Funny stories of obvious novelty cards in media
Ha, that's brutal but hilarious. I've seen the flip side working a door for a few months back in the day. The sheer volume of obviously fake IDs we'd pull at the venue security checkpoints was wild. My favorite was one that had the guy's birthday as "01/01/0000." I didn't snap it, just handed it back and told him happy birthday from the Roman empire. He was good about it, walked off without a scene. Those honest deadpans make the clubbing experience memorable for the right reasons sometimes.
Ha, this takes me back. My buddy tried to pass off his "time traveler" ID at a college bar once — thing literally said "Valid Until 1885." The bouncer snapped it in half right in front of him and just laughed. Worst part? The ID confiscation happened like five minutes into the night, so he was stuck being the designated driver. Definitely the most memorable bouncer interaction I've seen. Honestly, with all the venue security checkpoints these days, I'm surprised anyone still tries this stuff. Gotta admire the confidence though.
One of the running games in my friend group is spotting obviously wrong prop IDs in movies and TV shows. Here are some specific examples that are particularly notable — all verifiable by rewatching the scenes, not relying on my memory.
There's a recurring prop in a popular prestige crime drama where the character's ID has a physical format that simply doesn't exist for the state shown. The state uses horizontal-format licenses for all adults, but the prop is vertical — a format that state only uses for under-21 licenses. The character is clearly an adult, so anyone who knows that state's license format would notice the format immediately.
A different show has a scene where a character's ID date of birth is visible on screen, and the expiration date is actually before the date of birth. The prop team evidently copy-pasted the wrong year without checking the math. The scene is supposed to build tension around whether the ID will pass inspection, which is undermined slightly by the ID being obviously wrong in a way the show's ID checker would presumably catch.
A comedy series that used to run for years made no attempt at accuracy and openly used a fictional state name on character IDs — which was actually the right call. You could read the state name clearly on camera and it was clearly invented, which kept it firmly in "obviously a prop" territory rather than potentially confusing territory. That approach ages better than props that tried to look genuine and didn't quite succeed.
What's consistent across these examples is that the errors tend to be structural rather than detail-level. The wrong format, impossible date math, fictional issuing authority. These are the kinds of errors that a person who regularly handles IDs would catch in seconds but that a prop department without specialist review might not flag before filming. The detail-level elements — specific hologram designs, barcode data — tend to be handled more carefully because they're more obviously scrutinized.