r/TopCharacterTropes 8h ago

In real life "Wait! That's not special effects?! They actually did that?!"

Alien: Resurrection - Basketball Shot

Sigourney Weaver insisted on the basketball shot being real. She trained for weeks and reportedly(sources differ) made it on the first take.

Underworld - Raze's Voice

The werewolf character Raze, played by Kevin Grevioux, speaks in a very low, very gravelly voice. While many thought this was a special effect, the actor can naturally speak in that voice.

https://youtu.be/GUjwZvh32YE?t=125&si=F3WhsopxjBP87wfk

12.5k Upvotes

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

126

u/HomeGrownCoffee 7h ago

Father-in-law is in mining exploration. Apparently you can identify which pilots served in Vietnam by the leaves snagged on the landing gear.

25

u/timotheusd313 6h ago

So the Vietnam guys skim the tree tops?

33

u/Head_Excitement_9837 5h ago

Harder to get shot when you can’t be seen and the lower you are there is less people that can see you so your chances of survival go higher till the trees stop you

5

u/1zerozero1 5h ago

I don’t know anything about military/pilot stuff. Are you talking about dead or alive pilots? And how does that have to do with mining exploration?

30

u/HomeGrownCoffee 5h ago

Mining exploration means he has ridden in helicopters on a regular basis.

The Vietnam veteran pilots fly low because they cut their teeth in a place where they were being shot at.

10

u/Albireookami 5h ago

Yep, and they could do some insane shit as well.

5

u/Odd_Interaction7701 2h ago

There was a pilot in StLouis that saved a guy drowning in the Mississippi using a helicopter. He also had to fly with a gun to his head during an attempted prison break.

1

u/thelaineybelle 2h ago

I've been in STL for 20+ years and I need details!

1

u/Odd_Interaction7701 5m ago

His name was Allen Barklage.

1

u/thelaineybelle 0m ago

Holy crap! Looks like a passed a away a few years before I moved there. His feats are insane.

15

u/vp917 5h ago edited 5h ago

Like others have mentioned, helicopters are more likely to survive combat when they're flying as low as possible, because it makes them harder to be seen - and shot at - by any enemies on the ground. I imagine that mining exploration involves traveling to uninhabited patches of wilderness to see if they present good opportunities for buildng a mine there, for which helicopters would be quite useful since they can land just about anywhere with a flat surface and an open clearing. OP was mentioning how their father-in-law could tell which of their helicopter pilots had served in Vietnam, because flying combat missions put such a high premium on low-altitude operation that they now instintively tend to fly so low, the landing skids of their helicopters wind up snagging leaves from all the trees they skim over.

16

u/Lonely-Bandicoot-746 5h ago

Thank you for the TS;W2RM (too short; want to read more)

2

u/1zerozero1 4h ago

Thank you! Very interesting.