I’ve never seen an explanation as to why the guy thought that the lemon juice would work. Did someone tell it to him that or did he come up with it himself.

Younger me recalls (incorrectly) that they used lemon juice on the film in the first Star Wars movie, as a special effect to blur the base of the land speeder so it appeared to be hovering. They actually used vaseline, smeared on the lens, not the film, plus had mirrors under the vehicle too. I had told this lemon juice ‘fact’ to several people before someone finally corrected me.

My memory was wrong and I wonder how I came to that conclusion. Maybe I watched a ‘behind the scenes’ show on how they did the special effects, and they said it wrong. Maybe it was a show that presented the use of lemon juice in some other tangentially related special effect and I mixed the two up. Maybe I had read an article about using lemon juice to distort picture film in the developing process.

I wonder if that bank robber did the same mistake but with far worse consequences. The time frame of the robbers mistake was around the same time as my confusion as well.