Random Super Common Movie Deaths That Are Scientifically Impossible (12 items)

(#4) Being Quickly Strangled To Death

Hollywood has long portrayed manual strangulation – someone choking another person to death with their hands – as a quick and easy method to kill a person. In real life, throttling a person is much more difficult than movies make it out to be. It is definitely not quick and can take up to five minutes for a person to die.

Meanwhile, a person being choked is likely to struggle violently as they panic and begin to lose consciousness, and they can almost fully recover in just a few seconds if they are able to break free.
(#5) Blowing Up In A Car Shot By Guns

It might seem easy to blow up a car if you watch a lot of movies. Apparently, all it takes is shooting a few bullets at a vehicle's gas tank, and a vehicle will quickly erupt into flames or explode spectacularly. Real life is a bit of a different story. Gas tanks in cars are specifically made to be as safe as possible. They have to be able to withstand strong impacts in case the vehicle is involved in a crash. There is also not very much oxygen inside a tank, certainly not enough to cause a rapid fire or explosion. Meanwhile, most bullets are simply not powerful enough to pierce the reinforced gas tank or ignite the fuel inside.
So, although any circumstance where you're being chased by someone with guns isn't ideal, no need to worry much about your escape car exploding.
(#12) Sinking Into Lava

Another common death in sci-fi, fantasy, and disaster films is by an unfortunate fall into a volcano or other lava pit. This common depiction usually sees the victim sink slowly – and while weirdly cognizant – as the lava envelops their entire body. The only problem is that scientists know that lava has a very high density, which would almost certainly lead to most people simply floating on top of the material. Therefore it would not cause the instant death that hapless film viewers may assume.
Instead, the intense heat would cause a person to burst into flames and slowly burn to death.
(#2) Getting Sucked Into Quicksand

Sinking in quicksand has become such a popular way for characters to die in movies that researchers have devoted plenty of time to studying its effects. According to films, anyone caught in quicksand is likely to die as they are slowly sucked into the sand as they struggle to escape. Although anyone falling into quicksand will sink initially, the density of the sand and water mixture will then cause the victim to float. Eventually, the water will settle back down and cause anything with a similar density to a human to slowly make its way back to the surface, stabilized but stuck.
Getting stuck, not sucked, in quicksand is much more likely and may lead to death by starvation.
(#10) Death By A Bomb Shot By A Gun

According to the movies, an easy way to dispose of any would-be terrorist or bad guy with a bomb is just to shoot the explosive and watch it blow up. While it is certainly true that some bombs will ignite and explode if hit with a bullet, the vast majority will not. Most explosive devices are designed to be as robust as possible the majority of the time. The reasons for this are obvious; bomb designers don’t want the bomb to prematurely go off as this could cause unintentional harm or damage.
If you're holding a bomb and someone's shooting at you, you'll probably die from a bullet, not an exploding bomb.
(#9) Dying After A Powerful Palm Heel Strike To The Nose

Heroes in action films have the uncanny ability of swiftly (and cleanly) killing their enemies in hand-to-hand combat. One of these killer moves is the palm heel strike to the nose, a move where the hero forcefully thrusts their hand into their enemy's face. Movie science says the nose bone is shoved so hard that it busts into the enemy's brain, effectively killing them. In Con Air, this palm heel is the whole reason Cameron Poe (Nic Cage) is imprisoned.
This type of death is impossible for an obvious reason: our noses are nearly all cartilage, so there is no pointy bone waiting to pierce your brain upon impact. There is a tiny portion of bone at the top of your nose, but it still can't kill you.
Even if a person were to get hit so hard that the tiny part of bone became dislodged, there is no way the bone could get to your brain – that's the whole point of having a skull. Yes, a person could die from blunt force trauma or other indirect reasons after getting a nasty palm heel to the nose, but it won't be in the form of a bone-induced lobotomy.