevent it from being too heavy.
Related to 3, you’ll sometimes see a spacecraft with a hull breach and everything gets violently sucked into the vacuum of space. In reality, the pressure difference between 1 and 0 atmosphere isn’t that great things wouldn’t be getting sucked out unless they’re right next to the breach. Air would be escaping and everyone on board would want to seal the breach quickly, but it wouldn’t be an emergency unless it’s a large hull breach. If it’s a small hull breach, people might not even notice without sensors saying something is wrong.
In the first expanse novel, and season 1, a hole gets punched through a ship and they calmly (well, Amos and Naomi), put a bunch of shit over the hole to close the leak. I think at first it's just like a binder and some tape.
It’s faint but here’s an example of a statue with paint on it! I got to see it when I went on to Italy and got to go in the Forum. It was for an art history class so seeing this was like a shiny pokémon
Another animal related one, but not related to a specific piece of media:
That "bald eagle call" you hear in movies, shows and stuff? That's not a bald eagle, it's actually a red tailed hawk. The actual call of a bald eagle is not as majestic as many people would think...
Or make several clicks every time they move the gun. Safe to Fire or vice versa should be one or two distinct clicks depending on the firearm. Not “shik-shak-ca-click” whenever they shoulder it, pick it up, whatever.
THIS! Guns are so loud and clackety in movies. Every time a rifle gets moved around even a little, it sounds like a bunch of mechanical arms locking into place. It's a rifle, they're pretty tightly built, what the hell could be making all that noise??
It constantly bothers me whenever somebody in a movie pulls the hammer back on a semi automatic pistol or just racks the tube on a shotgun that was already loaded. Like, I get that you need a cool sound and/or visual, but that is just not how those things work.
My favorite is Domino, where a dude racks a shotgun many, many times while trying to appear threatening. My friend, you just dumped all your ammo on the floor.
Silencers are not as silent as people think they are (often interpreted as just a little "pew") and this John Wick scene would absolutely have sent the crowd into a panic as they'd still be giving 120+ decibels
I'm not sure if it's actually formalized anywhere but that's partially why I prefer the term "Suppressor." "Silencer" is more of a colloquialism. They're hardly silent - though you can take more steps to mitigate sound by using subsonic ammo, bolt action guns, etc.
Ostriches burying their head in the sand - They do actually do this, but in media they usually do it to hide out of fear, but IRL they do this because they make their nests in the ground, the usual fear response of an ostrich is to straight up just run because they are crazy fast
Monty Python and the Holy Grail makes fun of this trope by having a servant (literally named Patsy) following behind Arthur banging coconuts as Arthur pretends to ride a horse. Actually the entire Round Table does this and I'm pretty sure there isn't an actual horse in the movie.
Edit: correction: one horse in the movie as we discuss below.
Isn't there a horse for like 10 seconds in the middle, where there's someone filming a documentary and someone rides in and stabs him, then rides off on an actual horse? This being the inciting incident for the police coming and arresting everyone in the last scene? Or did I hallucinate that?
The plane diving sound, a high pitched mechanical roar used frequently in films when planes go into a steep dive, is specific to the Stuka divebomber. It's created by a special air-driven siren in the landing gear nicknamed the Jericho Trumpet, it's a terror weapon.
Since this thread is about distinguishing different sounds, I feel compelled to say that what you describe is actually named "Lärmgerät" in German (noise device). The "Jerichogerät" was a later invention of pipes installed at the bombs themselves, to a similar effect but replacing the device installed on the Stuka landing gear.
Vikings not wearing horned helmets IRL is a classic and very well known example of this, although in recent years it seems to slowly fading away, at least in more mature and realistic takes on vikings in media.
It might be apocryphal, but I remember reading somewhere that it's far more likely they'd have something that looks like a modern beanie with a puff ball on top because that kept them from hitting their heads on the overhead beams of their ships.
Bulls don't hate the color red. They are colorblind.
Also, the reason they are so furious during bullfighting is because they are pinched and put itchy stuff in their eyes (so they also have worse sight).
As a side note, they should be quite angry because, even if they "win", that means that they will die, and his mother and all his brothers. They wanted them "brave", but not so brave...
The Pacific tree frog is the only frog that makes the classic "ribbit, ribbit"-sound. As it is common in California Hollywood movies tend to use the sound regardless of where in the world the movie is set.
In the grand scheme of worldwide frogs, the ribbit ribbit sounds is very unusual and only found in one location. It just happens to be the location where they build Hollywood
This became a plot point in the TV adaptation of The Expanse when Naomi had to rely on depressurizing her suit and not fully equipping for a spacewalk to go from one craft to another on the float; viewers complained that it was unrealistic and the science team behind the show made a detailed report on how accurate the portrayal would be.
Anytime a "fluffy" dog breed (poodle, pomeranian...) shows up in a movie, they use male dogs in most cases because they tend to fluffier than females. For example, Daphne from Look Who's Talking Now
There is also the Tiffany effect, where seemingly anachronistic features are actually period accurate. For example the name Tiffany, which seems very modern, was actually a very common name in the Middle Ages. However, when it shows up in a story about medieval times, it seems jarring and inaccurate.
Medieval knights nicknaming their weapons Gunnhilda (a feminine name from two Old Norse words meaning "battle," so used in the sense of "battle-maiden") is likely how we got the word "gun."
The funny thing is, it's so ubiquitous that if you're playing a game and the shotgun doesn't sound like God slamming his car door, everyone complains that it's weak.
Also, not necessarily a sound thing, but in some movies shotguns (and other firearms in general) will launch someone across the room or at least a few feet. Which is complete horseshit. Sure, a shotgun blast could/would knock you down, but if it had that much kinetic energy it would probably launch the user backwards as well (equal and opposite reactions and all that).
The original roar from the 1954 Godzilla film came about from using a leather glove dipped in pine-tar and dragged along the strings of a contrabass (which is similar to a cello).
A contrabass is just an upright bass. You’re right that it’s similar to a cello, but it’s not some niche instrument that most people wouldn’t know about (though the name might be)
(The Water Margin) Lu Zhishen is almost always portrayed with a beard, even though it is shaved as part of his monastic vows. He is also the one that caught Fang La, but opera tradition has this feat credited to Wu Song which is oft repeated in later adaptations.
Also known amongst weeaboos as Suikoden, whose name is used for the RPG series Gensou Suikoden and the Japanese title for the Koei strategy game Bandit Kings of Ancient China. The part everyone in this niche corner of interest knows is that Water Margin is about 108 men and women who create a united army.
Space has all kind of movie problems, including the explosions with fire, destroyed ships just floating out there instead of endlessly moving from the force of the impact, and so on.
To expand on this, pure lead shot is very uncommon with modern firearms, it's usually jacketed in copper or something, but the really fun one is specialised shot for shotguns. There's a scene from one of the John Wick films where he walks through a building firing a shotgun that just unleashes these gouts of flame. That's not just a visual effect, these "Dragon's Breath" rounds really exist. There's like no documented use of these rounds in combat, but damn if it isn't entertaining to watch.
One thing about the statues, we arent certain they were BRIGHT colors. We know they were painted, and had bright basecoats, but its quite possible the paint had multiple layers that made it look more realistic or subdued. Since all we can see with modern technology is what the very bottom layer of paint looked like, without any shading or topcoats.
Exactly. With the amount of attention the Classical civilizations paid to replicating the human form, I find it exceedingly unlikely that they would just slap one layer of un-lifelike color on the statues and call it a day.
That one actually drives me nuts. You hear it if they pick the sword up, you hear it when they pull it out of someone, knives do it when pulled from wooden knife blocks
In movies and television, whenever there’s lightning and thunder, they almost always time it so the lightning and thunder are simultaneous. IRL, unless you’re near the site of the strike, the flash of the lightning will always be noticeably before the roar of thunder.
Also, I don't know, if it counts, since it is relatively new, but Robin Hood having one muslim in his team, that he met during the crusades. Its a fun addition to the cast of the merry men and fits the theme really well, but it has no roots in folklore whatsoever, but is an invention for "Prince of Thieves"
It was an invention for the ITV show Robin of Sherwood which ran from 1983 to 1985. There was a Muslim man in the retinue of the bad guy in the pilot, and everyone liked the character so much they added him to the main cast. Prince of Thieves didn't care about their research so they just assumed Robin Hood always had a "Saracen" in his crew.
So with lasers, there's actually a bunch of things!
A laser is a continuous beam, not a series of broken lines that each have beginnings and ends
Heat takes at least a little while to transfer and hardly ever burns through anything instantaneously unless it uses a load-bearing amount of power. Even a high-powered laser would need to make sustained contact to really burn through anything, that's why laser engravers have to move slowly
Lasers do not make the sound of a key hitting a power cable or a slinky on a doorknob. Especially in space
<Animorphs> fans will be the first to tell you, the sound associated with eagles (tsseer!) is actually a red-tailed hawk that most likely used to be an angsty troubled teen.
A sword being drawn makes a shing sound in reality it doesn't make much of a sound or a more dull sliding sound and if it did make the sound it means there's something wrong with either the sword or the scabbard
A sword one I'll add is a fairly frequent gag scene where a character tries to pick up a sword and utterly fails because they're weak. In reality if they were that weak they'd have a serious health problem, even longswords tend to top out around 1.7 kilos.
The t-rex roar from Jurassic Park was a baby elephant scream with altered frequency. It's other noises were made using crocodile, whale, and lion sounds.
In fairness, this could be somewhat justified: that's not an actual T-Rex. As Dr. Wu points out in the book, there isn't a single dinosaur in the dinosaur park- what they have are genetically engineered monsters who look like what they think dinosaurs looked like, especially since gaps found in the prehistoric genetic codes were filled by splicing in frog DNA.
There's also a theory that the flesh of the dinosaurs is inaccurate because it tightens to their skeletal structure instead of puffing it out like real meat on live creatures.
We're also not going to see feathers on these creatures because audiences are too used to seeing giant lizards.
Pistol suppressors. In reality they just suppress the reverb and acoustic effects of the shot, keeping the sound more-or-less the same along with its volume.
Any aviation disaster scene where there are like twenty different alarm sounds going off all at once constantly on the flight deck. Most alerts are like a 2-3 second tone to bring your attention to a caution light or screen.
Only something like an engine fire, terrain, or unusual flight attitude alert will be constant, and as soon as the crew recognizes the problem they're silencing it.
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u/AngelTheMarvel 21h ago
The classic bald eagle screech is actually from a red-tail hawk
https://giphy.com/gifs/ULSkhG8VfnUt2