10 Movies That Get Basic Facts Wrong

3. Melting All The Polar Ice Caps Will Flood The Entire World - Waterworld

Kevin Costner's infamous blockbuster dud Waterworld takes place in a post-apocalyptic 2500, where the world's polar ice caps have melted, causing the sea levels to rise over 25,000 feet, submerging almost all land underwater.

It's a neat enough premise for a mega-budget blockbuster in theory, though breaks down somewhat when you realise that even if every single polar ice cap on Earth melted, there's no physical way that it could effectively drown civilisation as we know it.

Instead, sea levels would rise about 230 feet, submerging coastal cities but certainly allowing more elevated ones to survive more-or-less unscathed.

This is particularly amusing as Waterworld specifically depicts Denver, Colorado, one of the most elevated cities in the U.S. at a mile above sea level, as completely submerged, even though that's an absolute scientific impossibility.

Granted, this is among the least of Waterworld's problems all things considered, but even so, it's a complete fantasy that such a bleak scenario could ever actually happen.