Best drama TV plot holes of all time

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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

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Silent Witness picture

Show generally

Plot hole: When Nicky goes into prison in Mexico to give a criminal a shot of insulin, two errors are seen. 1) The needle and syringe are far too big for an insulin shot, which takes a one ml syringe and a small sub-cutaneous needle. 2) When we first see the syringe, there is a small amount of insulin in it, but it grows the more times we see it, until a large syringe is two-thirds full - insulin is enough in a one ml syringe.

kh1616

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Batwoman picture

Down Down Down - S1-E3

Plot hole: The demented villain is not keeping tabs on the elevators! The rescue teams can move freely around the tower, the elevator doors can be pried open with ease like Sophie and her husband do, so his threat is completely empty and ineffective, somewhat surpassed in idiocy only by Batwoman's response, who during the ultimatum gets back home and keeps busy spraypanting the suit and finding a wig for her date with the crazy guy at the top of the hour rather than taking 10 minutes or so to free the people trapped in the 7 elevators first, unopposed as she is, and go challenge the idiot later when he has no more hostages. It shoud also be noted that the villain made the "hostage" situation and the "one hour" ultimatum known only to Kate! The police and the Crows have no reason at all not to intervene with full force to check out who the crazy bomber guy is, but the police does not swarm the building and nobody finds odd to see a madman on top of the building under terrorist attack.

Sammo

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More Torchwood plot holes
Gossip Girl picture

Show generally

Plot hole: In the pilot episode Chuck mentions his mother speaking as though she is still alive and he knew her but in later seasons it is reveled that she supposedly died while giving birth to Chuck and he never knew her.

gossipgirl

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Roswell picture

Pilot - S1-E1

Plot hole: In the lab when Liz makes the slides of her cheek cells and the cells from Max's pencil, the first time she doesn't add stain and the second time she does. If she's going to be a molecular biologist she really ought to learn to apply techniques consistently. (00:07:30)

Phoenix

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American Horror Story picture

Season 1 generally

Plot hole: It's been established that if you die on the property, you remain as a ghost for all of eternity. However, in Season 8, Moira's bones are retrieved and buried in a cemetery so that her ghost can escape and join her mother. However not all the ghost's bones are buried on the property, we know for sure that the Black Dahlia was not buried on the property and it's not likely Tate, Vivian, Ben or some of the others are buried on the property as well so they should not be tied to the house.

ctown28

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

Suggested correction: Tate's victims from the school shooting are ghosts who can move between different locations. There's nothing to suggest that the ghost of the Black Dahlia isn't merely choosing to be in the Murder House rather than being tied to it. The same goes for Vivien and Ben, since Violet is going to stay in the house, so might they.

Tate's victims cannot move around freely to different locations. The only time that they can is on Halloween, when all ghosts can move around freely but then return to their death location at the stroke of midnight. "OP" is a valid mistake.

ctown28

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The 100 picture

Unity Day - S1-E9

Plot hole: The grounder's leader Anya states that the missiles (flares) burned a village to the ground. If this were true, the flares couldn't have flown very far, otherwise that village would have been too far away for the grounders to know about. In a previous episode, when you saw the flares from space, it was obvious the flares traveled hundreds if not thousands of miles away. (00:31:30)

Mike Walker

More The 100 plot holes
X-Men: Evolution picture

Grim Reminder - S1-E11

Plot hole: In the end of the episode, Wolverine is seen recuperating after surgery removes the microchip in his brain, and his head is bandaged. Performing invasive surgery on Wolverine's brain isn't possible, since that would require going through his adamantium-infused skull and no conventional material is capable of that. Only a less invasive technique (such as going through the cranial sutres or cranial foramen) would have been effective and that most likely would not have required Wolverine's head to be bandaged (especially with his rapid healing mutant ability).

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It Takes a Thief picture

Boom at the Top - S2-E19

Plot hole: While Mundy is trying to disarm the briefcase bomb in the study, his time-sensitive work is interrupted no less than 6 times by people barging in from the party out front. The plot device adds comic relief, but there's no earthly reason why he couldn't have locked or barricaded the door in the first place. (00:36:00)

Jean G

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Haven picture

Over My Head - S3-E4

Plot hole: Daphne was able to hurt Duke because his name appears on her cell when he called, but names only show up on a cell phone if the person's number and name are programed into the phone, and Duke has already said he doesn't know her.

brianjr0412

More Haven plot holes
Zoey 101 picture

Zoey 101 (Pilot) - S1-E1

Plot hole: There is no way that Zoey could've seen those boys hanging Chase's bike from a tree. She was way far from the window to even recognize his bike, and when Chase looks through the window, the bike was just now being lifted from the ground.

JuliaD

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Once Upon a Time picture

New York City Serenade - S3-E12

Plot hole: When talking to Hook about the photos, Emma states he could have photoshopped them to make it look like she and Henry were in Storybrooke, however she had taken them directly from Henry's camera and had them developed. So Hook had no way to photoshop the pictures from inside the camera. (00:27:00)

Marj Spiritdove

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The Legend of Korra picture

Reunion - S4-E7

Plot hole: Guards at a security checkpoint attack Varrick and Bolin, because a wanted poster identifies them as fugitive traitors. The problem is that poster cannot have been there. Varrick and Bolin escape in the previous episode (Battle of Zaofu) but are captured minutes afterwards. (So, no posters needed.) The next day, they escape again by blowing up their imprisoning train car. Their captor, Bataar, thinks they are dead. Indeed, Varrick intended to die. Later, Bataar is actually shown reporting them dead. One might argue that the poster wasn't a wanted poster, but one that warned people about the empire making an example of the traitors.This argument is too flawed: The empire had many examples already, some very high-profile. And a propaganda poster must be placed in plain sight, not in a security booth corner especially designated to let security guards compare the passing individuals. (00:14:00)

FleetCommand

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The Twilight Zone picture

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street - S1-E22

Plot hole: The street sign in the beginning is all wrong: it faces the camera rather than the street where the story takes place. In a typical American city, street signs are almost always placed in the direction of the street they are indicating, so drivers on the other street in the intersection know what they are turning onto or passing. In other words, the story is not set on Maple Street! Maple Street is the intersecting street at the end of the road the story is set on.

mirtom

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Beverly Hills, 90210 picture

The End of the World as We Know It - S9-E23

Plot hole: Noah cancels the club's scheduled Monica concert because Dylan pays him to have her give a private performance to Dylan and Gina instead. He seems really excited and proud of himself for some reason. Even if Dylan paid him much more than he would have received from the gate (which is likely), this could cost Noah money in the long run. Many customers would probably get angry and decide to stop frequenting a place that would cancel a concert at the last minute for no good reason. Then again, Noah was never exactly a genius - in business or otherwise.

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Mad Men picture

Shut the Door, Have a Seat - S3-E13

Plot hole: Pierce getting fired would invalidate his work visa. His existing visa would have been for overseeing the management of a foreign firm with a US presence. He would have had to leave the country and reapply for an investor visa. (00:41:25 - 00:42:00)

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Dexter picture

Remember the Monsters? - S8-E12

Plot hole: In order to elude Elway at the airport, Dexter fills a backpack with random items and leaves it unattended under a seat, and then tells a desk clerk that he saw Elway deliberately put the backpack there and walk away, which leads to security detaining Elway and the airport being evacuated. Airports have security cameras everywhere, so security would have reviewed the footage and seen Dexter was the one who placed the bag there. They then would have gone through all security footage since he entered the airport in order to deduce his identity and then located and arrested him.

Phaneron

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Magnum, P.I. picture

The Case of the Red-Faced Thespian - S4-E12

Plot hole: Magnum is incredibly slow to unveil the charade at the base of the episode; he does it based on something marginal (Robin Masters does not do "research" for his novels), but he completely overlooks the key plot point of 1-17 "J. Digger Doyle" was that he does not use a typewriter, but he dictates the novels.

Sammo

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Justified picture

When the Guns Come Out - S3-E6

Plot hole: Raylan has a hunch that Winona took the money again from the evidence room, so checks the locker, finds the empty box, and assumes she stole it. When they returned the money in the previous season, he said "Put it back anywhere except for where you found it", so as to make it easier for someone to assume it had been misplaced, rather than lost. So the locker being empty is hardly a smoking gun for him to assume Winona's taken the cash.

Jon Sandys

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