10 Movies That Get Basic Facts Wrong

8. Hair & Nails Continue To Grow After Death - Resident Evil

Paul W.S. Anderson's video game adaptation Resident Evil is probably the last place anyone should look for even the faintest morsel of scientific plausibiity, but even so, it incorporates an oft-parroted myth into its script that just isn't true at all.

When the Umbrella Corporation's anthropomorphic A.I. the Red Queen (Michaela Dicker) explains the nature of the zombie-creating T-virus to Alice (Milla Jovovich) and co., she claims that the virus takes advantage of residual human growth which continues after death.

To quote her, "Even in death, the human body still remains active. Hair and fingernails continue to grow. New cells are produced, and the brain itself holds a small electrical charge that takes months to dissipate."

But it's been long disproven that hair and nails keeps growing post-mortem, and is typically a result of skin dehydrating and shrinking after death, giving the impression that growth has continued.

While it is true that cell activity continues for a short time after a person dies, contemporary studies suggest that the brain's electrical activity ceases roughly 10 minutes after the heart stops. The idea that anything can be going on months later is, frankly, completely ridiculous.

Given that a Resident Evil movie of all things really didn't need to offer up a substantial explanation for its zombie apocalypse, it's pretty amusing that the filmmakers even tried.