7 Completely Unrealistic Movie Plots (That Came True)

Oh, wait, sorry. He discovers a hole in the wall through which Robbins has escaped. Robbins has in fact spent his decades in jail meticulously chiseling himself an escape route in preparation for one day becoming a heavy handed metaphor for the human spirit.

The Real Life Event

On December 15, 2007, the cells of Otis Blunt and Jose Espinosa were opened at New Jersey's Union County Jail and found to be curiously lacking in Otis Blunt and Jose Espinosa. What the cells did have were two posters of what the newspapers called "bikini clad woman".

The prison guards looked behind the posters and discovered a hole linking the cells to each other and another hole in the external wall, linking the cells to the outside world.

The two inmates had spent the previous weeks chiseling away at the wall with a length of wire. They then crawled into one cell, covered the holes with the posters and piled blankets under their bed sheets to make it look like they were sleeping, an idea so rudimentary, they had to steal it from a Baby Sitter's Club novel.

They then escaped through the hole, climbed a fence and parted ways, one of them going to Mexico City, as in every jail break film ever, the other going to hide in a nearby basement, as in being a fucking idiot.

Not that it mattered; the guy in the basement was caught a month later, the criminal in Mexico the day after that, presumably while sanding his boat on the beach.

They were brought before a judge and charged with third-degree escape, to which they hilariously pleaded not-guilty. We don't know if they were convicted or not, but we expect the prosecution's evidence was along the lines of: "Here is the defendant in Mexico City, here is an empty fucking jail cell. The prosecution rests."

The Film

Three Kings featured Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney before they were bankable movie stars, and the guy that directed Being John Malkovich before he never acted in another film ever again. Somehow they came together to make Three Kings one of the best war movie of the past 15 years.

It tells the tale of U.S. soldiers who stumble upon a map to a fortune in Kuwaiti gold. Still hungry for some action after the boring-as-far-as-wars-go Operation Desert Storm, they head out on a rogue mission to steal that shit.

The film hardly had the makings of prophecy. The screenplay was dashed off in seven days when John Ridley, a former writer for the TV show Martin, decided to see how quickly he could write and sell a script. Oh, and the Iraq War was already over when the film was released in 1999, and it's not like we were going to have another one of those, right?

The Real Life Event

Fortunately for the movie's chances at achieving Cracked.com immortality, and unfortunately for thousands of Iraqi citizens, America re-invaded Iraq in 2003, and after a few weeks, easily took Baghdad. A few days later, in a baathist cache in Baghdad the Third Infantry Division stumbled upon a cement shed filled with metal boxes. Inside each metal box was $4 million in cash, over $320 million in total.

In a situation like this you might expect the soldiers to steal the money. Instead, the brave troops alerted their major, locked the money away and went back to protecting Freedom and spreading Democracy. For about half an hour, and then they started frantically searching the area for money that they hadn't yet reported.

That night Staff Sergeant Matt Novak, First Sergeant Eric Wilson and Specialist Jamal Mann broke into a similar looking building and, sure enough, found it stocked with 50 metal boxes bursting with $200 million in hundred dollar bills. They stuffed some of the cash in their pockets and hid the boxes in a canal and a palm tree to recover later. Their plan was flawless, except that the palm tree wasn't the most inconspicuous place to hide the money. As the major who found it said: "Well my God! You walked right across the street, you know, 20 feet away, in this palm tree, and there's a wad of cash stuck in the fork of a tree, you know."

Ha, seriously! It's almost as if the soldiers hadn't planned an end game, accomplishing the first step of their plan, and assuming everything else would just fall into place...

It was later discovered that very little radiation had in fact leaked out and that nobody was at risk of turning into mutants. But America has never let an absence of any real threat ruin a good panic and the nation spent most of 1979 freaking the hell out about the dangers of nuclear power. The effects were devastating for the mental health of the local community, but it was all aces for Hollywood. The China Syndrome, capitalized on the similarities between the two events and swept up at the box office.

Jane Fonda went on to become an ardent anti-nuclear protester; to the extent that nuclear physicist Edward Teller blamed her for causing his heart attack, saying: "You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."

Jane Fonda, you may now officially add your name to the list of people indirectly harmed by Three Mile Island, because you just got burned!

In January 2008, two men were charged with larceny and improper-burial. Improper-burial is a vague description of a crime, but it's a little more concise than taking-your-naked-dead-friend-dressing-him-in-clothes-wheeling-him-down-the-street-in-a-chair-leaving-him-on-the-sidewalk-and-trying-to-cash-his-social-security-check.

This is what pensioners David Daloia and James O'Hare did to their friend, Virgilio Cintron. At least, so alleged the prosecution, on the evidence of witnesses and policemen, one of whom said Cintron was unresponsive, flopped around unsteadily in the chair and appeared to show early signs of rigor mortis. The same policeman had the pair arrested after they failed to get the $355 Social Security check cashed. Daloia and O'Hare, on the other hand, claimed they were simply helping their sickly friend, whose landlord was trying to evict him, presumably for being dead.

"I thought he was alive. Was it stupid? Yeah. But trying to cash a check when he was dead would be even stupider. I'm not that dumb" said Daloia, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The two men were later found not-guilty because the prosecution couldn't prove exactly when Virgilio had died, and because the jury probably imagined the whole scheme being perpetrated by the irascible Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman.

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The film climaxes with a shootout in a busy street outside a bank, between the body-armored, assault rifle wielding criminals and the police. While Mann shoots the scene with his trademark realism, it features the same over the top violence as the most far-fetched 80s action flicks.

The Real Life Event

During 1995 and 1996, Emil Matasareanu and Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. robbed an armored car and two banks in California. Deciding to go for the hat trick, they kitted themselves out in combat fatigues, ski masks and homemade body armor and set off one February morning in 1997 to rob a Hollywood branch of the Bank of America.

Unfortunately for the two effeminately named robbers, the third time was less than lucky, and they got involved in one of the most prolonged and violent shootouts in American history.

Philips and Matasareanu were spotted going into the bank by a patrol car. The officer found something suspicious about the numerous assault rifles and 9mm handguns the two men were carrying and alerted police headquarters to a "possible" bank robbery.

After leaving the bank with over $300,000, the criminals walked into a barrage of cops and began what would become known as the North Hollywood Shootout. Seventeen people would be injured (read: shot with an assault rifle) in the ensuing firefight. The police shotguns and handguns could not penetrate the criminal's body armor, allowing Philips and Matasareanu to stand without cover, firing armor piercing bullets at the police. And then the SWAT teams arrived and things really kicked off.

After sustaining 11 gunshot wounds, Philips shot himself in the head. Matasareanu held out a little longer but ,after taking his 27th bullet gave up, was arrested and died on the way to the hospital.

A number of lessons were learned from the event, specifically the need for police to carry heavier weaponry, but more importantly, the lesson that if you're considering a life of crime, robbing any more than two banks and an armored car is probably pushing your luck.