10 Ridiculous Movie Tropes So Common People Think They're Real

4. Defibrillators Will Revive A Flatlining Person

The Trope

When an important character in a movie flatlines, it's incredibly common for another character, be they a medic or otherwise, to use a defibrillator to bring them back to life, shocking their chest in order to "restart" their heart.

There's even an 80s cult thriller, Flatliners, centred around this concept, with a group of medical students literally killing themselves to experience "the other side", only to be brought back to our physical realm with a handy defib.

The Reality

Granted, most of us are fortunate enough to never come in contact with a defibrillator in our daily lives, and so we're free to gleefully accept that this is how the machines work.

In fact, a defib won't actually work on a flatlined heart, at which point a medical professional needs to administer adrenaline and begin CPR procedures to try and get the heart working again.

A defibrillator is instead used for irregular electrical activity in the heart - aka a faulty rhythm - whereby a shock can "reset" the heart to a healthy, normal beat.

The trope is so aggressively commonplace in both movies and TV (especially medical drama shows) that real life really doesn't stand a chance.