One who
nitpicks. A nitpicker takes great pleasure in pointing out mistakes in a
movie,
TV show, piece of writing, anything creative that involves
consistency and
logic. Habitual nitpickers are often very
fastidious and sometimes truly
anal-retentive, though not always. Nitpickers make excellent
editors and
proofreaders. Nitpickers are frequently a target of humor from the more laid-back of us. During one episode of
The Simpsons,
Lucy Lawless talks with rabid
Xena fans. The
nerdy fans claim that between shots, a horse changes breeds. To hastily settle the matter, Lucy Lawless claims that
"A wizard did it." This is an example of a
continuity nitpick, as opposed to the more substantial
plot nitpick or arcane
technical nitpick.
Technical nitpick: a nitpicker would notice that in Star Wars, on C-3P0's head, while he was within the Ewok village being treated as a God, the reflection map on his chrome dome is inconsistent with what one would expect in a sunny forest. The reflections seem to show, in fact, that the light there is a actually a grid of high-power studio lighting, not a single specular highlight representing the sun of Endor.
Nitpickers love to compile the errors they spot. The Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek is a must have compendium for the nitpicking Trekkie. Nitpickers are also called continuity fascists by some people, but 'nitpicker' is a more widely used term.
The word 'nitpicker' derives from picking nits, or the eggs of lice from hair. It's an exacting, tedious task.