Best adventure TV plot holes of all time

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Andromeda picture

Show generally

Plot hole: The way slipstream works is wildly inconsistent across the show. Sometimes, they have to travel a significant distance to find the nearest slip point, and other times, when it's required by the plot, there's a slip point conveniently right next to the ship.

wizard_of_gore

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Suggested correction: How is this a mistake? Unless the points are evenly distributed and all close to each other, they are going to be different distances away.

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Agatha All Along picture

Circle Sewn With Fate / Unlock Thy Hidden Gate - S1-E2

Plot hole: Spoiler - considering what emerges at the ending of the series, Agatha's behaviour in this episode hardly makes sense. She had no trust in the Witches' road; in fact, she knew it did not exist at all, and her only aim was to steal the powers of the other four witches during a fake ritual. However, one of them is a normal human with no powers, one is a witch with her powers sealed and thus impossible to steal, and she literally tells the third one how her very specific energy-stealing power works - which, of course, is entirely absurd considering she had no purpose for her, given the lack of a real ritual.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: The whole point was to just get a witch to do the ritual. Agatha's earthly ability is to read people. Knowing it's a rouse, she tells Lillia what she needs to hear to participate in the ritual (the road will make Lillia more powerful) and that at the end of the road, Agatha cannot just steal her power. She knew she needed to show a bit of her hand and had no doubt a witch would blast her out of anger (and show no restraint) when the song was over and no door appeared (human nature).

Suggested correction: She made do with what she could find. Two of the witches had powers she could steal. Since she was totally powerless at that time, it would be enough for her. After taking the power of just one or two, she could have killed the others just as easily. It didn't matter to her that one of them was not a witch at all; she needed four to make them believe they were walking the witches' road.

lionhead

"I can't steal your magic unless you blast me with it. So if you show a little self-restraint, which, let's be honest, you're gonna need to, all that power is yours to keep." This is not me paraphrasing her for humour or to be concise; it's the actual dialogue to the person she plans to rob of their power. And it is 100% accurate; there is no "spark" she can steal without being hit directly. This level of candour makes sense only if there is an actual point to the ritual, and her subsequent attempt at taunting them is desperation because the ritual does not work, so then, at that point, she has to make do with what she has. Not if the whole thing was a sham to begin with.

Sammo

I agree it's strange she would warn her about her ability if she planned to have them attack her, but Alice did in fact use her powers on her later without thinking about those consequences. So maybe Agatha hoped she would forget or not show restraint once she angered them enough. The witches in the past all seemed very eager to attack her after being taunted, and seemed to have been working for her for centuries too, so why not now?

lionhead

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Iron Man picture

The Wedding of Iron Man - S1-E13

Plot hole: When Mandarin is concluding that Tony Stark and Iron Man are one and the same, he is watching video footage of when he had Tony Stark captive, and Tony first constructed the Iron Man armor and used a dummy that looked like himself in order to fool Mandarin into thinking that Iron Man was rescuing Tony Stark from captivity. If Mandarin had video footage of Tony Stark in that room where he organized his own rescue, then he also would have had footage of Tony Stark constructing the dummy of himself in the first place, and thus would have known Stark was Iron Man from the get go. (00:13:06)

Phaneron

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Hercules: The Legendary Journeys picture

The Gauntlet - S1-E12

Plot hole: It is pretty obvious that Hercules and Iloran are not responsible for destroying Spiros' village. Spiros saw the two of them, investigating the ruins unarmed, only when all the fires had long since died down.

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Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac picture

Der Kampf gegen den Drachen - S1-E3

Plot hole: Shiryu states that the Dragon Cloth, which has been 'for eons' under the waterfall (let's just say it's an exaggeration) is harder than diamond and invulnerable to any attack. In the original manga and anime series, Pegasus uses a sudden dodge during a daring grapple to get Shiryu to strike his own shield with the glove of the armor, shattering both ("invincible sword meets invincible shield") and causing him to fight barechested. In this remake, this whole part does not happen, so when Seiya wins the fight with a heart punch like in the other versions, he does it when Shiryu has his heart still covered by the thick breastplate of the armor, making the whole "Shiryu's armor is impervious to any hit and much stronger than any other Cloth" plot point completely moot.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: It is only said that the "Dragon Shield" is unbreakable.

No, says much more than that. "That might be true for other armors, but the Dragon Armor is special. Nothing can get past my shield. It's unbeatable. The day my Cosmo forced the waters of the Lushan to flow upwards, it revealed the Dragon Armor. Battered for eons by the falling water, the Armor had grown harder and more radiant than a diamond. My Armor is the hardest substance known to man. No matter how fast or hard you strike, you've lost, Seiya." He parried the blow with the shield and so that deserves a special mention, but they keep mentioning the armor as having intrinsic properties, and he is wearing the armor when he is struck by Seiya, which guards his heart. In the original anime and the manga he was armorless after Seiya wrecked it, in here it's intact. It makes no sense, which is why I categorize it as a plot hole and not just as Character error: it's not that maybe he's wrong about the armor, it's the whole situation that now is flawed reprising the original with key differences.

Sammo

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Relic Hunter picture

Buddha's Bowl - S1-E1

Plot hole: Sydney is able to surmise from the artwork (we could also say from the writing, but her rival is one step ahead of her for 2/3 of the episode and it is established that he does not know the language) the precise location of the koi in Lumbini. The map is 150 years old, but there's no way even with a big stretch of imagination to buy that they both'd be able to pinpoint with such ease and certainty its location in the basement of a random building in the bustling market center of a town, that surely changed plenty during the past century and that does not bear any special landmark.

Sammo

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Zorro picture

SeƱor China Boy - S2-E38

Plot hole: Diego instructs Bernardo to use sign language to talk to the Chinese. The problem is that Bernardo shows the Chinese things that he could not have known if he were really deaf and dumb (where the Chinese came from, for example). All this in front of Sergeant Garcia.

Big Game

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The New Batman Adventures picture

Beware the Creeper - S2-E10

Plot hole: During Ryder's report, as Bruce and company watch it on TV, the camera suddenly zooms in on Joker standing on a catwalk above Ryder, and none of the crew, especially not the camera man who caught the villain, makes a comment about this. They may have thought the Joker (or rather an impersonator) was perhaps a surprise gag in the show, but since this is supposed to be a serious documentary report, it is still strange that they wouldn't point it out.

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Lupin III picture

2% Chance of Survival - S1-E3

Plot hole: Nix's hypersensitive hearing is disturbed by the smoke bomb exploding close by, but he is not thrown off at all by Lupin's unsilenced gun in the enclosed space, which produces a louder and sharper sound.

Sammo

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture

Invasion of the Punk Frogs - S2-E8

Plot hole: Shredder meets the frogs for the first time and gives them clothes using the holographic projector. The frogs continue to wear the same clothes for the rest of the episode, even without Shredder being around.

TNT

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I Spy picture

Happy Birthday... Everybody - S3-E20

Plot hole: After a chance meeting in Mexico, Tom Matthews invites Kelly and Scott to his home for dinner. The address is unlisted, neither knows where the other lives or is staying, and no address or phone information is exchanged before they part. But Kelly and Scott somehow find the house anyway. (00:09:50)

Jean G

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Magnum P.I. picture

Mondays Are for Murder - S2-E13

Plot hole: In an effort to keep Glenn's death as quiet as possible, Higgins hires a private pathologist to do an autopsy to see if there were any foreign substances or poisons in his system when he died. A few scenes later it is revealed that Glen was undergoing chemotherapy. How is it possible that the pathologist missed the cancer and the chemo treatment in his investigation? What he found was an excess of antacids.

toroscan

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The Tripods picture

The White Mountains: November, 2089 AD - S1-E13

Plot hole: The main characters are being pursued by Tripods, mind controlling alien machines. My question is, if the Tripods can turn humans into 1600's puppets, complete with foxhunts, why don't they make some of said mind-controlled humans help with the pursuit?

dizzyd

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Lupin the 3rd picture

Farewell My Beloved Witch - S1-E3

Plot hole: Lupin was captured by chance, and he did not plan for that, nor he seemed to have previous knowledge of Stern's appearance, but he escapes regardless using a Mission Impossible-like perfect mask of him. He also somehow kept his own blazer, tie and shoes underneath the uniform and boots he stole and wore. (00:16:00)

Sammo

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Mission: Impossible picture

Holograms - S1-E3

Plot hole: The mysterious neurosurgeon Dr. Quinn was mentioned by the fake Myles Taggart under the pretence that his presence was announced by the local newspaper. It turns out that his invitation by the university was a lie - presumably no newspaper story existed at all then, or the university would have acted on that. Taggart is exposed as a fraud, Quinn's link to him is so direct that he was even the one who invited him (instead of goading the Colonel into inviting him like it was his own idea) and yet the Colonel continues to trust Quinn blindly - he even has the whole night and day to think about this simple fact, nothing was decided on the spur of the moment.

Sammo

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Power Rangers Samurai picture

The Team Unites - S1-E1

Plot hole: This was the first episode of the series and we see that the rangers are unable to figure out how to properly operate their zords; but in Origins Part 1 (which takes place prior to this) they have no issues with the zords at all.

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Supergirl picture

Midvale - S3-E6

Plot hole: After Kara and Alex are run off the road, Kara is convinced by "Noel Neill", revealed later to be J'onn, to stop using her powers. From context, J'onn had to have been summoned by Eliza, but in 2007, she would still think he's just Hank Henshaw; she doesn't learn he's not, or even that he's a shapeshifter, until 2016, as seen in season 1's "Myriad", well after Kara and Alex have grown up.

Cubs Fan

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