Hackers in TV shows

[Dani]

I was recently watching a tv show where a "hacker" saved the day with some HTML code.

What's the most unrealistic portrayal of hackers you've ever seen in a movie or TV show?

[Dani]

P.S. Huge shoutout to Pantheon for (with the exception of the weirdness that happened at the very end of the series) the most realistic portrayal I have ever seen in a TV show.

[Reverend Jim]

Just working through Pantheon. No spoilers please.

Most unrealistic? Where do I start?

Criminal Minds

Being able to immediately cross reference one obscure thing with another obscure thing in two completely unrelated databases on different computer systems.

NCIS

Abbey and Tim both typing on the same keyboard at the same time.

Any Other Hacker

Guessing a password in under 30 seconds by just looking around the room.

Hackers (1995)

The moronic graphics that show on the screen as the hacker "tunnels" into a system.

Found/Tracker

The hacker who can hack into any system in under a minute.

And I don't recall the show but the team was trying to break encryption and as they were working, the data they were trying to decrypt slowly came into "focus" (the exact word they used). Seriously? If they guessed half of the encryption key the data would be visible but blurry?

I guess it boils down to just about every portrayal of a hacker in any movie or TV show.

[rproffitt]

I'm going to include CNN showing DOGE hacking agency computers in 2025.