Best crime TV plot holes of all time

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More The Professionals plot holes
Point Pleasant picture

Season 1 generally

Plot hole: In episode 1-7: "Unraveling," Christina and Jesse get on a bus to New Haven, first thing in the morning. Christina left the Kramers's house before breakfast. Then, they ride on the bus all day until getting trapped in a terrible storm in the dark of night. But New Haven, CT, is less than a seven hour bus ride from the Jersey shore, so anything that happened to them on the way there should have been in full daylight.

DavidK93

More Point Pleasant plot holes
Time Trax picture

Show generally

Plot hole: "Showdown": Darien's lost hat and jacket reappear without explanation after Kane finds him wandering in the desert. Also unexplained is how Kane conveniently happens to be leading an extra, unnecessary horse - unnecessary, at least, until he stumbles across the stranded Darien. (00:15:00)

Jean G

More Time Trax plot holes
Wanted picture

Rush - S1-E1

Plot hole: At the start, they state that they have 96 criminals to go. They bring up the photos of all 96 wanted felons. They then learn that Machado has been pushed to the top of the list and they bring up his file. You can see his mug shot on the screen, among the list of 96, as they zoom into his file. If he is in jail and has not yet escaped, how can he be in the list of 96?

Rlvlk

More Wanted plot holes
Quincy M.E. picture

Hit and Run at Danny's - S2-E6

Plot hole: There are three mistakes in one scene when Quincy talks to the driver of the hit and run car and he finds seatbelt bruises on the right side of the throat under an arm sling. First mistake: The bruises will hurt a lot and won't heal if they are under a sling. Second mistake: At the beginning, when the driver struggles with the kidnapped lady while driving he has no seat belt on which touches his throat. Third mistake: When you put a seat belt on sitting in the driver seat the belt will surely touch the left sight of your throat - not the right. (00:39:05)

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Spider-Man picture

Sins of the Fathers Chapter 6: Framed - S3-E6

Plot hole: After Peter Parker is framed and arrested for selling government secrets to foreign organizations, he escapes police custody and goes home to retrieve his Spider-Man costume that was simply hanging in his dark room. If he was arrested for selling government secrets then surely the police would have searched his home and found his costume (as well as equipment) in the process. Since the police car was visible in front of his house, it seems very strange that police didn't search his home.

Phaneron

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Beauty & the Beast picture

Beast Within - S1-E6

Plot hole: The mob hitmen are about to enter the Sweeny family's house to kill them when the police van arrives to move them to a witness protection safe house. In the next scene, the bad guys abduct Catherine and try to force her to reveal where the Sweenies have been taken. Why? They could very easily have waited and simply followed the van. (00:36:30)

Jean G

More Beauty & the Beast plot holes
iZombie picture

Eat, Pray, Liv - S3-E3

Plot hole: When Katty is first discussing the dead girl from the plane crash who had brains in her stomach, she says the girl's flesh indicated she died months before she ever got on the plane. But then later in the episode, Katty says the plane crash girl was at the boat party (massacre) the day before she got on the plane. Everyone at the boat party was alive before dying and turning into a zombie, so the girl's flesh would not indicate she was dead for months since she only died the day before.

Bishop73

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

Suggested correction: Not everyone at the boat party was "alive", there were some zombies there as well, Blaine included, it is entirely possible that she was a zombie before the boat party happened.

ctown28

Which episode(s) mention Blaine and others were zombies before the boat party massacre? Everything in the show makes it seem like it was the combination of tainted Utopium and Max Ranger energy drink that night which caused the zombie outbreak, including Blaine's transformation. And the Fillmore-Graves outbreak was a separate incident that Blaine wasn't a part of.

Bishop73

Yeah, the boat party was ground zero for the outbreak, Blaine and everyone else was human when they got on the boat. Nothing suggests otherwise.

Purple_Girl

When get turned in to a zombie your flesh is dying so her flesh could be dead.

More iZombie plot holes

JAG (1995)

JAG picture

Cowboys and Cossacks - S2-E14

Plot hole: When the radar man of the USS Cayuga describes a radar reading to likely be "One of the Russian cruisers", the commanding officer of the USS decides not to pursue it saying, "We are after bigger fish today - I want the Vasilyev". In the film, the Vasilyev is depicted as a destroyer, which is a smaller and lighter ship than a cruiser. In this context, the cruiser would be a "bigger fish" than the Vasilyev and the CO should pursue it instead if he was after the larger, more dangerous vessels as he seems to declare.

More JAG plot holes
Sherlock picture

His Last Vow - S3-E4

Plot hole: Sherlock manages to convince Janine to let him into Magnussen's quarters after deceiving her into thinking he is going to propose. Several days later, she is enjoying her "revenge with profits" on Sherlock for his duplicity. Problem: There is no way she could have found out. She was out cold moments after letting Sherlock in, and Sherlock himself was shot by an assailant, which he had misidentified. Only Watson knew Sherlock's true intention, but we know he did not reveal it. The shooter and Magnussen did not know and had no opportunity to tell Janine anyway. (Plus, Magnussen's credibility is too low.) In fact, if I were the director, I wouldn't bother making up a motive for being a "grasping, opportunistic, publicity-hungry, tabloid whore" (film's own quote). Such a person loves "profits", not just "revenge with profits." (00:31:00 - 00:43:00)

FleetCommand

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Richard Diamond, Private Detective picture

A Cup of Black Coffee - S2-E9

Plot hole: Diamond is in a very small town in the middle of rural nowhere, and it's the middle of the night. His car has just been wrecked, driven over a cliff by the bad guy. Yet on the same night, in the cafe at the end, he offers George a ride - for that same night - to New York. (00:25:30)

Jean G

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More Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) plot holes
Batman picture

Enter Batgirl, Exit Penguin - S3-E1

Plot hole: When he abducts Alfred, believing him to be a minister, Penguin suffers a peculiar memory lapse. He's encountered Alfred twice before in previous episodes, even kidnapped him once before (knowing full well that he was Bruce Wayne's butler). Yet here, he fails to recognize Alfred at all. (00:12:30)

Jean G

More Batman plot holes
Ozark picture

Pick a God and Pray - S4-E9

Plot hole: Ruth enters Darlene's home at night, crossing over the crime scene tape. She proceeds to the barn where she finds all of Darlene's heroin packed up neatly. This is factually impossible. Once the police had secured the crime scene in the house, they would have searched the entire property and would have discovered and seized the heroin at that time. (00:54:38 - 00:56:09)

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Midsomer Murders picture

Show generally

Plot hole: In the Pudding Club episode, when they visit the secret room, all the candles are lit even though no-one is in there.

More Midsomer Murders plot holes
Matlock picture

The Professor - S1-E11

Plot hole: Matlock figures out that The Professor wouldn't have been able to see the security guard from 50 yards without glasses, and that's what tips him off about The Conspiracy: the guard testifying that the man wasn't wearing any. However, when we see the scene happen at the beginning of the episode, the person posing as Prof. Erskine Tate is, in fact, wearing glasses. (00:04:15 - 00:22:15)

Sammo

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Murder, She Wrote picture

Sticks & Stones - S2-E10

Plot hole: When Beverly is killed the killer shuts off the main power switch which would have turned all the lights off in the house, not just those in the bathroom. (01:31:00)

More Murder, She Wrote plot holes
Father Brown picture

The Daughters of Jerusalem - S2-E6

Plot hole: Dinah Fortescue's fingerprints are supposed to be on a teacup but she's wearing gloves in the flashback. So how did they get there? (00:24:35 - 00:33:34)

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Batman: The Animated Series picture

Two-Face (2) - S1-E18

Plot hole: When Two-Face and his men have broken into the new D.A.'s office to find dirt on Rupert Thorne, one of his men finds a file detailing Thorne's record of Swiss bank accounts, money laundering, blackmail and payoffs that Two-Face tried for years to subpoena when he was D.A. When Thorne finds out that Two-Face has the file, he states that he will be ruined if Two-Face gives the file to the police. If Two-Face tried unsuccessfully for years to subpoena the file, then in all likelihood that means Thorne paid off the right people to prevent the subpoena from happening, so Two-Face giving the file to the police shouldn't be a problem for him. Additionally, if giving the file to the police would be all that it would take to bring Thorne down, then the new D.A. could have already done so. If the new D.A. was also paid off by Thorne, then it wouldn't make sense for Thorne to allow the D.A. to keep the file since they could easily lose the file or even double-cross Thorne. (00:10:45 - 00:14:20)

Phaneron

More Batman: The Animated Series plot holes
The Listener picture

The Bank Job - S3-E1

Plot hole: When Toby, McCluskey, and the others are looking at the bank's security camera footage, Toby asks to zoom in on Newman's tattoo, and then Toby asks if he can borrow someone's cell phone so he can ask Oz about the bank manager. It cuts to Oz at the hospital as his cell phone rings - when Oz picks up his cell he presses the button and promptly says, "Hey, Toby, what's up?" It's quite impossible for Oz to have known that it was Toby calling him if Toby was using someone else's cell, and he did not even have the chance to hear Toby's voice. Those telepathic abilities belong to Toby, not Oz.

Super Grover

More The Listener plot holes

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