Best comedy movie plot holes of all time

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Knives Out picture

Plot hole: The killer shows up at the scheduled appointment at 8 AM. They kill the idiot blackmailer with an overdose of morphine. Remember, that morphine that supposedly killed Thrombey in 10 minutes. Marta finds the blackmailer at 10 AM...alive, and does CPR on them, keeping them alive long enough for the ambulance to come and bring them to the hospital, even if in critical condition. So we went from "kills in 10 minutes, you can't even try to save him" to "after 2 hours, you are still hanging on"? (01:56:10)

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Marta injected an absurdly large dose. A smaller overdose would not kill in 10 minutes.

I read that objection before. From 10 minutes to 2 hours there's quite a leap that the movie does not explain or address at all, if it were part of the plot they should have said why this difference, on something so time sensitive (of which they got the factual details wrong anyway). Even visually when you look at the dose injected to Harlan and the dose in the syringe for the murder, they do not look different. He even stabs her with the syringe. Which makes sense since he has no reason to leave her there with a small. Controlled overdose in her veins risking that she would be saved as it -almost - happens - it's amazing he got away with it to begin with because she is so dumb to show up for no reason in a derelict place without talking to her accomplice that passed her the toxi report, or anyone.Without a throwaway line from an investigator or anything of the sort ("but you injected her the wrong way, so she was still alive two hours after"), we are just left with an inconsistency.

Sammo

Suggested correction: You've assumed a hell of a lot! Marta said Thrombey was given a dose of 100 mg (instead 3) of Morphine and would die in 10 minutes unless given the antidote. You just asserted that "Thrombey would die in 10 minutes" as if it was fait accompli, while Thrombey didn't die of morphine overdoes at all! (He cut his own throat.) For all we know, Marta's 10-minute assessment was a worst-case-scenario assessment. Fran's age and physique, as well as Marta's CPR, helped negate the effect until the ambulance arrives. If the medics administered the antidote, it could have prolonged Fran's life. Finally, 2 hours is the time after which the viewer is informed of Fran's death, not her actual death time. Most importantly, this happens in the medical world all the time: A person who is supposed to die after 3 days lives for 16 years. There are case-by-case explanations for each one, but they baffle the medical examiners at first.

FleetCommand

Two hours is not my assumption or when the viewer is informed of her death; the killer gives the appointment to the victim at 8 AM and to Marta at 10 AM, so as I said, after 2 hours with 0 medical care on her she is still hanging on and with barely a little tap she is ready to dispense important clues. I go by what the movie says also about the 10 minutes overdose time. Of course if you tell me that baffling freak occurrences can happen all the time in medicine and that very precise statements from the movie don't matter because the character can just have gotten it wrong by over 10x and the movie does not acknowledge it at all, well, that's a very respectable opinion; mine is that fiction (a whodunnit, not a slasher flick with a killer surviving multiple gunshots and the like) is not reality and it should respond to higher standards than "I guess she was still alive somehow."

Sammo

I re-watched the movie to verify that Fran was given an appointment at 8 AM. I discovered something new: The bottle that was injected to Fran contained only 5 mg of Morphine. That's 1/20th of what was "supposedly" given to Thrombey Sr. So, yeah, 10x is OK. In fact, 20x is OK.

FleetCommand

No, no; it contains 5 mg of morphine PER ml, it's the concentration, not the total. Go back to the scene when Marta "messes up", the vials are the exact same as the one that Ransom injects (obviously, since they come from Marta's bag after all). It's new for you but I covered that already in the Factual Error about it. It's something that piles upon a previous mistake. She did not give him 100 mg of morphine because it would have emptied the vial (which is more than half full) and because a full vial of ketorlac would have killed Trombe regardless, at that concentration! The movie gets both the props and the medical facts wrong (100 mg of morphine does not even kill most patients, Harlan would have not died in 10 minutes especially since he takes safely big doses of toradol and morphine), but nothing - in the script - says that Marta or Ransom got basic medical facts wrong.

Sammo

Okay! It seems mistake after mistake is piling up. Now, it appears Fran lived 4 hours, during 2 of which she was unattended. Plus, 100 mg of Morphine from a 5 mg/ml vial amounts to 20 ml of liquid. Well, now, everything you say makes sense... or at least most of the things. On the whole, I think it was a complicated situation.

FleetCommand

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Edward Scissorhands picture

Plot hole: At the end of the film, we see Edward carving ice sculptures in his mansion. How did he get the ice up there? First of all, it takes place in a warm climate and I didn't see a freezer up there in the castle. He couldn't have gotten ice from town because firstly he had scissors for hands and couldn't have gripped the ice. And, even if by some miracle he could, he wouldn't be able to buy any from town because everyone in town but Kim was convinced that Edward was dead, she told everyone that they killed each other. And Kim didn't bring it to him because she told her granddaughter in the end that she never saw him again after that night. So where did he get that ice?

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Super Mario Bros. picture

Plot hole: After Mario and Luigi have defeated Bowser, Daisy's father and the man in New York re-evolve back to their human forms. This makes no sense as it is never explained, and none of the goombas or Koopa troopas ever revert.

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The Parent Trap picture

Plot hole: The parents meet and get married on the QE II and then we jump to the girls getting to camp 11 years and nine months later. We learn their 12th birthdays are on October 11, so at the time of the camp (which must be around July/August) they are 11 years and around 9 months old. They should only be 11, given it takes 9 months to grow a baby, but instead they're nearly 12.

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Suggested correction: Elizabeth James got pregnant sometime within the 11 years. Their parents sent them to camp in July because in October they both turn 12. So they are 11 years 9 months old.

The mistake is valid, but perhaps not specific enough about why. The opening scene takes place Jan 8, 1986 (as seen on the marriage licence). Then it says 11 years and 9 months later, which would mean in the next scene it's October 1997 (when it's July 1998). It's 11 years and 9 months after the twins' birth and/or the parents' divorce. But we're not actually shown that part.

Bishop73

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Brave picture

Plot hole: During the scene where Merida gives her speech on "breaking tradition", her mother, as a bear, moves silently behind the majority of the crowd, so they don't see her. Fair enough. However, Merida and her father's clan are all looking in the same general direction (towards the crowd) while she's speaking - how does no one from Merida's clan see a bear moving at the back of the room?

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Ice Age picture

Plot hole: In the Ice Tunnel scene, Manny, Sid, and Diego come to a stop on the vertical block of ice. It breaks, and they slide through a 'field' of icicles sticking out of the ground. Their 'sled' is shaved down to nothing, indicating that the icicles are sharp. After going through the same tunnel as the baby, how did the baby make it through that field? (00:46:53)

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Suggested correction: A possible reason for the sled slowing down is not due to the ice tunnel but the sheer several tons of weight the sled had on it while it was sliding through the tunnel.

Good point. Without the weight, the icicles would had slowed down the sled instead. And since the baby hardly weighs anything at all, it wouldn't have been able to slide through the field, it would've just collided with the front icicles and stayed there. But it still leads back to question of how the baby got through the field.

Rassdyt

Not true, their "sled" is destroyed by the icicles.

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Inside Out picture

Plot hole: Joy and Sadness are stuck outside of the control center. They are trying to figure out how to get back, and encounter maintenance workers who are discarding old memories. The maintenance workers show that they have the power to send memories back up to the control center to be played. Why couldn't they send the core memories that Joy had back up the same way? Better yet, why not use that method to send Joy and Sadness back up to the control center? The director of the film is even aware of the plot hole, and said "Yeah, well then we wouldn't have a third act," before explaining how the idea of recalling memories was added in later, "box[ing] [the screenwriters] in a corner a little bit."

manthabeat

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Suggested correction: Even if they do send the core memories up to headquarters, they wouldn't be able to get joy and sadness through the tiny gap that the workers send the memories up. Joy has to be in headquarters for Riley to be happy.

This mistake is large enough that the director is aware of it. I think that more than qualifies it to be on this site.

manthabeat

Suggested correction: Joy is a control freak, she wants to return the memories herself. She doesn't even imagine that the workers can do such a thing.

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How to Train Your Dragon picture

Plot hole: When Astrid gets on Toothless for the first time, Toothless takes off uncontrollably and tries to scare her. Hiccup seems to have no control over him at this time. How is that so if with the new tail fin, Toothless cannot fly without Hiccup's precise control of the tail fin? That whole sequence would have fallen apart. This mistake was even admitted to on the DVD commentary. (00:53:35)

Quantom X

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About Time picture

Plot hole: They aren't able to travel before the birth of their children or their children become different. Despite that, he visits his father one last time before their third child is born. His Dad and he then travel back to when he was a kid, which would have changed his first 2 kids.

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Suggested correction: This is not necessarily inconsistent with the movie's time travel logic. Since Tim goes back in time to visit his father and inside that particular time travel, they use time travel to go back to a day where Tim was a child. Then, they return back to the original time travel where they're playing ping pong. At that moment, both of Tim's kids were already born. So, when he returns from the ping pong scene, there's no change regarding his kids.

Also, paraphrasing the Dad, he said they aren't going to change anything. It is more like reliving a memory than changing the future to get what you want. The Dad couldn't go back to not smoke before his kids were born because that was major and would have changed the course of his life; walking a bit differently on a secluded beach that you walked on in your younger days (as long as you spent the same amount of time - presumably) would not alter the trajectory of one's life.

The slightest change in 1 second of being on the beach would absolutely affect his kids. A man produces 1500 new sperm every minute. Altering the timeline and delaying every event that is going to happen by literally 1 second would most definitely alter which exact sperm was used when conceiving both of his first two children.

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Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde picture

Plot hole: When Helen Hyde is on her shopping spree she uses Jekyll's credit cards without getting caught. The ending also has him saying he dressed up like Helen Hyde but everyone there saw him change back.

Rob245

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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days picture

Plot hole: When Greg gets caught faking his summer job, the receptionist tells his father that they don't employ minors, but Heather Hills who is sixteen (we know this because she is about to have her sweet sixteen) is a lifeguard at the pool.

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Little Giants picture

Plot hole: In the Cowboys' last possession of the final game, Spike makes a long run before being stopped on the goal line. The Cowboys' next play is a run up the middle. The Little Giants stop the run and the Cowboys lose possession, but since that was the first possession of a new set of downs, the Cowboys would have three more chances to score.

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The Pest picture

Plot hole: When Leo, Gustav and Himmel are driving through Miami looking for Pest, Gustav notices that the tracking device that was put in Pest's underwear shorted out because of how much he was sweating. An earlier scene showed that Pest jumped off a boat in the middle of the ocean and swam to Miami. Since the tracking device was in Pest's underwear the whole time, it should have shorted out the moment he jumped into the water leaving Pest safe and Leo, Himmel and Gustav driving around aimlessly.

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Money Train picture

Plot hole: When Charlie sets out to hijack the money train, he jumps off the platform onto the tracks as it arrives, in plain sight of the driver and other passengers at the station, and only puts his mask on once he's in position on the tracks. The train conveniently stops right over top of Charlie, allowing him to enter through the conveniently-placed grate on the train's floor. (01:17:15)

Jay Runkle

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show picture

Plot hole: When the castle is about to blast off, Brad and Janet abandon Dr. Scott's wheelchair at the door of the castle and carry/drag him across the porch and down the steps. After the blast off, Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott are on the grass and have been blown some distance apart from each other (in the UK version, there's another song where Brad and Janet crawl toward Dr. Scott so they are blown farther apart than shown in the US version). It seems extremely unlikely that the remains of Dr. Scott's wheelchair just happened to fly from the doorway to land directly under him during the blast. Brad and Janet can barely crawl so they didn't move him or it. (01:34:10)

Myridon

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Bride of Chucky picture

Plot hole: In the end of the film it is heard the police want to exhume the body of Charles Lee Ray from his grave site in New Jersey. Now when Chucky and the crew get to the grave site they find and kill a coroner who is digging up the body. He is the only one there at 1am, by himself, a lonely coroner without any police officers, after all this is a police investigation and I doubt the cops would have him there alone. Then right at the end the Detective who is hunting them arrives. Now he is a cop from Lockport, about six states away. A. Why did he drive all that way to see the body? B. A cop from all the way down there shows up but no new Jersey cops are at the scene?

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Better Watch Out picture

Plot hole: How does a tied up Ashley glue duct tape to her wound at the end? And on top of that without Luke noticing later on when laying out of the crime scene.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture

Plot hole: When April O'Neil calls Vernon Fenwick (drives the channel 6 van), he answers his phone and immediately says "O'Neil". When the scene cuts back to O'Neil, we see she called from a payphone. Fenwick would have no way to know it was her calling.

ScRiZ

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Suggested correction: That isn't a plot hole. Vernon assumed April was the person calling him and was correct. People do this all the time in real life.

BaconIsMyBFF

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The People Under the Stairs picture

Plot hole: The man goes completely trigger happy shooting all the walls all around his house, trying to kill Fool, Leroy, and Roach at different points. The police come in and don't notice anything wrong. What about the bullet holes all over the place? (00:41:35)

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Free Guy picture

Plot hole: When Guy kisses her, she questions how he did it - stating no "kiss" function existed in the game. However, later on after the reboot she proceeds to kiss him (rather than him kiss her).

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Suggested correction: As one of the principal developers of the simulation engine, Millie recognizes that Guy is a non-player character (NPC) who merely obeys a loop of coded actions, and he's supposedly incapable of acting outside of his code. So, she means that NPCs can't just arbitrarily kiss players. Players can do whatever they want, but NPCs are mindless robots. At that point, however, she doesn't realise that Guy's Artificial Intelligence has evolved to independent self-awareness, allowing him to act outside of his code.

Charles Austin Miller

Key's actually says "There isn't a button for that" when Millie brings it up. There would be no way for her to initiate, as her in game actions would be limited to the controls offered.

By the time Millie kisses Guy, we know that the Free City simulation engine was already undergoing Artificial Intelligence evolution, essentially rewriting its own code, allowing Guy (and other NPCs) to achieve independent self-awareness. It follows that Free City was probably rewriting its player code, as well, making all sorts of new and startling functions possible for players and NPCs alike.

Charles Austin Miller

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