Best crime TV character mistakes of all time

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Inspector George Gently picture

Gently with the Women - S7-E1

Character mistake: The registration number of Alan Salt's car is HUA222B, but when Rachel is on the phone asking an officer to look up the car's registered owner she gives the registration number as B222HUA.

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Batwoman picture

Down Down Down - S1-E3

Character mistake: Batwoman does everything she can to rescue the elevator falling down after the villain detonates the bomb, but does nothing for the second one Tommy blows up to make her lose her footing when she is vulnerable. There is no message from Luke telling her anything, and she is not shown having a HUD with thermal readings or something like that, so there is simply no reason why she would risk everything to stop one elevator and completely ignore the fate of the next one which could be full of civilians as well.

Sammo

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Magnum P.I. picture

Dark Skies - S5-E8

Character mistake: Higgins and TC are investigating a drug smuggler camp in Maui. TC sees a box of cigarettes and says the people in the camp must be Latino because the cigarette box is in Spanish. Wrong. The box says Cigarillos, which are small, short cigars. If the box was in Spanish it would say Cigarrillos, which is cigarettes in Spanish.

toroscan

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Hawaii Five-0 picture

Pono Kaulike - S5-E18

Character mistake: After being asked in class, Max refers to what he does as a "vivisection of a once-living organism", which in itself is a contradiction because vivisections are performed on living organisms. What Max does is called dissection, or more specifically autopsy, because he does it to determine the cause of death.

Tanngrisnir

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Bodyguard picture

Show generally

Character mistake: When the bodyguards enter elevators, they always enter last; they should be entering first to ensure it is secure. This is particularly visible in the hotel where the elevator can stop on any floor and Special Protection Branch does not have complete control of it as an express.

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Murdoch Mysteries picture

24 Hours Til Doomsday - S9-E5

Character mistake: When first discussing the projectile Murdoch has written on his board that 2 (sin45) =1. This is obviously incorrect to anyone who's studied even basic trigonometry. (00:05:54)

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Dexter picture

The Angel of Death - S6-E5

Character mistake: Louis Greene, Masuka's new intern, is asked to find the person who purchased Rudy's prosthetic hand. He is unable to do so; however, as a consolation, he says "I installed a modded-up Intel chip to overclock your CPU." You can overclock your CPU, but you don't need another chip to do so. (00:44:00)

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Only K series intel CPU's can be overclocked so a CPU upgrade is understandable if the previous one was not overclockable.

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Third Watch picture

Show generally

Character mistake: In the final episode, Carlos visits Doc in the psychiatric hospital for advice concerning his upcoming marriage to Holly. While talking, Carlos refers to Doc's deceased wife as "Linda", while throughout the series, it has been made very clear that her name was Deborah.

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Batman picture

The Joker's Flying Saucer - S3-E24

Character mistake: Vertigris tells Joker he planted a bomb in the Batmobile while it was parked in front of City Hall/Police HQ. Only in this instance, it wasn't. It was parked in the alley out back, the better to hide his bomb-planting from public view, so it's strange that he'd forget this. (00:08:15)

Jean G

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Life on Mars picture

Episode 4 - S1-E4

Character mistake: Sam encounters Marc Bolan in the club and warns him to "drive carefully", aware of Bolan's future death in a 1977 car accident. However, Bolan never learned to drive and he was actually a passenger in the fatal accident. (00:07:55)

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Perception picture

Caleidoscope - S2-E4

Character mistake: The chess set in Dr. Pierce's home office is set up incorrectly. When the men are set up properly, each player has a light colored square in the right-hand corner. The board as it appears in the show is set up so that the light-colored square is in each player's left-hand corner. This "beginner" mistake puts the king and queen in the wrong positions.

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The Professionals picture

Take Away - S4-E6

Character mistake: When Cowley visits Bodie at the squat, the unwashed and dirty Bodie suggests Cowley should stand downwind of him. Downwind Cowley would smell Bodie; he should have said upwind.

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Fargo picture

The Tender Trap - S5-E6

Character mistake: Deputy Olmstead says to Lorraine Lyon, "You think that you're rich 'cause you're better than me." Surely, the line should have been "You think that you're better than me 'cause you're rich."

Leicaman

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: No, she actually does mean Lorraine thinks she is rich because she is better than her. And to her, anyone who is not rich is therefore less, or else they would be rich too. It's the same type of thinking but with a different approach as what you suggest. It's about privilege.

lionhead

Interesting. I can see it either way. Thanks for the thought.

Leicaman

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