Indeed. Trying to pick apart CG in television and movies started for me when I began taking classes for 3D, animation, texture painting, etc and has never really stopped since. I've only really been doing Arch-Vis my entire career which arguably is a simpler niche of CG, though I am pretty familiar with the other areas out of pure interest. I'm often noticing details in the way architectural structures, systems, and millwork are actually built. It's definitely not as demanding as character modeling, rigging, and animation, which there's no easy way around, but with arch-vis a lot of the times we're translating (faking?) those smaller details with textures or simplified geo because the actual detail won't often show up (or would make the scene too heavy) because the views are so vast. I also look at materials in the real world as reference and try to take mental notes of how certain characteristics appear like reflection levels, roughness, etc. at whatever time of day/lighting conditions it may be at the time.
One could argue that 3D artists have a greater ability to see 'The Matrix'! ;)
Sometimes I am almost convinced that we may actually be living in a complex computer simulation..but I digress. :)