Every kid knew that there was an inherent risk in asking Santa for an action figure, because parents usually figured that as long as it had the right logo on the box, they were on the safe side. This, naturally, caused many a tear-filled holiday.
Classic comic book characters have successfully been reinvented over the years. But they kept being succesful because the core was the same -- no one would ever mess with that, would they?
It's easy for us to hide the bad things from our kids that appear in works today. Things get a little trickier when classics of children's literature suddenly let fly with the sort of out-of-the-blue casual racism usually reserved for old Southern men after a few too many drinks
In the grand scale of things, not much changes when a single dude decides he'd rather be a Communist than an American, or vice versa. The balance of power is still basically the same, right? But every balance has a tipping point, and sometimes all it takes is one turncoat to change the course of history.
It turns out some of the most awesomely portrayed jobs in movies require almost no training whatsoever and can be done by almost any old jackass who walks in off the street.
Dogs were probably useful as hell on the battlefield way back when. With the advent of artillery, you'd think they'd be retired from combat situations. Of course, you'd be totally wrong.
Writers and directors aren't exactly corporate experts and often don't even know what an average office job is like. That's why they've come up with these weird misunderstandings of how companies work.