Artistic License Biology: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

There are cases where the [[MST3K Mantra]] certainly applies, especially if the entire world of the work of fiction is pretty crazy and, thus, all bets are off in terms of good science. Therefore, most of the examples below are culled from series who were at least trying to be taken seriously (so please keep that in mind before adding an example on this page).

* [[Half-Human Hybrid]]

* [[Hard Head]]

* [[Hollywood Evolution]]

** [[Devolution Device]]

** [[Lamarck Was Right]]

** [[Lego Genetics]]

* [[Hollywood Healing]]

** [[Only a Flesh Wound]]

** Ken Akamatsu seems to have been blindsided by myths about eyesight. Supposedly, Naru 'ruined her eyes' by studying so much for her entrance exams, and towards the end, Keitaro has developed night blindness, unstated but implied to be from going on so many digs with Seta. While these things are possible, they would require our fun couple to do most everything by dim candle-light, never get enough Vitamin A in a modern culture, and basically seems a combo of somewhat realistic biology and old wives' tales. Maybe this was meant to symbolize their blindness about their mutual feelings, but genetics also plays a huge role in eyesight.

** A turtle which ''flies'' by flapping its ''fins''. Of course that's pure [[Rule of Cool]] in effect.

* [[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]] features, to make a long [[Mind Screw]] short, a [[My Own Grampa]] situation<ref> original, clone, reincarnation of clone who is father to original and has same DNA as last incarnation</ref> where all involved have the same DNA, despite the presence of a non-blood-relation mother.

* [[Handwaved]] in ''[[Digimon]]'', anything impossible that a Digimon (or the Digital World) does is explained away by saying "they're just data".

* [[Hentai]]. For starters, normally men don't use penises of the dimensions of a forearm to fuck women with breasts as big as watermelons, resulting in shoting gallons of cum umpteen times in a row.

** Moments later:

{{quote| "Now, I understand your teacher has had you investigating the science of sound."}}

* Animal comparisons are a very common method of establishing a character as having a [[Biggus Dickus]]. Truly clueless writers compare the hero to a [http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Largest-Penis-in-the-World-43756.shtml gorilla]. And the women are ''impressed'' by this. As ''[[You Don't Know Jack]]'' put it, "[[King Kong]] ''my ass!''"

** Let's not forget that Danny wouldn't be Danny, if Vlad was his father. It's simple genetics, people.

*** [[A Wizard Did It|The Queen Of The Fae Did It.]]

* Dear and fluffy Lord, all the fan fics, who have snake spies reporting what they hear to a master. Ignoring the silliness of snakes understanding human speech, ''snakes do not have ears.'' They can detect vibrations in the ground and water, but they cannot detect airborne sound waves.

* There exists a fanfic whose author was under the impression that being intravenously injected with deadly nightshade would instantly heal a gunshot wound. Way to misinterpret herbal medicine ...

* A [[Fetish Fuel]]-crossed-with-disturbing ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'' fic featured the [[Mary Sue]] sustaining the Fellowship when they ran out of food by ''breastfeeding'' them. Human females do not produce enough milk to feed nine adult males at once. Someone on a badfic-sporking community pointed out that they'd do better to kill and eat her.

** Not to mention the fact that, even if the [[Mary Sue]] could produce enough milk, human breast-milk has very little nutritional value to a human older than, say, 8 years old (this being the absolute upper limit).

* Yaoi fanfic that wishes to define a man as a virgin because his "asshymen" has been breached. As anyone who has ever taken a shit should know, [[Captain Obvious|there is no such thing as an asshymen]]. And besides, if such were the case, [[Anal Cunt|wouldn't that mean]][[Incredibly Lame Pun|...]]

* There is a [[Archive Panic|rather prolific]] [http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1891678/LordryuTJ author] on Fanfiction.net who seems to believe that the male and female genitalia differ [[In Name Only]].

*** [[Wild Mass Guessing|So he travelled back in time and fathered Hagrid!]]

* There's a particularly bad 6teen fic where the author states that Niki's mary sue twin is such because doctor's put her dad's '''eggs''' in Niki's mother.

* There are a few fanfics having a girl who just had sex wakes up then instantly knows that she's pregnant.

* The Fan Fic "[[Full Metal]] Dragon" doesn't even have to start before this happens:

** Summary: Jake's mom had an affair while she was still pregnant with him. resulting in two infants. Jake stayed with them while the other child went with his father, Hoenheim of Light.

* In [[The Darker Knight]] Batman's batarang hits "Too-Face" in non-vital organ...like his liver and intestines.

 

== Film ==

** More importantly, how exactly do you tell when your lungs, specifically, are freezing?

* The 2008 remake of ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still]]''. "His life-support suit was similar to a placenta." "That makes sense, because a placenta sustains life." Words cannot describe the idiocy of this reasoning.

** None of the sea turtles seem to worry about having to breathe. They also don't travel in flocks, [[Rule of Cool|but this was intentional]].

* The ''[[Doom]]'' movie has the mutant monsters come from the genetic experimentation of long dead human Martian [[Precursors]]. Fair enough. But it turns out that the mutations are caused by there being a "[[In the Blood|gene for evil]]" in the "poorly understood 10% of the human genome" which the [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|genetically engineered]] chromosome reacts to. Now, when one of these mutants bites a healthy human, it infects them like a ''virus''.

* ''[[Jurassic Park]]'' contains a few:

** One character who is supposed to be a [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying|paleontologist]] saying "Dinosaurs and man. Two species separated by sixty-five million years." The problem being that dinosaur is not a species designation, but a much higher taxonomic rank. There are currently known to have been more than 1,000 species of dinosaur. Furthermore, most of these species have been extinct far longer than 65 million years (and most paleontologists would argue that some dinosaurs live to this day -- these dinosaurs are technically known as "birds").

* In another '50s B-movie, ''The Alligator People'', a physician uses hydrocortisone injections to induce accident victims to regenerate damaged body parts. While cortisones do reduce inflammation (swelling), and can therefore make injuries ''feel'' better, they actually ''slow down'' the healing process.

* In ''[[The World Is Not Enough (Film)|The World Is Not Enough]]'', Renard has a bullet lodged in his medulla oblongata that is "slowly killing off his senses". [[No One Could Survive That]]! This is credited with removing his sense of touch, despite this not being where the sense of touch is in the brain. The sense of touch is in the parietal lobe (mostly) which is at the top back of the brain. The medulla is at the bottom of the brain. While some have survived with bullets in their brains, such as Kiran Prajapati, who they were likely thinking of, if a bullet was damaging your medulla your heart would quickly fail, you would stop breathing, and your sense of touch would be fine. [[Captain Obvious|Until you die, of course.]]

* ''[[Push]]'' has the lead character {{spoiler|inject soy sauce directly in to his blood stream with no side effect at all.}}

** The snakes are shown as shockingly aggressive, actively pursuing prey, whereas most snakes (including those shown in the film) are relatively sedentary; the snakes in the film bite repeatedly for no apparent reason, simply killing without eating the people or defending themselves, and then move to attack and kill other people who are neither a threat nor viable prey. The snakes are described as being so aggressive and violent because they are being stimulated by sexual pheromones, except that snakes are not praying mantids or black widows and do not kill their mates while they have sex. If snakes ''were'' to be brought into a violent frenzy when in the presence of sexual pheromones they would require separate pheromones for each individual species, and would be just as likely to attack each other as humans, as any other species would be as much of a threat/competition as the people would.

** The Burmese python practically growls and flashes fang like an aggressive dog. Then it manages to kill the [[Jerkass]] in moments, when in reality it would take much longer even if the guy had a heart attack almost immediately. Finally, the python has no problem getting human shoulders down its throat. A real python would need a few moments to unhinge and stretch out its jaw, and then would probably need some time to properly position a meal that wide. Assuming a snake that size could get its head over an adult male's shoulders in the first place; even most potentially man-eating snakes will have trouble consuming a large person. Yes, there were time constraints, but still. At least the python seems to still have been working on its meal when the poor thing got sucked out the window.

* In ''[[Ice Age]] 2: The Meltdown'', a young anteater is seen blowing bubbles in a pool of meltwater, by breathing out through its elongated snout and in through the mouth at its base. Real anteaters have tiny mouths, and they're located at the tips of their snouts, not underneath them. Keeping the end of its snout continuously submerged should've drowned it. Also, Scrat the proto-squirrel has huge saber-like canine teeth. Being rodents, squirrels -- even prehistoric ones -- don't have canines at all.

** The authors have said in an interview that it was [[Played for Laughs]]. Later crosses into [[Accidentally Accurate]] since [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/03/141997834/scientists-unveil-fossil-of-saber-toothed-squirrel-that-lived-among-dinos a recently discovered prehistoric mammal was indeed squirrel-like], [[Science Marches On|and did indeed have fangs]]. It was not a rodent though, and lived in the ''Mesozoic'', not in the Cenozoic, much less the last ice age.

* The writers of ''[[Mission to Mars]]'' clearly had a lacking understanding of genetics. To start with, one of the characters constructs a model of a DNA molecule from supplied spacial coordinates, then [[Gary Sinise]] is able to ''look'' at a (very small) string of computer-generated DNA, and see that it "looks human". This is impossible, because a) you can't tell what species a sequence came from by looking at such a small sample and b) spacial coordinates that form a double helix say precisely jack shit about what bases (and, by extension, what genes) are contained in the DNA sequence. Then someone mentions it's missing "the last pair of chromosomes," when the simulation makes it readily apparent it's missing the last pair of ''bases''. To top it all off, the coloring of the bases appear to suggest that a base pair is made up of two identical bases, which is just wrong.

* A scene in the bad Canadian vampire B-movie ''Thralls'' features the lead villain vampire ''punch another man through his stomach, tear part of his spine out and show it to him as the now-spineless man merely '''stands there'''''. And then, rather than break in half where his spine used to be... he just collapses.

** Overlapping with [[Science Marches On]]: At the time the novel was written, "skin asphyxiation" was taken seriously, at least by the public. The studio had a team of doctors on hand while shooting the death scene, and left actress Shirley Eaton's stomach unpainted to make sure she could breathe.

** It's implied that Aliens bond with their hosts at the genetic level. That doesn't make very much more sense, but hey, it's [[Alien]].

* The Spleen from ''[[Mystery Men]]'' is an in-character example, as he named himself for an organ that has nothing to do with his [[Fartillery|superpower]].

* A minor case in ''[[Mystery Team]]'', but it is somewhat unusual that Jason can bike several miles with one flat tire without showing any signs of fatigue.

* A ridiculous number of movies, including the ''majority'' of vampire-hunt flicks, depict the human heart as being located near or slightly above the left nipple. The heart is located at the bottom ''center'' of the human ribcage, which means an awful lot of would-be Van Helsings actually missed their targets. Also a [[Real Life]] misconception, given how people lay their hands over <s>their hearts</s> their left breast to salute the flag, pledge allegiance, etc. (mostly justified for women, though, as placing the hand directly over the heart usually means cupping their own breast).

* ''[[The Reaping]]'': Members of the [[Religion of Evil|Satanic cult]] sacrifice all their children to Satan, except for the firstborn, who are inducted into the cult, [[You Fail Biology Forever|to ensure the cult itself can survive]]. In reality, you would need (on average) two offspring to survive (and reproduce) per couple just for the population to remain stable. Even if the cultists recruit outsiders to marry the kids they don't sacrifice, attrition would still wipe them out, as some of each generation are likely to die, fail to reproduce at all, or leave the cult.

* ''[[Piranha 3D]]'' contains an idea so [[Egregious|egregiously]] stupid that it may very well have been put in just to make the dumbest people in the audience feel smart when they realized that it was impossible. The Piranha survived two million years in an enclosed covern through CANNIBALISM!!!! It's like they took ''[[The Matrix]]'''s bio-battery lunacy and [[Up to Eleven|turned it up to]] [[Memetic Mutation|OVER 9000!!!!!!]]. For those of you who were absent the day they taught about food chains in Middle School, the general rule of thumb is that every predator gets about 10% of the energy his prey took in. So, every generation of piranha should have lost 10/11 of their population. Even assuming they magically preserved 90% of the energy, they wouldn't have made it that long without producers in their food chain! And just to add insult to injury at the end of the movie we find out {{spoiler|they've been fighting the babies, which are apparently as big as their full-grown prehistoric ancestors. So, apparently, this process made them BIGGER.}}

* While most of the less-than-realistic aspects of the [[Godzilla]] films can be attributed to [[Rule of Cool]] and/or [[Rule of Funny]], there's a scene in the 1993 version of ''Godzilla VS Mechagodzilla'' in which one of the human characters feeds Baby Godzilla a leaf. This would be fine and dandy, if Godzilla's species wasn't already established to be carnivorous (Godzillasaurus pretty much looks like a jumbo-sized T. rex) and that Baby Godzilla clearly has teeth better suited for tearing apart flesh rather than munching on veggies.

** The 1998 American Remake ''constantly'' showed Zilla running at a rather high speed. People, there's a '''very''' good reason why very large animals (IE: Elephants, Apatasaurus, Tyrannosaurus, etc.) don't move fast (or don't run very often). To put it nicely, if Zilla were to trip while running that fast, he'd pretty much ''splatter'' all over the pavement when he fell.

*** Actually, given Godzilla's mass, the amount of force generated by falling at that speed would have been less "splatter" and more "[[Earthshattering Kaboom]]."

* In ''[[The Matrix]]'', Agent Smith gives a [[Hannibal Lecture]] on how humans are viruses, because they don't instinctively develop an equilibrium with their environment like other mammals and instead breed until they can't support themselves and have to move on. In reality, mammals do not instinctively do that, and equilibrium is something forced on them.

* One would hope that Trevor Reznick/Christian Bale of [[The Machinist]] is exaggerating when he claims not to have slept a wink for [[The Insomniac|over a year]] - Unless he was taking little 5-10 minute naps without realizing it, he'd have been dead after a month.

* This could be applied to the majority of vampire movies which try to sound "scientific." While it would be possible to rely on a blood-only diet similar to the vampire bat, the vampire in question would have to take half their weight in blood and become enormously bloated since blood contains about 90 percent water and only 10 percent in protein without any fats or carbohydrates. [[A Wizard Did It|Magic]] vampires, of course, can handwave all of this.

** In addition, vampire bats after a feeding are usually too heavy to fly and must accomodate this by digesting the blood quickly and releasing most of it through their urine.

*** [[Ear Worm|Traitors, traitors, spider traitors...]]

* ''[[In Time]]'' The premise of the movie is that the aging gene is switched off, resulting in effective immortality. Aging is not the result of a gene. Aging is caused by the degradation of telomeres. Telomeres are repeated strings of meaningless DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes. Every time cells divide, the chromosome lose some base pairs, necessitating these telomeres. They function in quite a similar way to the aglets on the end of your shoelaces.

** The one speaking up is Pyro, not Wolverine.

** Anacondas don't grow that damn big.

** They don't move at the speed of a cheetah in chase.

 

== Literature ==

* ''Mariel of Redwall'', of the ''[[Redwall]]'' series, mentions Gabool the Wild having gold "replacements" for his canine teeth. Sadly, he is a rat, and rats do not have canine teeth to begin with. Most of the physical deformities exhibited by characters (often the villains) would be cause for them to be outcasts and likely dead in short order. Those defects would include walking upright and speaking English. Not all animal characters are as realistic as [[Watership Down|Richard Adams]]'s.

** In "The Creeping Man", the eponymous character "devolves" into an ape by shooting up with monkey blood, or brain juice, or something. Just... no. (An episode of ''Mystery'' based on this story had to put a disclaimer at the beginning of it explaining this fact, lest the audience treat the story's events as pure [[Narm]]. It is instead claimed that the character has been driven mad by the adverse effects of the hormones so that he ''thinks'' he is a monkey.)

** In "The Speckled Band", the villain controls a snake by whistling, which a snake would be unable to hear. This one was lampshaded in a Russian miniseries. Watson points out that the snake couldn't possibly hear its master's call. Holmes replies that the villain wasn't sure in his method either, and also tapped his cane on the floor.

* Similar, again, is a Dutch book by A.F.Th. van der Heijden called ''Het Leven uit Een Dag''. Humans only live one day in the book. They can only have sex once, then their reproductive organs will wither away (the woman will get pregnant instantly). Since the humans in that world only get one child, each generation will be half the size of the previous one. Since a new generation only takes a day to grow up and die, humankind would be extinct pretty darn soon.

* Likewise, the vampire-like creatures from George R.R. Martin's ''[[Fevre Dream]]'' seem doomed to slow extinction, as their females give birth to single offspring and always die as a result. Granted, Martin's vampires are actually ''aware'' of this quandary, but that can't explain why their young would evolve the self-destructive habit of clawing their way out of the womb, in the first place. At least the source is clear: that's what they thought about lions in ancient times - hence the Aesop's fable about a hog boasting to a lioness about the number of her babies, to which the lioness replies "I have one, but it's a Lion".

*** Although there are certain rare genetic disorders that are dominant.

*** The problem with this is that half bloods still end up perfectly magical, even if their muggle parent has no magic blood.

*** ''That we know of''. It's entirely possible that the only half-bloods we're shown in the series are the ones born to a heterozygous muggle parent and a wizard. It may be that the ones with a homozygous muggle parent are simply never mentioned.

* In the ''[[Replica]]'' series of YA novels, the bad guys repeatedly try to get hold of Amy's super-DNA by ''cutting her hair and fingernails''. The installment where her DNA reverted to "normal" after getting her ears pierced ... wait, what?

* In ''[[The Stand]]'', the explanations given for the operation of the superflu virus are sketchy at best, and it seems highly unlikely that the disease would have resulted in such massive destruction. (Among other things, a plague is deadliest if it has a ''long'' incubation period, giving it maximum lead time in which to spread before the victim becomes too sick to move around.) Still, there aren't any obvious screw ups... until the end. {{spoiler|Up until this point, the superflu had been a binary proposition: Either you got it and died, or you didn't get it. At the end, however, a baby born to one immune and one non-immune parent gets the superflu and then recovers; which leads the thoughtful reader to ask, what the hell happened to the children of immune and non-immune parents born before the flu? As a bonus, the explanation given for how the baby recovered is a load of crap}}.

** The explanation for why {{spoiler|the baby recovers and the children of immunes and non-immunes don't before the plague seems implicitly to be that the babies not born until after the plague have acquired protection from the plague by being in their immune mothers' uteruses at the time of the plague; those born before the plague are no longer connected to the mother and thus don't have the ability to catch it and recover.}}

* In ''[[Prince Caspian]]'', Reepicheep the talking mouse has lost his tail in battle, and he argues with Aslan over whether it needs to be regrown. Both of them seem to think a mouse's tail has no practical value, and is of use only as a badge of honor or vanity, but the tails of mice and rats are actually important thermoregulatory structures, without which he'd be quite vulnerable to heat stroke.

** A mouse the size of a domestic cat would have problems with that anyway. It's moot for purposes of the story.

** Not to mention, Vampire venom at one point was stated to replace all fluids in the body which is why it turns into a sparkly rock like substance. If you follow that logic, his sperm should have been replaced. So basically, the first time they had sex and he orgasmed... she should have become a vampire instead of becoming pregnant.

*** By that logic, Bella would have turned the first time she ''kissed'' Edward.

* ''[[The Rainbow Fish]]'' has the protagonist - a fish with rainbow-colored, shiny scales - give away all but one of his scales to the other fish kids. A nice family-friendly Aesop about sharing with others? Too bad that removing a fish's scales would kill it, because scales don't regrow.

** If you remove too many at once, it leaves the fish open to infection. Scales do grow back, just not very quickly. Besides, the Rainbow Fish only gives away the iridescent scales that the other fishes ask for.

* In ''[[The Millenium Trilogy|The Girl Who Played with Fire]]'', Ronald Niedermann is a 6'6" musclebound blonde giant, who has a disease which renders him unable to feel pain. The book even mentions that most people who have this disease die at a young age, but then hand waves it away by saying he's just too tough to die. This is, of course, not how it works. Normal life is dangerous enough for people with this affliction, but this character was an amateur boxer and gets in several fistfights over the course of the book. One untreated injury could conceivably kill him, most notably when he takes a full-strength punch to the kidneys from a pro boxer. But even before that, the kind of muscular frame he has cannot be maintained without weight training, which would be catastrophic without pain sensors to determine one's limits.

* In the original novel version of [[Frankenstein]], Victor worries that if his monster had a female monster to mate with, they would produce monster babies. That would be all fine and dandy if the monsters weren't made from reanimated human flesh, almost guaranteeing them both to be infertile. Even if by some miracle, they were able to conceive, any child of the two of them would in fact be human, biologically descended from whoever the monsters' reproductive organs came from.<br /><br />Like the Sherlock Holmes example above, this is also actually a case of [[Science Marches On]]. The original novel was published twenty years before Schwann and Schielden founded cell theory, and almost fifty years before Pasteur definitively disproved abiogenesis. In fact, the most exciting discovery of the time was the effect of electrostimulation in disembodied muscle tissue, so the story of a creature made from dead human material reanimated by lightning was as grounded in modern science (in 1818) as literature about sentient computers is today.

** Although there is no reference to Victor's using lightening. There is a single reference to the "apparatus of life".

** I always thought the implication was that they were crushed by the stampeding animal...

* At what point did ''Lesbian Land 2250'' get an aspect of human biology correct? "Ginger Winters" thinks that vaginas are indestructible, all-encompassing, and incapable of infection, that breast milk can sustain a grown human. Under any normal biological conditions, entire chapters would culminate in much of the cast dehydrating and succumbing to desiccation. Also, the [[Voodoo Shark]] that comes up in the course of handwaving [[No Periods, Period]], and the overall capacity it has to drive geneticists to alcoholism, and...

** Orchidaceae are, in actuality, marginally more difficult to care for than graminoids.

** Berwin greatly miscalculates the value and rarity of certain plants. Oxalis, for instance, is a relatively common and inexpensive plant.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

{{quote| '''Spencer:''' Do girls ''have'' bladders?}}

** Another ''Enterprise'' offender: an Ensign has a slug-pet that is not faring well on board ship, so they drop it off on a planet. Not its native planet, mind you -- just ''a'' planet. Admittedly it won't have any breeding stock, but ''still''...

*** In the episode "Macrocosm" we have viruses(!) which can grow in size - up to a meter, fly, and hover in the air - something tells me the word "virus" was completely misunderstood...

*** 'Virus' was only what everyone was calling them. They had features of many different forms of life, viruses included.

*** The Occampans (Kes' race) In ''Voyager'', can only reproduce ''once'', and have ''one child''. What kind of species would evolve such a trait and thrive? You'd need EVERY member of your race to reproduce to have 0 population growth. If any member of the race dies, then the race as a whole has taken a blow it cannot recover from! Heck, ''how'' did the Occampan race come about? Since they can have only one child, and thus cannot grow in numbers, how are there so many of them?

*** It was actually explained in a novella that twin and triplet births were extremely common among Ocampans, so it depends how you look at it.

*** Data devolving into a pocket calculator would have made more sense.

*** a) ''Threshold'' didn't say that evolution was fixed, it just posited that it (change) could be severely (and randomly) accelerated in certain circumstances. Paris' random allergic reactions and physiological changes had nothing to do with evolution, which takes place over time and hundreds of generations. This is sci-fi, so concepts such as genes being forced into flux are par for the course. b) ALL life is related. DNA is the blueprint, the programming lanaguage. The episode was dealing with a 'what if' - namely, what if that language could be distorted and partially rewritten?

*** And even this was already plumbed with ''TNG'''s "The Chase", which attempts to cure at least three problems at once...by making all of the Alpha Quadrant's DNA part of a message by a progenitor race, also humanoid, that "seeded" planets with their genetic code in the hope of more sentient humanoids like themselves popping up. Cue Picard facepalm.

*** An original idea that inspired a lot of 'ancient ancestor' settings. To clarify, the original humanoids found that their home galaxy (not just one quadrant) contained no life that was like them. Their own extinction fears drove them to seed the Milky Way and as a result encourage humanoid life to develop. The code was like a signature for them - they wanted the Milky Way races to find out their origin to encourage cooperation.

** Totally impossible...within our understanding. It's always worth remembering that in 2100 they will laugh at us for the things we knew for certain in 2010.

* On ''Rides'', the build team works to incorporate a real human skull into a spooky-themed vehicle's sound system. The narrator constantly refers to the skull as "he" and "Don", yet the ''numerous'' close-ups show features that suggest it's really a "Donna". Granted, the show's cast have no training to recognize this ... but you'd think the suppliers who provided the skull would've mentioned it.

* In the third episode of ''[[Sanctuary]]'', Zimmerman claims that the last major outbreak of the Bubonic Plague was in 800 AD (the end of the Plague of Justinian). Leaving aside for the moment that he should have said "[[Unit Confusion|AD 800]]," the last major outbreak of the plague was in ''1945''. He was only off by about ''a millennium''. Even ignoring the occasional outbreak in modern times, he's completely missed a little thing called "The Black Death" in the 14th century, the most famous plague outbreak in history.

* ''[[Monk]]'': A woman kills a billionaire by poisoning a death-row inmate, thus ruining the kidney he was going to donate to said billionaire. They both apparently have the "rarest blood type in the world" -- "[[AB Negative]] with D antigen." Except, the Rhesus D antigen is ''what we mean'' when we say "positive" or "negative." No wonder AB Negative with D Antigen is so rare... ''it doesn't exist!'' "AB with the D antigen" would mean he's AB+ ... and therefore can accept ''any blood type''! Also of note, only blood expresses the Rhesus antigen. All that's required to match in organ transplantation is the ABO blood type; all the recipient needed was another AB-type kidney.

** The frontal and parietal lobes are the largest two lobes of the brain, so it depends on which parts were taken. But the motor cortex and sensory cortex are right beside each other, straddling the border between the lobes, so it's hard to imagine how a single piece could be removed that incorporates both lobes and ''not'' involve the motor and sensory cortices (in which case Booth would have troubles far more than just aiming a gun - he'd be liable to be paralyzed on one side of his body in at least one limb). Also, the part of the brain most involved in memory is the Temporal lobe. And in a later episode they show an MRI scan of Booth's brain, and the missing part is most definitely not anywhere near the frontal or parietal lobes.

** In a minor example, one episode starts with a human falling to his death and landing in a field of cows. The witnessing cows just stand there placidly, and politely keep their distance from the investigators. Real cows tend to be curious, so would gather to see what was going on.

** Given that humanity is still evolving, every generation is a new stage. Sheldon's only mistake is that he overexaggerates his own significance in the process.

** He is missing the point of natural selection. Because of his psychological quirks and self-centerness, his fitness level currently appears to be very low (moreover he has a very low interest in finding a mate in the first place, much less conceiving and raising a child). Unless his attitute changes completely, he is going to be naturally selected against, and not pass on his genes. Evolution favors those who have multiple children, of course.

** In season 2, episode 13, the supposed genius Dr. Baltar heals president Roslin's cancer by injecting her with some cylon/human hybrid blood that is more resistant to diseases because it has no antigens (which means it has bloodtype O) and therefore it has no blood type. Therefore it is somehow capable of destroying a cancer in a very late stage. Furthermore, cancer cells (or any other animal cell type) aren't cultivated in a petri dish and on agar, as it is shown on the pictures Dr. Baltar has, but are instead cultivated in cultivation flasks in a fluid.

* On Discovery Channel's ''I Shouldn't Be Alive'', the narrator explain the effects of hypothermia on human cells, using the term "cell walls", in one episode (and is sure they have used it other times). Animals do not have cell walls (in fact, Animalia is the only kingdom where they are totally absent). Yes, they probably just don't want to explain what a cell membrane is/[[Viewers are Morons|assume the audience won't understand the explanation]], so they use a term the audience will know. Considering Discovery's association with fact and science, it seems like they would be willing to spend an extra ten seconds quickly explaining what it is.

* ''[[Life After People]]'' just lapsed into this trope, showing footage of ''Volvox'' and ''Paramecium'' -- two well-known varieties of protist -- while discussing how living bacteria might've hitched a ride on one of NASA's deep space probes. Protists are more closely related to ''us'' than to bacteria, and the types shown would die just as quickly as we would in hard vaccuum.

* Cryptid-buffs on ''Monster Quest'' attempted to catch photos of Bigfoot, baiting camera-traps with smelly chunks of salmon. If Bigfoot is alleged to be a great ape, why assume it would use smell to find food, or consider fish edible? Apes are mainly vegetarians, the species that do eat meat don't scavenge it, and their sense of smell is only slightly better than our own. Brightly-colored fruit would seem the better ape-attracting food to offer.

** The classic episode "The Invisible Enemy" beggars description. The [[Big Bad]] is a prawn-shaped space virus which ''spawns''... let your imagination fill in the blanks.

** Could all be handwaved in one of three ways: 1) The TARDIS doesn't give a literal translation of the Doctor's biobabble, it instead renders something the companions can understand, even if it's wrong. 2) The Alien physiology/technology in question could work differently from our understanding. 3) The Doctor makes it up cause it sounds cool.

* A Korean drama special entitled ''Last Flashman'' has a girl find out a shocking birth secret (that she's an alien or something) because she has blood type O but both her parents have type A. Most of the people are shocked and confused and maintain strongly that it's impossible to have blood type O from A parents. This is biologically wrong, since having O blood type with A parents are perfectly possible -- a person with A bloodtype can have the allele pattern Ai, and if each parent donates an i, the child gets an O. It would be odd if it was two ABs giving birth to an O, or two As giving birth to an AB, or two Bs giving birth to an A, or two Os giving birth to an AB or A or B, but this is not the case.

* In an episode of ''[[Fringe]]'', the [[Monster of the Week]] is a fast-moving, foot-long slug that turns out to be an engineered ''cold virus''. Walter attempts to [[Hand Wave]] this by stating that it isn't entirely unprecedented since large ostrich eggs are single cells. Except viruses aren't cells. Cold viruses are strands of genomic DNA contained inside of a protein coat, and entirely unable to move under their own power. Saying that it was a "giant" cold virus makes as much sense as a "giant" hemoglobin molecule.

** In another episode, a charred bone from a witch's bundle is identified by the boys as that of a newborn baby. Long bones of infants don't have fused epiphyses on their ends, while this one clearly has them.

* In ''[[Babylon 5]]'' the [[Psi Corps]] covertly try to get Talia to take a treatment to "cure" her telepathy, when it would in fact turn her into a empath. It is then revealed that their plan involves breeding her with the other empath created using this process, in order to create empath babies. That's right, not only are they evil, they're also Lamarckians!

** Although it would be unlikely that killing the male would result in the extinction of the species, like depicted. It's more likely to be like the Anglerfish, one of the females changes into a new male to carry on. Which sort of means it ends on a [[Downer Ending]] if you think about it...

* The entire ''[[Stargate]]'' series is filled with terrible biology.

** The Asgard have a serious problem, they are all clones and because they simply clone their last body their DNA is degrading! It seems that nobody had the bright idea to not copy the last clone, but just use the original copy every time.

*** Well, this is actually the point - they do not have any original from back in the time when they were still well enough. They found some ancient frozen asgard, but those were not yet ready to be used as "hosts". And of course, there is no saying what the requirements of the clone are - possibly, the mind transferring process isn't actually as simple as they make it to be - possibly, the body has have some compatibility with the "transplantee". By the time they realized they have a problem, it was already too late. Yes, they could have bought some time if they stored some current copies for later use, but at the end of the series, {{spoiler|they made it clear they do not want to protract their "death" as a species any longer, when there are no advancements in their condition}}.

** Human-flatworm hybrids can happen on their own with enough [[Nuclear Nasty|radioactive sludge]].

** In ''Blood'' an LSD-like substance was combining with adrenaline to produce a hallucinogenic substance... in the eyeball. They have visual hallucinations. (Or did they?) The eyeball could probably absorb it into the blood, but the coincidence is a bit much.

* Dr. Holt (''[[A Gifted Man]]'') had apparently never heard that you're not supposed to diagnose paternity based on ABO groups when he told an AB- man on the spot that his son, O+, wasn't his biological child. Although it is rare, the man could have been ''cis-AB'' and had an O child.

* [[QI]] had an episode about animals and [[Sean Lock]], either as a joke he kept up all evening (claiming that he learned everything he knew about animals from glamour-model Katie Price), or through what he professed to be sincere ignorance, were unable to score a lot of points. Among other "facts", he claimed that that Rhinos are dinosaurs, because he throught they were called "Rhinosaurus".

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' at least justifies its moments of failing biology forever (admittedly, usually [[A Wizard Did It]]).

** For example, all human/tiefling descendants are tieflings. Forever. Nobody ever finds a tiefling hiding unknown in their family tree; oh no, if your great-grandfather is a tiefling so is everyone descended from him. Apparently when devils are involved, Mendel's laws are more like suggestions. Depending on the sourcebook, some tried to correct it to "half-demon for a few generations, tiefling for a few generations, human eligible for Demon Bloodline feats", judging by the various sourcebooks on the subject (and depending on who you mate with). As of 4th edition, thought, tieflings are back to having supernaturally [[In the Blood|tainted blood]], rather than a genetic condition; the first tieflings were the result of normal humans undergoing an infernal ritual, rather than interbreeding with demons.

 

 

** There's also the part where Liquid grossly misapplies Asymmetry Theory. His ramblings just make it seem like the writers had at some point heard of the biology/genetic concepts mentioned, but didn't actually bother to look into them any real way<ref>[[Word of God]] is that Liquid, personally, has no grasp of how genetics works, and was deliberately taught wrong just to wind him up and make him driven</ref>. Then there's the guy whose body carries a charge of 10 million volts, the man who can't decide if his pet internal beehive is full of bees or hornets...

* In the Director's Cut edition of ''Scratches'', the brief sequel/epilogue reveals that {{spoiler|the mother of the game's [[Bertha in The Attic]] had been taking thalidomide, presumably accounting for her child's deformities. But thalidomide is specifically responsible for phocomelia, a birth defect in which the limbs are underdeveloped and flipper-like. This game's Bertha may be grotesque, but he's ''not'' a phocomeliac, and wouldn't be very scary if he were.}}

* In ''[[Ripper]]'', the killer is revealed as hacking people's minds/brains to program their bodies to self destruct. While there are ways to theoretically kill someone if you interface with their brain, the Ripper somehow increases the internal body pressure to cause them to explode from the inside. ''Somehow'' the forensics investigators keep thinking the killer is killing by slicing people up with a knife, which would look ''nothing'' like exploding from within, even assuming programming your body to explode was possible.

* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' is very guilty of this, especially in the 3D games: Rip out a brain, the body is still standing AND feeling pain; rip out a skull, and the head still has shape; rip out your own tibias, and you're still standing; severe someone's head, and the body is still standing; the list goes on...

* ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'': A rare example of simple mistakes than mismanagement of biological knowledge. In some cases random glitches or hacks allow you to ride other animals that are often used for hunting challenges. However, they still gallop and neigh like horses (as well as floating inches off the ground)- including the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeJSfVmeKDU&feature=related elk], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W75tiaN0uCA&feature=related wolf], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycGiIxlzZGc grizzly bear], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS1qGWlOYns cougar], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrmRHJKc3A deer], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8P6W9dFf4 bobcat], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK_6Ns87_wU&feature=related dog], and even a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvY2W3HOJ4M jack-rabbit]. Others were more intentional. For example pumas don't sound like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt8hwLlSyvo&feature=related jaguars]. In fact they don't roar at all, but growl, hiss and make [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKw4OFAu1WM snarly near-human screams].

 

 

 

== Western Animation ==

** There's also the episode where Stewie meets Bertram as a sperm, which has Bertram looking exactly like he does when he's eventually born, despite the fact that the sperm cells only contribute half of the genes of any given person. [[Genius Bonus|It's possibly a reference to medieval ideas about how conception worked]], where it was thought that the mom didn't contribute any genes and that she essentially "grew" a human who already existed in a sperm cell in her body, but still fails biology.

** During a visit to a mental hospital to bail out Boomhauer after he woke up in downtown Houston from a tanning on a inner tube gone excessively long (and got arrested by a cop for indecent exposure), Dale Gribble was also accidentally admitted into the hospital after he proclaim to one of the doctors there that [[Conspiracy Theorist|peanuts were evolving a defensive mechanism]] that is behind the peanut allergies of some people. In this case it's specifically ''Dale'' that's failing; the ''writers'' had the doctors (correctly) conclude that Dale is a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

** When Bobby gets a summer job for a guy who cleans poop off lawns, he and his employer gross out his folks by describing an incident at work: their discovery of deposits of gigantic turds, scattered all over an estate's grounds. Turns out it was alpaca poo, as a neighbor's damaged fence had let a whole herd go trespassing ... and it ''also'' turns out that the writers chose the worst possible animal to blame it on, as alpacas produce lots of tiny "beans" of dung, and herds of them do so all in one place. Obscure, but a single phone call to a petting zoo could've rectified this one.

** During Hank's little problem with constipation ([[Running Gag|Peggy told me]]), he had to see a proctologist for a colonoscopy. The Doctor, despite being an apparent expert, told Bobby that if Hank's small intestine was stretched out from end to end, it would go all the way around the earth. Hank points out that there's no possible way his intestines could stretch 26,000 miles, and that if that were true, food would have to fly through his system faster than the speed of sound. Though this could have been simply a way to get the boy interested.

* In ''[[The Legend of the Titanic]]'', dolphins even jump as high as the deck of Titanic and manage to float in the air for a short amount of time.

** Let's not forget the unrealistically large octopus which has a dog's nose, and has to take a breath before it goes underwater.

* ''Franklin and the Green Knight'', a film from the ''[[Franklin]]'' series depicts Mrs. Turtle, an anthropomorphic turtle, as being pregnant with Franklin's sister, Harriet, rather than laying an egg.

** Franklin can also remove his shell in the cartoon series. In reality, a turtle's shell is fused to its spine. Even if it were possible to take it off, such an act would put the turtle on the fast track to excruciating pain and a quick, messy death. (While we're on the subject, someone should remind a [http://friskywoods.deviantart.com/art/Shellshocked-77703850 certain Italian plumber] of this.)

** REGULAR Cucumbers aren't technically vegetables, even.

* Among the many errors regarding animal physiology and behavior, one the more minor in [[Hero 108]] is the Deer King and his men, who neigh, grunt, and whinny like horses even though deer in real life make noises more like they have kazoos stuck in their throats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=[[Xa Ph Vc Ldz 4 M]]&feature=fvwrel or barking http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EWzg4eiJnM&feature=related

 

* A staggering [http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2009/02/41_of_museums_d.php 41% of museums don't know how dogs walk.]

* Similar to the [[Chick Tracts]] example under Comic Books, some pro-abstinence church groups claim that condoms are made of porous material that allows viruses to pass through. This is only true "skin condoms" which are made out of things like lambskin and are porous enough to pass viruses, and the packaging is quick to point out that these are '''ONLY FOR CONTRACEPTION''', and suggest the manufacturer's latex and nitrile options are a much better alternative if the potential customer is worried about VD. Promoting the idea that they are all like that borders on criminal, since studies exist showing that 'abstinence only' curricula that emphasizes the fallibility of protection '''strongly''' tends to be correlated with increased rates of VD, as students' thought processes rapidly approach something along the lines of 'why bother'.

* A surprising number of people believe the human heart is on the left side of a person's chest, to the extent that some symbolic tattoos are placed over the left lung in support of this belief. While it is positioned ''slightly'' to the left (due to the left ventricle being larger than the right ventricle), it is much more central, located between the two lungs under the sternum in a part of the body called the mediastinum.

** Similarly, some people think that deoxygenated blood is blue. This is due to them seeing diagrams of the circulatory system, which invariable portray veins as blue and arteries as red (or shallow veins on their own body which have a bluish color). In truth, both are red (though deoxygenated is a slightly darker shade) and a staggering number of people who are taught that [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|deoxygenated blood is blue inside the body and turns red when it makes contact with air]].