MovieChat Forums > Without a Trace (2002) Discussion > Their bi-fold badges

Their bi-fold badges

posted 14 years ago by inforlonghaul
2 replies | jump to latest

Don't know if this was asked earlier or if the producers of the show answered it already...but-

What was up with their badges? Out of all the FBI shows and movies I've seen, which were all very similar, WAT's bi-fold badges were by far the worst I've seen. They didn't look authentic to me one bit. The only time you saw the real metal badge was on their belts.

If somebody had come up to me in real life with a badge that flimsy, I'd laugh at them and ask them to tell me where the real agent was. Anybody could print something up like that.

It was a bugging me and I thought I'd ask, considering how 'authentic' the rest of the show seemed and why this crappy prop was used. I figured somebody here might know why this was done.

[–] NinjaNinjaa 14 years ago

Aha, I actually have this problem on a lot of shows. The officers want to do some indepth, personal interview. The person asks- Who are you? The officer quickly flashes a random badge and the person immediately accepts it.

As for the reason, I have no idea- I expect they just didn't realize how bad it was, or thought people wouldn't notice...

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You're making me--- you're making my stomach sick.

[–] dexterdragon93 13 years ago

If you really want some more info about badges in TV shows and Hollywood ect read on: Some years ago there was an article when the X-Files was popular, that was written to address some of the bad TV badge issues. If you remember how the X-Files showed Scully and Mulder's badges/ID's in the intro? Well people bitched about how fake and horrible the ID's looked and in this article Chris Carter talks about how he had researched or had foresight to make them look so fake that he could mass produce them for memorabilia and not get into trouble with the real life FBI. Sorry this is poorly written I had a long day... I tried and googled this article but I get nothing but websites selling ID's...