10 Dangerous Movie Scenes Audiences Refused To Believe Were Faked

Hollywood is nothing if not the business of trickery, of duping the audience into believing that the fantastical, perhaps impossible feats they're seeing were in fact captured for real.

This is especially crucial where dangerous action sequences are concerned, because if viewers genuinely believe that an actor or stunt performer actually did something on set, they're far more likely to buy into the overall peril of the scene and, by extension, the movie as a whole.

Yet most movies contain far more effects-based trickery than audiences will ever be aware of, and filmmakers can cannily use subtle, even "invisible" effects to ensure the audience never doubts that it was pulled off The Hard Way.

Hell, in these 10 examples viewers even struggled to accept that these dangerous movie moments weren't done for real, such is the brilliance of their execution, no matter that they were in fact pure Hollywood movie magic - whether deceptively simple or ingeniously complex.

When a scene seems so authentic that we actively rally against the suggestion that it could've been faked, the filmmakers have most certainly done their jobs well...

Roman Polanski's neo-noir classic Chinatown features an unforgettable scene in which private investigator protagonist Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) has his nose cut by a knife-wielding gangster (Polanski).

Ever since the film's 1974 release, audiences have been wowed by the perceived realism of the effect, given that Polanski can be seen reaching the knife inside Jack Nicholson's nostril and flicking it away - in a relatively close-up shot with little room to hide the trick, no less.

As such, many chose to believe that Polanski and Nicholson, ever willing to suffer for their art, chose to do the deed the hard way, with Polanski wounding Nicholson for real.

But of course, that wasn't the case. Instead, Polanski was holding a spring-loaded prop knife with a tube of blood attached to the other side of the blade not visible on camera.

It's an incredible effect that still looks terrific almost 50 years later, enough that folks can't really be blamed for believing Polanski might've legit nicked Nicholson.