Best movie plot holes of all time

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Planet of the Apes picture

Plot hole: The "video history" of the crashed USAF ship makes it very clear that the planet is uninhabited when they "landed". I can understand how a race of apes develops - they had a bunch of them on board. I can understand how a race of humans develops - they are descendants of the original crew. What I don't understand is...where the heck did all the horses come from?

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Suggested correction: Humans refer to parts of their own planet as uninhabited even though they are crawling with animals - vast areas of the Arctic are "uninhabited" even though polar bears and seals are found there. Were we to find a planet with nothing but primitive horses on it, we would label it as uninhabited. Apes and humans came from the crashed spaceship, horses were always there.

Which still makes no sense whatsoever.

Charles Austin Miller

I agree with you Charles. Horses are native to Earth but, the Oberon lands on a planet light years from Earth so it's a big plot hole how horses from one planet could end up on another when the planet was not only uninhabited but, the Oberon was believed to be lost.

Again, the Oberon was a massive space station, genetically experimenting with many earthly lifeforms, including horses, apparently. The time/space-rift was very near Earth (Mark Wahlberg made the journey in about 25 seconds at the end of the film. Not years but seconds). The implication is that the Oberon passed through the rift, and much of the crew survived to continue their genetic research on what later became the Ape Planet. So, the Oberon initially arrived on a barren planet and introduced all of the biological and botanical species, including apes, horses, and everything else.

Charles Austin Miller

Suggested correction: According to the backstory, the space station Oberon was dedicated to genetic modification sciences. They were actually experimenting with animal genes in the safety of space (which kind of makes sense). Given that the Oberon was a truly gigantic space station, it's not too much of a speculation that they were experimenting on many different types of animals (not just apes). When the Oberon crashed on Ashlar, half its crew was killed, but half survived with a number of ship's systems still functional, and they continued their genetic research, possibly producing a number of Earthly species on the otherwise uninhabited planet.

Charles Austin Miller

I think this should've been posted as a question, rather than a plot hole.

Charles Austin Miller

That's just a wild guess. There hasn't been a single mention of horses on board the Oberon. Even if there were, why only horses?

lionhead

Wild guess? The Oberon was experimenting in genetic modification, which implies a broad range of research...and not just on great apes. The Oberon was gigantic enough to be an Ark.

Charles Austin Miller

So where are all the other animals?

lionhead

Exactly. Where are the birds, lions, lizards, etc?

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Law Abiding Citizen picture

Plot hole: Inmediately after Jamie Foxx finds the bomb in the city hall, and he says, "We don't tell the mayor anything", we see Gerard Butler arriving to his property next to the prison, and finally he enters his jail cell. So, in the time between Gerard Butler's arrival to the property and his entrance to the jail cell, Jamie Foxx thought about a plan, picked up the bomb, passed through the traffic and security checkpoints, talked to the warden to get access to the prison, entered solitary, handcuffed the bomb, and still had time to wait for Gerard Butler's arrival.

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The Lost City of Z picture

Plot hole: Searching for the source of the river, the raft is going downstream. Return trip it's also downstream. Generally, no matter where they are going, the rafts keep floating downstream.

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The Equalizer 2 picture

Plot hole: Robert first shoots the electrical transformer on the pole's top, then enters the bakery, slices the wheat sacks and uses electrical fans to create a dust cloud for a dust explosion. How are the electrical fans supposed to work after the electricity is cut?

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Jigsaw picture

Plot hole: Spoilers. It's revealed that the barn game takes place at an old farmhouse owned by the family of Jill Tuck - Jigsaw's widow. It's public knowledge that she was married to Jigsaw and that buildings they owned served as the headquarters of several past traps, so the barn should have been investigated at some point in the meantime. Ten years have passed. It makes no sense that the barn was never investigated and that the bodies of the barn victims were never discovered.

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Suggested correction: The game was unknown to police even 10 years after John died. Now they've found all his other games and his multiple lairs. There would be no need to continue the search.

Ssiscool

Hogwash. They would have definitely searched known properties associated with Kramer and his family.

I agree. In the second Saw movie, the police discover that John Kramer is Jigsaw. With this knowledge, not only would the police be able to freeze his assets but, they would be able to look into his financial records and look into any properties he owns like houses, warehouses, etc. Since the cops now have a face and a name, it's a very big plot hole why they never searched his home or any other places. If they had, more traps would have been found and confiscated.

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Bring it On picture

Plot hole: Check out the final routine at the end of the movie for the Clovers. Watching carefully, approximately 20 seconds into the routine you will see two girls on the left hand side running face to face into each other. If this had been a proper competition they would have lost because it was a major error in the routine.

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Body Heat picture

Plot hole: Considering the incredibly elaborate plans Maddy makes to have her husband murdered after forging a will she knows is invalid so he dies intestate and she - as his widow - gets his entire fortune, you'd think she would have worked out one little fact - Edmund Walker does not die intestate. It is established in the film that the dud will supposedly written by Ned Racine replaces a previous, valid will which bequeaths half his fortune to his niece Heather. When the new will is declared invalid under Florida law the previous will takes precedence and Heather and Maddy split the fortune. In no way will Maddy get the lot.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest picture Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest mistake picture

Plot hole: There are six metal bars mounted around the circumference of the water wheel's axle. In the wheel's interior, when Jack frees himself he lands on his feet, begins to run and promptly hits his head on one of those mounted axle bars, then falls out. Moments later, when Jack returns and runs in the wheel, he is shorter (way more than a foot) than all six of the mounted axle bars spinning with the water wheel, which would make that previous shot impossible, however humorous it is. (01:52:40 - 01:53:55)

Super Grover

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Spider-Man 3 picture

Plot hole: In this movie Goblin was able to sneak up on Peter. But in the previous movies Peter was able to sense danger from quite a distance away; Green Goblin from a few blocks and the train barricade from over a mile.

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Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade picture Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade mistake picture

Plot hole: When Indy is stepping on the letters at the end, trying to spell out God's name, he steps on J, incorrectly, causing it to collapse. When he falls through, however, he grabs onto another letter so as not to fall down. The letters he grabs onto and pulls himself up are an L and a Y, which are not in the word Iehova, so should have collapsed too. (01:46:20)

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Ocean's Eleven picture

Plot hole: Where do the flyers come from that are in the bags that are carried out of the vault and into the van? Danny and Linus couldn't have taken them down there and there is no room with the Chinese man. They are carried out to the van before the SWAT team appears, which means they'd have to have been in the vault to start with? In the commentary by Steven Soderbergh he acknowledges that there's no explanation. (01:35:05)

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The Core picture

Plot hole: How do they maintain communication between the ship at the centre of the earth and the surface? There's no wire, and radio waves can only travel any distance without obstacles, and the earth's crust would be a pretty hefty obstacle...

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Spider-Man 2 picture

Plot hole: Harry tells Doc Ock that in order to find Spider-Man he must find Peter first. Doc Ock finds Peter with Mary Jane in the cafe and throws a car through the window straight at them, then later throws Peter against a brick wall. Any normal person would've been killed instantly (or very badly injured), and Doc Ock doesn't yet know that Peter is Spider-Man. Given that Peter is his only lead on Spider-Man, it makes no sense that Doc Ock would try to kill him.

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Suggested correction: Doc Ock is being controlled by the arms. They aren't behaving rationally.

Creating a series of silly explanations for obvious plot holes never resolves them. These arms were not behaving irrationally. In many scenes they were shown to be very intelligent. A good example is the scene where they attack doctors who try to remove them from Doc Ock's body. Saying that they weren't behaving rationally is absurd.

He may not have been trying to kill Peter, he could've been trying to make more of a scene of his entry, so Peter would take him more seriously and tell him where Spider-Man was. He could've been thinking of it as a risk of killing Peter though, but his arms made him go crazy.

This is only a theory. Theories never resolve mistakes.

It's not a theory. When Otto is first giving his demonstration to everybody at his apartment, a woman asks if the advanced AI for the tentacles would make him susceptible to being controlled. Otto says that yes it would so he shows everybody the inhibitor chip that he designed so he would not fall under its control. After the inhibitor chip gets destroyed, it's seen that the tentacles have not only taken control of his mind by forcing him to commit crimes, but have slowly driven him insane.

This scene is much too confusing for many people. This entry is correct. This is a mistake.

If these tentacles wanted him to finish the experiment then they wouldn't make him kill the person who has valuable information for him.

The arms are influencing his thoughts but not controlling every part of him. Doc Ock still seems to have control when defending himself but they seem to work in tandem with Ock. The only time they work on their own is when he under anesthetic. As we don't see him before he throws the car, we can only speculate the arms were trying to hurt Peter by themselves.

Lummie

It's a cool scene regardless man.

Rob245

Killing Peter would probably send a message to Spider-Man as well, so Ock probably wasn't concerned about being gentle.

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Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning picture

Plot hole: When the cop shows Pam the newspaper clippings they include what look to be fresh photos of the real Jason from the events of Part IV, yet no photographer is ever seen taking pictures of Jason alive in the previous films and most likely wouldn't live long enough to publish the photo. (01:25:00)

jbrbbt

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Suggested correction: The picture was taken from security footage at the hospital after killing the 2 employees.

lartaker1975

It was never shown.

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For Your Eyes Only picture

Plot hole: Bond makes a huge tactical error after diving to the St. Georges. He knows the Russians and their operatives are after the ATAC. The ATAC itself is expendable to Britain, since it has a self-destruct mechanism that, under proper procedure, would have been set off when the ship sank. So why is Bond trying to retrieve it? Because he disarms the self-destruct, he actually allows Kristatos to get his hands on it, forcing Bond to track it down again and, to stop the Russians from getting it, HE DESTROYS IT! So why doesn't Bond, instead of disarming the self-destruct, set a timed charge or toss a grenade in the room to destroy the ATAC while it's at the bottom of the sea? The answer is, of course, that if Bond destroys the ATAC before the bad guys can get at it, the movie's over. Even so, at the end, when Bond finally does destroy the ATAC, he tells Gogol it's "detente. You don't have it. I don't have it." Clever line, but it reinforces the fact that the British don't need it. They can build another one.

Vader47000

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Now You See Me 2 picture

Plot hole: Prior to the final show, when the horsemen are performing separately at different locations in London. [Scene X] Jack is busy with his card swap trick. While others are doing their tricks too, [Scene Y] McKinney is believed to be tricked once again by his face sharing brother at another location... Dylan gets a call and then he calls everyone to wrap up and meet somewhere. [Scene Z] Jack also wraps up and leaves the place... OK. Later after the expose in final show McKinney tells the story about how Jack successfully hypnotized his brother [in the Scene Y]. How could Jack be at two different locations at the same time? He was performing somewhere else when he did hypnotism at another location and then wraps up his trick back where he started.

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Road Trip picture

Plot hole: When Beth is in Josh's room she picks up the card that simply reads "Love Tiffany" and asks "who's Tiffany Henderson?" She couldn't have known her last name. (00:15:30)

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Charlie's Angels picture

Plot hole: In the Redstar mainframe, we are told that the floor of the vault will trigger the alarm if it receives more than 0.25 seconds of contact (apparently even with the security checks). What would be the point of the bosses going through all of those security measures if they would just set the alarm off anyway? Surely once the girls have faked the fingerprint and retina scans, they don't then need to flip across the floor! (00:33:55)

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Bumblebee picture

Plot hole: How can Bumblebee and Optimus already have the car specs and colours before they leave Cybertron for the first time to come to earth? Optimus didn't have this when they came to earth in the first Transformers movie.

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Suggested correction: First of all, this might not be the same continuity as the older Transformers films. Second of all, the cars on Cybertron might be Cybertronian vehicles. Optimus scanned the semi in the first film so that he could be a different vehicle than he already was. There is no reason this could not have happened.

I'd like to add that we know for a fact that this is not the same continuity. It is a reboot. See the Wikipedia article.

FleetCommand

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Basic Instinct picture

Plot hole: This is another movie where the cops are too dumb to go out by themselves. The woman who icepicks the first victim (we see) to death would have left enough forensic evidence on the scene to convict her ten times over - skin, hair, sweat, saliva, vaginal fluid, possibly blood, and they all contain DNA in abundance. She had vigorous, sweaty sex with this man and she didn't clean up afterwards (and she couldn't have done so thoroughly enough anyway) so she's left calling cards all over the place. The killer also handled the icepick (which the police take away in an evidence bag) with bare hands - her prints would be all over it. She might as well have left a signed confession, but they can't even identify her. Sharon Stone, for instance, leaves her fingerprints (on the chair and fixtures in the police station) and her saliva (containing epithelial skin cells which are an excellent source of DNA) on the cigarette butt she discards, also in the police station. She went there of her own accord and these artifacts are legally accessible by the police. It is obvious to anyone that the women who had sex with the victim killed him, and Catherine is most certainly a suspect. They don't have enough to charge her but they would if they did a simple series of tests on the dead man's body - and if she didn't do it, that would eliminate her as a suspect. They don't even check.

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