Live-Action TV / Artistic License Military

Series with their own pages:

M*A*S*H

An episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. showed a wedding of a young Navy ensign. He and all his buddies were in choker whites, sporting impossible ribbon racks full of awards they couldn't have earned, some for wars they were infants for, along with warfare devices they couldn't have gotten yet (dual Surface AND Subsurface Warfare Pins)... not bad for being in the Navy less than two years!
Arrested Development is a serious offender. Buster seems to be in and out of boot camp whenever it's plot convenient, and the uniforms (when not grossly inaccurate) were out of date by about seven years. Not to mention you wouldn't get a medal for getting injured from a non combat accident, and tricking someone into reenlisting is highly illegal. Given the show lives by the Rule of Funny, most of the inaccuracies are probably intentional.
Babylon 5:
- The series tends to portray "cruisers" as midsize warships and "destroyers" as large warships, in a reverse of historical norms.
- The series has some problems with Earthforce naval ranks. The uniforms in the series are pretty clear: blue for naval personnel, gray for security, olive drab for ground forces. However, General William Hague and Major Ed Ryan are both apparently naval officers and wear blue, whereas the rest of the cast follow the standard NATO naval rank system.
Batman (1966) episode ""He Meets His Match, the Grisly Ghoul". At the end of a radio transmission between Batman and Robin, Batman (who is a duly deputized officer of the law and should know better) tells Robin "Over and out".
Blackadder Goes Forth, whilst generally fairly accurate on many uniform and insignia aspects (excepting the fact they are dressed perfectly accurately for 1914, not 1917!), has an easily missed error in the form of Brigadier-General Sir Bernard Proudfoot-Smith. The rank title is in fact correct for the era (it's currently just Brigadier, without the hyphened General, in the British Army). His insignia is, however, incorrect: Brigadier-General during WWI wore a crossed baton and sword (similar to other generals, but without any crowns or stars above).
In Bones:
- A Ranger Colonel shows up to recruit Booth to train soldiers in Afghanistan. He immediately recognizes the Colonel as an army ranger, presumably due to the 75th Ranger patch on his right shoulder, instead of the correct flag. Also, the Colonel is wearing a (deformed) black beret instead of the Ranger tan.
- Agent Booth himself at the end of the same episode counts as well. Wearing a presumably new uniform that looks like it came from the "reject" pile of the local CIF. Would be an aversion except that Booth has been reinstated to the rank of Sergeant Major and would at least ensure his uniform was presentable.
- Then there’s Booth’s brother Jared, who had the wrong hat for his Navy rank.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Initiative can't seem to figure out whether it's a special ops arm of a civilian agency or a unit in the military, and if so, it's not sure which agency or which branch. In one episode Riley refers to his colleagues as soldiers, in the next they are Marines. (There are some implications the Initiative is a unit all its own, and that personnel from all branches have been transferred there due to being deemed suitable for the program, but noting definitive.) Others use the terms interchangeably to refer to Riley. They answer to a civilian at first, but then are taken over by a general. Insignia seems to have been chosen by grabbing stuff at random and pinning it on wherever it would fit. Though they do avert Mildly Military by being very well disciplined with a clear chain of command.
- Fanon has attempted to explain all this by saying that the Initiative was a civilian agency that used active duty soldiers from multiple military services simultaneously, and that any military personnel put in charge were doing so on a... well... you get the idea. When told this theory, Joss Whedon's response was to nod vaguely and say "Sure... if that works for you... I guess."
In the Disney Channel Original Movie Cadet Kelly, Hilary Duff and Christy Carlson Romano would have been discharged for what they did to each other if it had been military rather than a school.
An episode of Destroyed in Seconds had footage from a helicopter crash during a Russian airshow. The helicopters were Mi-2s, but the narrator continuously refers to them as "M1-2s". The narrator then calls them "state-of-the-art". They aren't, having been introduced in 1965 and phased out of front-line service in most armies which field them, including Russia's.
Doctor Who:
- We'll start with New Doctor Who's 'saluting while not wearing hats' (if you are hatless, you can come to attention, or a version of it if sitting down, when wishing to show respect to a superior officer within most Commonwealth countries). Yes, it means that the Doctor can do his 'no don't salute' bit, but would it cost them too much to borrow the hats?
- "Day of the Moon"
  - Rory, dressed in civilian clothes, salutes the NASA personal in 1969 with the British-styled salute. The NASA personnel are explicitly confused by his usage of the British salute, so it's certainly an in universe example.
  - President Nixon leans on the NASA employees to keep quiet because he is their "Commander in Chief". Commander in Chief refers to his position as being in charge of all US Armed Forces, but NASA was (and is) a civilian federal agency. Possibly said as a shorthand as the President is technically the ultimate boss of any federal agency.
- "The Pyramid at the End of the World": The colonel in charge of the American military contingent is wearing the rank insignia of a four-star general.
- "Survivors of the Flux": In the scene where UNIT has just been founded, Lethbridge-Stewart makes a brief audio-only cameo, using a sound recording from an earlier story. Another character then refers to him as a Corporal. While it is possible in the British Army for a non-commissioned officer to be promoted to a commissioned rank (known as "soldier commissions" or "late entry commissions"), it is not especially common, and a person who had taken that career path would probably be older than Lethbridge-Stewart was at the time of his early appearances as Colonel and Brigadier.
- Torchwood. Captain Jack Harkness' greatcoats all bear the rank insignia of "Group Captain", which is a full title in itself, is never referred to as "Captain", and has the equivalent of "Colonel" in the armed forces. Not to mention the fact that in his first appearance, his uniform is that of a "Squadron Leader". Possibly justified, as he originally stole the identity in question, and while he probably figured it out later, he's shown to be very attached to his greatcoat, rank insignia and all, so probably doesn't care.
In Enemy at the Door, set during World War II, most of the recurring German characters are in the Wehrmacht (regular military), but Reinicke is an officer of the Waffen-SS (which had a separate command structure and its own ranks). Early episodes aren't consistent about recognising that the SS had different ranks from the regular army, with Reinicke frequently addressed or referred to with the army rank of "Hauptmann" instead of the SS rank of "Hauptsturmführer".
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: John Walker is a US army Captain, and the first person in history to be awarded three Medals of Honor. An extremely unlikely event due to the politics involved, as a matter of fact, only 19 were awarded twice, the last being in WWI. Moreover, it is implied he received all three for the same event, which have been prohibited since 1918. Finally, considering his record and age, it would be practically imossible for Walker to still be a Captain.
A French Village: In the series' first season, the commanding officer of Villeneuve's German garrison is addressed as "Mein Kommandant", a literal (and incorrect) German translation of the French way of addressing to an officer having the rank of major (German officers aren't addressed this way, not to mention "Kommandant" isn't even a real German word). The correct phrase would be "Herr Major".
In the Fringe episode "The Arrival", a photo is shown of a Marine from an incident in 1987. Not only is he wearing digital camouflage, which was not introduced to the Marine Corps until the early 2000s, but it's ACU instead of MARPAT. What the Marine should be wearing are BDUs.
In the Gilmore Girls episode "Chicken or Beef," at Dean Forester's bachelor party, one of his friends, Kyle, is shown to have enlisted in the Navy and is wearing his Dress Blues uniform. While the character has graduated high school just months prior, his uniform is that of an E-5 and has two hash marks on the left sleeve. It would be impossible for a high school graduate to obtain this rank in a matter of months, but more to the point the hashmarks on his sleeve mean Kyle has been enlisted for between 8 and 12 years (one hash mark indicates four years of service).
The opening of Hogan's Heroes shows Colonel Klink (who's in charge of Stalag 13) initiating the salute. As mentioned above, that's not how it works. Then again, all the Germans on the show are idiots.
The first episode of the Horatio Hornblower series has Hornblower, aboard a captured French ship, refuse to run down the French colors before opening fire on the French corvettes attacking the Indefatigable and only displays the British flag after the battle is won. This is treated as a clever ruse, but in reality, Mr. Bowles' objection about the Articles of War would have carried much more weight. Flying the wrong colors to sneak up to enemy ships was allowed (in one of the novels, Hornblower has a French flag made for this purpose) but you had to change to the correct colors before attacking. Actually opening fire under false colors was considered a serious crime.
In JAG the research and accuracy became better through the years the show was running, though inaccuracies could always be found. Having a Marine Corps veteran as its creator, executive producer, and show runner probably helped. Being Backed by the Pentagon probably helped a great deal too.
Jericho (2006), in a rare in-universe example. U.S. Marines come to help rebuild and resupply the town. A former Army Ranger notices details that are wrong; one calls an NCO 'sir', they say 'hooah' (Army) rather than 'oorah' (Marines). They are simply civilians wearing uniforms and using the town's resources.
M*A*S*H has too many to count, but a few stand out above the others:
- Frank Burns demands and receives a Purple Heart for getting an eggshell in his eye during an artillery barrage. In real life, he would have been denied as the injury wasn't directly caused by enemy action. The episode actually addressed this point: Frank wouldn't have been eligible for the medal, but the injury was entered into his records as "shell fragment in eye", which happened during an artillery attack on the unit, which got the medal approved by I Corps, which presumed it was an artillery shell fragment instead of an eggshell. Note that Hawkeye was not amused at the trickery and how it cheated the value of the medal to injured soldiers that came through the 4077th. So, not an error on the writer's part; an error on the Army's part, In-Universe.
- Potter is correct in stating that the Army Good Conduct Medal is only for enlisted soldiers. He's wrong in insisting that his status as a prior-service enlisted soldier entitles him to wear the medal, which he is seen wearing from time to time and he has his medal framed on his wall. What he (or the writers) failed to realize is that the medal was awarded long after Potter was an enlisted soldier and that the retroactive dates don't go back to when he was enlisted and eligible for the award.
- At one point Hawkeye and BJ try to take Corporal O'Reilly into an officers-only area with them. Hawkeye plucks a pair of captain's bars from BJ's shoulder, attaches it to Radar's cap, and (inspired by the ranks of lieutenant-colonel and sergeant-major) declares him a "corporal-captain". And this works. They only had to convince one suspicious officer (though this itself is unlikely) and given that he was in the club, he'd likely enough to believe their story of the Army seeking opinions on a possible new rank.
- 1970s shaggy hair and sideburns is and was completely out of Army regulations, almost all CIVILIAN men at the time kept their hair much shorter than that. Now given, the writer of the original book said conscripted surgeons in the war got away with ridiculous things because of the scarcity, it wouldn't explain the regular and career soldiers for the reasons above. During Colonel Blake's tenure as CO the failure of the enlisted men to observe regulation grooming standards can be explained as 'since the commanding officer didn't care about the regulations, nobody bothered following them' (after all, if there's one constant thing about the military it's that if the CO consistently lets something slide, the troops will happily slide on it as far as they can get away with), but one of Colonel Potter's character elements was that he actually was "regular Army" in mindset re: enlisted discipline.
- Now given that the time scale for the 12 year series doesn't really fit into a three year conflict anyway, but most conscripted surgeons only served a year in country. Hawkeye is apparently there throughout the entire conflict.
- Occasionally, references are given to "points," which a draftee accumulates in order to determine his time-in-service; Trapper is sent home after accumulating enough points, and a racist combat unit commander volunteers his black troops for dangerous missions in order to accumulate points faster and rotate them out of his unit. This refers to a system used for WWII which was discontinued by the time of the Korean War, and never applied to medical personnel in any case.
  - According the U.S. Army Center of Military History “…a soldier earned four points for every month he served in close combat, two points per month for rear-echelon duty in Korea, and one point for duty elsewhere in the Far East…The Army initially stated that enlisted men needed to earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the States, while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army reduced these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and thirty-seven points for officers.”
Madam Secretary:
- The series has several Stock Footage Failures involving military equipment, e.g. using an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer as a stand-in for a minesweeper, and saying said minesweeper has depth charges in the bargain.
- There's also an extremely silly case where Henry (a retired Marine Corps captain) reads a pair of Air Force second lieutenants the riot act for badmouthing his wife and being drunk in uniform. That isn't the Artistic License. The Artistic License is when a later episode misidentifies the flyboys as having been Marines: the twoie-louies were wearing dress blues, and the Marines'◊ look nothing like the Air Force's◊ (what the previous episode showed).
- In the season 3 premiere, Elizabeth persuades President Dalton to close the Navy base in Bahrain after it's badly damaged in a global warming-influenced cyclone shortly after a major upgrade; they plan to build a new base in Tunisia to support its fledgling democracy. Good politics, but Tunisia is in North Africa, thousands of miles from the Persian Gulf, not to mention being just across the Mediterranean from Italy, so there's no real military advantage to be gained by the move.
The Man in the High Castle:
- The Nazi border guards encountered by Juliana and Wyatt wear Wehrmacht Heer uniforms, but their vehicle is painted with SS runes. The Heer was the regular army of Germany, while the SS was the private military of the Nazi Party. They did operate together on a regular basis, but had separate logistics and chain of command. Heer troops would not be driving an SS vehicle.
- Speaking of the SS, they're shown wearing all-black uniforms even in 1962. This is the "Black Ensemble" uniform, which started to get phased out in favor of more Boring, but Practical "earth-grey" tunic uniforms. This is because Feldgrau was exclusively used in the field and the Nazi regime spent their last five years on a continuous war-footing.
- It's possible that the uniforms in the Alternate History just developed in different ways: John Smith is a high-ranking member of the American SS but wears a black uniform and a Nazi party armband that incorporates the stripes of the American flag, and is also shown to be wearing what looks like a Wehrmacht peaked cap at first glance but actually has an SS runestone in the center, which no historical uniform ever did.
- Yamori and Inokuchi have gensui badges, but neither are ever called gensui. This would never fly in the military, especially in the Japanese one where titles are considered immensely important.
Played for laughs in Mr. Bean.
- Bean once approaches a Queen's Guard and starts combing his fur hat and sticking flowers in it for a selfie, with the Guard not doing much more than standing like a statue and giving the occasional worried look—and then stomping off at the call of shift change just when the timer on Bean's camera takes the picture. As various hecklers and tourists have discovered (check YouTube), the Queen's Guard will usually ignore just about everything except laying hands on them or otherwise actively interfering in their duties, at which point you find out that despite the goofy-looking Bling of War uniform, they're real active-duty British soldiers and take their job very seriously.
- In another episode, Bean approaches a British Army section taking part in an open house at a school. After observing their Drill Sergeant Nasty yelling Angrish at them and then walking off, he starts making random coughing noises that the soldiers take as commands, and leaves them collectively standing on one foot waving a hand. Cue the sergeant coming back just after Bean leaves.
The setup for one early-season NCIS: Los Angeles episode has US Marines on patrol duty in a desert come under attack... then the camera happens to pass a sign showing they're in southwestern California rather than Iraq or Afghanistan. Ostensibly they're there helping with border security, which is a violation of the post-Civil War Posse Comitatus Act that sharply limits the use of US troops in domestic law enforcement. If they'd been National Guard, it would've been okay (the Guard answers to state governors rather than the federal government), but also would have put it out of NCIS's jurisdiction (which covers only the Navy and Marines).
Parks and Recreation had one during the "Sister City" episode, where a group of military officers from Venezuela visit Pawnee. To anyone with military experience, it's plain that their Venezuelean Army uniforms are just US Army uniforms loaded with bling. Among others, they're wearing US Army Combat Infantry badges and the medal ribbons on their uniforms are all US military decorations.
In the third season of SeaQuest DSV, after Captain Hudson takes over from Captain Bridger, he insists that the titular sub is now a warship and is no place for civilians. To stay aboard the sub, Lucas asks Hudson if he can stay if he enlists into the navy. Hudson agrees, and Lucas is given the rank of ensign. That's right, a civilian scientist with no military experience is immediately given an officer rank and starts serving aboard the sub without even having to go through bootcamp. Later, an ex-con gets the same treatment and immediately becomes a sub-fighter pilot.
Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby has a very minor one; Gormsby's medals are upside-down (making them appear in reverse order). But it's enough to make most watchers from a military background flinch.
Sherlock contains several examples of details that were accurate in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's time, but are not accurate for the series' 21st century setting:
- Watson's backstory in the British Army. He states on several occasions that he is from the "5th Northumberland Fusiliers". The unit name is a carryover from the original Doyle stories. Watson served with the 5th (Northumberland Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880. The regiment was renamed simply to 'Northumberland Fusiliers' in 1881, but was frequently referred to as the "5th Northumberland" for decades thereafter. The regiment became part of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in 1968, before the current John Watson was even born. Additionally, he was a surgeon - not a normal soldier - so he should really be saying he's from the Royal Army Medical Corps.
- "The Hounds of Baskerville" features Major Barrymore, an officer with a full beard, which is not allowed by British Army regulations. Barrymore had a beard in the original story and in every other adaptation, which undoubtedly is the reason for his beard in Sherlock.
  - British Army regulations do allow the wearing of a beard if there is a serious medical or religious reason (e.g., skin condition prevents shaving or the soldier is a devout Sikh) or 'operational reasons' as decided by a sufficiently high ranking officer (e.g., patrolling in the desert for weeks and there's not enough water for shaving). Of course none of these are mentioned or obvious in the episode so Artistic License is the most likely explanation.
- The extras in "The Hounds of Baskerville" are also clearly overage, and do not wear uniforms correctly.
- Sherlock refers to the soldier who asks him and Watson for help as a Grenadier. The problem is that the soldier is actually serving in the Scots Guard and all OR1s (typically called privates) in Foot Guard regiments are addressed as Guardsman.
Soldier Soldier had to fudge things around the edges; it couldn't depict any genuine British infantry regiment, so wholly fictitious ones, with plausible back histories, had to be invented.
Sons of Anarchy had an episode where several sailors can be seen in the escort services house in dress whites. Where exactly their ship pulled in is never really explained. Given they're in uniform it would imply it's Fleet Week, which would be in San Francisco. Seems like a long way to go for a whore house...
Space: Above and Beyond:
- Cooper Hawkes ends up getting arrested due to a combination of Fantastic Racism and a misunderstanding with the police after a group of thugs try to hang him in an alleyway. The judge sentences him to serve his debt to society via military service... by putting him through a commissioning program to become a space fighter pilot in the Marine Corps. The Drill Sergeant Nasty even goes so far as to describe the entire situation as a cruel prank played at his (the drill sergeant's) expense. While the US military did do this in the past, A) they only recruited enlisted men this way, not officers, and B) they officially ended this practice several decades before the series was made, never mind set. Hawkes would have had to obtain a waiver after the fact; he most certainly would not have been shipped from jail still in a prison jumpsuit and shackles. Besides which, becoming an officer in the US military requires a college degree (whether from a civilian university or a service academy).
  - In Universe, this can be explained by the In Vitros having been bred and trained for warfare since birth, so he's basically being sentenced to doing what he was created to do.
- The military had long since abandoned the issue of sending letters to inform families of their dead loved ones. Appropriately, to avoid exactly the sort of situation Nathan finds himself in one episode. His parents not getting the letter and still believing his brother is alive the episode after he was killed in action.
- No, Colonel McQueen, the real Marine Corps does not routinely send AcePilot naval aviators in as infantrymen (the 58th actually complains about this in one episode). Despite the Marine creed that every Marine is first a rifleman, that would be a stupid risk of very expensively trained officers. This is also deconstructed in "Sugar Dirt" when the 58th leaving their fighters under orders to join a ground attack results in them getting shot up on the runway.
- In the pilot, the (supposedly) elite Angry Angels squadron wears custom uniforms and berets. This is frowned upon by the Marine Corps: official policy is that all Marines are the same, to the point where they've even abolished unit patches.
- Most of the haircuts we see on the male characters are so far out of regs as to be ridiculous.
Stargate-verse
- The Air Force throughout the franchise is remarkably effective at defending its dominance of the program, considering that even after the introduction of the F-302 Space Fighter and BC-303 and -304 battlecruisers, most of their missions are ground warfare operations for which the other branches are more known. Realistically Stargate Command would be much more of a joint operation: while the Air Force would probably still be in charge given that space is part of its remit, there would probably be a lot more Army and Marine Corps personnel going offworld than are present in the series, since Air Force special forces troops are more organized around supporting air combat operations than directly attacking the enemy. The same issue applies to Jack O'Neill's backstory as a special warfare operator: he's shown conducting (a Lotus-Eater Machine recreation of) a mole-extraction mission in East Germany, something for which they most likely wouldn't have used an Air Force team in reality.
- Stargate SG-1:
  - Mostly averted, although there were some uniform oddities that popped up now and then, most notably an airman in the pilot wearing the insignia for both a Staff Sergeant and a Major. It was officially endorsed by the U.S. Air Force, and had military advisers on board to avoid most flagrant mistakes (they would reportedly even complain if Amanda Tapping let her hair grow longer than regulation in her role as Samantha Carter).
  - The pilot episode also saw such flagrant errors as salutes given while indoors (you don't salute a superior while indoors), and a Captain reporting to a Colonel while in the same room as a General. (The Captain would have reported to the General, as he was the highest ranking officer in the room.)
  - While U.S Air Force soldiers are depicted rather accurately, the same cannot be said for the Russian forces we see on the show. This is most prominently displayed in "The Tomb", which is chock full of inaccuracies. For starters, the Russian Stargate team are stated to be from the Russian Air Force, which, unlike the U.S Air Force, does not have any ground troops. It's possible that a writer mistook the Russian Airborne Troops (Vozdushno-desantnye voyska Rossii, or VDV) for members of the Air Force. They are also shown wearing black berets, as opposed to the blue berets of the VDV, one of their most distinctive uniform features, while black berets are worn by Naval Infantry, Russian tank troops and the now-defunct OMON special police unit.
- Stargate Universe:
  - A character is consistently identified as a Sergeant despite wearing the rank insignia of a Senior Airman. This is sort-of understandable, as modern-day Senior Airmen in the USAF wear the same rank insignia that Sergeants did back when the Air Force rank of "Sergeant" existed. That USAF rank was eliminated in 1991 (it was at the same paygrade as a Senior Airman anyways) and the insignia repurposed.
  - The 20-year old Master Sergeant Ronald Greer. Master Sergeant is a rank that requires at least 16 years prior experience, meaning Greer could not possibly have reached that rank at his age, unless we assume some kind of Applied Phlebotinum or time dilation plot went on behind the scenes. This being both Stargate and a more serial show than even SG-1 was in later seasons, this seems unlikely... ^note
Star Trek:
- Star Trek: The Original Series:
  - Costumes often did not match stated ranks, and there would often be some confusion over what rank a character held. The only character to receive an explicit promotion during the run of the series is Spock, who starts out as a Lieutenant Commander and is promoted to full Commander at some indeterminate point in the first season. However, he wears the two-braided shirt, denoting a full Commander, throughout. Many other characters described in dialogue as a Lieutenant Commander also wear the two braids of a full Commander. There is also no real distinction in costuming between junior officers and enlisted crewmen.^note
  - During production of "The Omega Glory", costumer William Theiss misunderstood the chevron insignia worn by the Enterprise crew to be a unit patch for the USS Enterprise, and therefore gave the USS Exeter crew their own rectangular chest patch. The actual intent was for the chevron to be akin to branch insignia, worn by all Starfleet starship personnel, but the mistake was noticed too late in production to fix and went to air. Theiss never repeated the error, but it spawned a fan theory that every ship in Starfleet had its own patch. This ultimately led to Star Trek: Enterprise erroneously giving crew members of the USS Defiant their own badge in "In a Mirror, Darkly", after they had disappeared from the Prime Universe in "The Tholian Web" wearing the normal chevron patches.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  - DS9 usually managed to keep everyone's ranks straight, even the Army style ranks of the Bajoran military. The only gray area is Chief O'Brien,^note but even he is consistently recognized as a specialist officer (NCO/Warrant) rather than a commissioned Starfleet officer, allowing him to, among other things, avoid getting in dress uniform and going to formal occasions a few times.
  - Occasionally you see the Chief chew out an Ensign for screwing up an engineering task (he's still respectful about it), which some people complain about. This is actually Reality Is Unrealistic: If you're an Ensign Newbie and your commanding officer has placed you on work detail with a decorated CPO whose job designation is Chief Operations Officer, he's allowed to chew you out over your failures with the engineering. Indeed, in some military services, mentoring inexperienced officers was one of the duties of senior NCOs, given their experience. Another point about his rank was actually brought up by the character: when Nog is accepted to Starfleet Academy, O'Brien muses that if Nog ever makes ensign he's going to have to start calling the kid sir.
  - Season seven's "Field of Fire" has Ezri Dax refer to a bit character as "not the first drunken ensign I've escorted home".^note However, the character's rank insignia, one gold pin and one black pin, is that of a junior grade lieutenant (and he's correctly referred to as a lieutenant in the preceding scene).
- Star Trek: Voyager:
  - In "Learning Curve", Tuvok is ordered to train the Maquis crewmembers who are having trouble fitting in. Instead of giving them a crash course in Starfleet procedures to show why they are necessary, he acts like a Hollywood Drill Sergeant Nasty and has them Toothbrush Floor Scrubbing.
  - In "Equinox, Part I", Captains Janeway and Ransom are momentarily confused over who's in charge since they're of equal rank, as though it's something that doesn't happen. In Real Life, the method that's been followed for centuries is plain, simple seniority—whoever was promoted first calls the shots. Starfleet's own regulations essentially boil down to "whoever has the more badass ship," which isn't unreasonable, but neither captain should be acting like this is something that requires a deep dive into the rule book, because they've both been in Starfleet long enough that they'd have witnessed or experienced it back home: officers being superior due to positional authority rather than rank is very common.^{Real Life}
  - In "Scientific Method", Captain Janeway orders Tuvok to crack down on discipline. "You're Security Chief. Don't thirteen department heads report to you every day? Straighten them out!" The writers appear to be confusing the job of Security Chief (responsible for tactical and internal security) with Chakotay's position of First Officer (responsible for day-to-day management of the ship, who would therefore have all the department heads reporting to him daily and have the authority to discipline them if needed).
  - In "The Cloud", Lieutenant Tuvok tells off Ensign Kim for making the "junior officers" nervous. Both ranks are regarded as junior officers, as is anyone below the rank of Commander. This confusion may be due to them both being department heads (Kim in charge of Ops, and Tuvok in charge of Tactical/Security).
In Superman & Lois the abbreviation "DOD" apparently stands for "Department of Defense," as in real life. The writers seem to have only a vague idea of how this department works. General Lane is portrayed as if he has broad authority over it. Since he's a military officer, not the Secretary of Defense, this could be accurate, sort of, only if he were a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which to all appearances he isn't. He's simply one flag-rank officer among many.
In the Supernatural episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), the Army's military police are shown investigating a crime scene on a Navy base instead of the Shore Patrol or NCIS. (For that matter, Army MPs would not be doing major crime scene work; that's what Army CID (Criminal Investigation Division) does.)
The Twilight Zone (1959): "Probe 7, Over and Out". When Colonel Cook's superior General Larrabee ends his radio communication with Cook, he says "Over to you, and out", an example of incorrect radio protocol.
Under the Dome:
- One episode mistakenly describes and depicts the MOAB bomb as a missile instead of a bomb. It's also unlikely that the MOAB would be used to destroy a hard target such as the dome, since it's a fuel-air device designed to airburst and demolish softer targets over a wide area. (In the original novel the scene involved a tactical nuke.)
- It can probably be forgiven for being a dream sequence, but when the one woman sees her Navy husband coming home from deployment, walking down the street, he's wearing a discontinued working uniform and wouldn't be authorized to wear it off base/ship anyway.
The West Wing:
- The White House received weather forecasts from a Coast Guard 1st Lieutenant. The Coast Guard equivalent to this Army/Air Force/Marine Corps rank is Lieutenant (Junior Grade).
- The Army Chief of Staff is portrayed as a three-star general. During peacetime, the job is always held by someone with four-star rank. (During wartime, it can also be held by a five-star; in the US, such ranks are used only in wartime.)
- Aaron Sorkin in general seemed to have difficulty with military matters in The West Wing. He turned heat-seeking air-to-air missiles into radar-seeking air-to-ground missiles, and throughout West Wing's run talks about "Battle Carrier Groups" rather than "Carrier Battle Groups"... to name but a few. (This general ignorance is often expressed through the president, who typically plays The Watson to the Joint Chiefs.)
- In the first season episode "The State Dinner" a carrier battle group is stuck in the path of a hurricane. The naval officer who briefs the president on it tells him that it consists of "the USS John Kennedy, two guided missile cruisers, two destroyers, and two battleships." This is pretty remarkable, considering the Navy retired its last battleships a few years before the start of The West Wing.
In The Wire, the second half of the fifth season has some plot points that revolve around whether or not a reporter is making up details in his stories. As part of his stories, he interviews a former Marine who served in Iraq. When the reporter first meets the Marine, the Marine talks about an "M niner niner eight", which (he explains) is a Humvee. He also calls a .50 caliber machine gun an M50 (which is actually an M2). Later, the Marine's credibility is called into question. Even a fellow Marine is questioned on the subject. In the second interview, the Marine correctly identifies the machine gun as a .50 caliber machine gun, but the audience is supposed to be left with the notion that the former Marine is a credible source of information, despite a few mistakes in his story.

Artistic License Military / Live-Action TV

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