11 Sci-Fi Movies That Got Science Completely Wrong

11. Total Recall – Exploding Humans

Total Recall is a sci-fi classic. Set on Mars in the late 21st century, it tells the story of Douglas Quaid as he finds himself caught up in an ordeal that may or may not be the result of synthetic memory implants.

Towards the movie's climax, antagonist Vilos Cohaagen is ejected to the surface of Mars where he dies a grisly, cartoonish death by decompression.

His body bloats dramatically and threatens to explode, which is something that is often shown to happen when the human body is sent unprotected into the vacuum of space.

Well, that's something that sci-fi has all wrong. While it might seem more dramatic that way, in reality, the most horrific aspects of decompression would be frostbite around the eyes, nose and mouth, and your blood pressure would drop so low that your blood would literally begin to boil in your veins.

Total Recall isn't necessarily the worst offender for this, but it's become a common trope in sci-fi, owing in part to its dramatic (and untrue) depiction in the 1990 classic.