10 Surprisingly Realistic Movie Scenes Nobody Saw Coming

Shocker! Leaping off a roof is probably bad for your health.

The Other Guys The Rock Samuel L Jackson
Columbia

If you need your movies to be realistic, you're generally going to have a bad time where genre fare is concerned - the action, thriller, horror, and sci-fi genres in particular require the audience to suspend their disbelief for the sake of being entertained.

And that's absolutely fine - stringently "realistic" movies can easily turn out dull, yet at the same time, sometimes filmmakers working within heightened genres will dare to inject some unexpected realism into their stories.

It's generally far more important that a given scene be entertaining than plausible, yet in the case of these 10 movies, they offered up some surprisingly authentic moments, either for dramatic or more likely comedic effect.

It's always satisfying to watch a movie and appreciate that the way a character behaves, or the outcome they're on the receiving end of, feels like it would actually happen in real life.

Inspired by this recent Reddit thread, these scenes all dug into the nitty-gritty and gave audiences a far more down-to-Earth rendition of their action than anyone could've possibly expected.

Movies shouldn't always be this grounded, but when it works, it works...

10. Ghostface Throws A Knife At Dewey (And Fails) - Scream 3

The Other Guys The Rock Samuel L Jackson
Dimension Films

If movies are any indication, it's incredibly easy to simply throw a knife in the general direction of your enemy and fatally strike them. Yet it took the silliest Scream movie of them all, Scream 3, to point out just how ridiculous that was.

At the start of the third act, Ghostface catches Dewey (David Arquette) at the top of the stairs and immediately throws a knife at him.

We as the audience are conditioned to expect a flawless kill, with the knife landing square in Dewey's forehead and killing him instantly, but that's thankfully not what happens.

Instead, the knife hits Dewey handle-first in the head, merely knocking him out and causing him to fall down the stairs - but live to fight another day, at least.

Granted, in reality most people would probably miss their target entirely when throwing a knife, but at least Scream 3 was in the ballpark of reality by having the "badass" knife throw deliver a less-than-fatal result.

This subversive dose of reality was all the more delicious because the shot of the knife flying towards Dewey was featured extensively in Scream 3's marketing, leaving many to assume that he'd finally bite the bullet - or, er, blade - this time around.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.