Best drama TV plot holes of all time

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Skins picture

Pure - S7-E3

Plot hole: In Part 1 look closely when Cassie is showing Maddie the 'Oblivion' website that contain pictures of her. Some of the pictures are those we actually see being taken of her in Part 2 (the following episode). How could they be on the website before they've even been taken?

Liam D

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Dragon Tales picture

Show generally

Plot hole: In each episode, Emmy, and Max travel to dragon land (often for a long time) without their parents ever knowing. This makes no sense. Their parents would notice sooner, or later that Max, and Emmy always go in, and out of the house, or that it's always quiet in Emmy, and Max's playroom. You'd think Emmy, and Max's parents would get suspicious, and would question their children accordingly.

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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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Pride and Prejudice picture

Show generally

Plot hole: In Pemberley, Caroline Bingley refers to an utterance of Darcy ("I should as soon call her mother a wit") that he made after coming home to Netherfield after their first ball in Meryton. Falsely she says he made this expression "after they had been dining at Netherfield". This is a direct quotation from the novel and is not coherent with the film plot in which this utterance is made after the first ball.

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Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman picture

To Have and to Hold - S6-E20

Plot hole: In the ending scene, Mike has a probable concussion from her fall, so Sully keeps her awake to prevent her slipping into a coma. They talk all night, reminiscing as Mike experiences periodic pain spasms. Their talk ends with discussion over them having another child, and then they instantly engage in an intimate moment, which would be impossible, considering her condition, and without further checkup from another doctor. Sometime later she is suddenly feeling 'cured', and they return home.

oprlvr33

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The Magicians picture

The Secret Sea - S4-E12

Plot hole: In the poison room, Zelda is magically knocked unconscious where Everett explains to her, among other things, that there is a secret reservoir of magic. Plover then mentions the reservoir after Zelda awakens, as if he somehow heard the conversation in her head.

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1883 picture

The Fangs of Freedom - S1-E5

Plot hole: When the bandits attack the pioneer's wagons they are chased on horseback by the Captain, Jack and others for quite a distance until Ennis is killed in the confrontation with one of the bandits. In the following scenes Elsa is mourning over his body but her mother and others from the wagon train stroll up and the wagons are in the background-all this after a fairly long chase.

bnemirow

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Secret Invasion picture

Season 1 generally

Plot hole: The Skrull base is inside an abandoned nuclear power plant with enough radioactivity to force any human (like, say, Nick Fury) to constantly pop iodine pills to fight the symptoms of a poisoning that would kill them in less than half an hour. Despite that, Skrulls also detain prisoners, for years in some cases, in rudimentary shackles without any sort of shield or protection against the radiation.

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: Iodine pills don't fight the symptoms of radiation poisoning; they prevent the body from absorbing radioactive iodine. It does not protect from exposure to radiation; it won't save you from it. Secondly, it's all an act by Gi'Ah posing as Fury anyway. Thirdly, they are in the reactor control room where Gravik says the radiation is higher. The prisoners are in a low radiation room, which could be extra shielded from radiation. It could also be that the prisoners are fed iodine to block radioactive iodine.

lionhead

We can make up if we want that there's a special, super-secret anti-radiation serum and/or super-effective shielding, helping humans even during an exposure that lasts years (a decade in the case of Rhodey!), but there has to be something in the actual visuals that remotely hints at it. It's hard to headcanon that the dingy area of the plant where they are racked together, strapped to bed nets behind tarps, can be "low radiation", or that they are given anything to counter it. In particular, in the ending, the rescued people leisurely walk around the plant with zero radiation protection, even casually in the open yard where "Fury's" Geiger counter was going mad earlier. And the radiation was not something induced by the Skrulls that just ended when the baddie died. Not only is there no techno-babble justification (one could argue it's simply a pedantic detail not unlike the lack of hair growth or muscle atrophy), there's a direct flagrant contradiction in how the environment of the location - which is the only reason why they picked that site as a base - is deadly to humans only to a dramatic degree only when it's convenient.

Sammo

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The Flash picture

Revenge of the Rogues - S1-E10

Plot hole: During the fight at sundown, Cold gets a hit on Flash and he goes down. Eddie takes a shield and goes to help. But Flash was in the middle of the street with no obstacles around, and it's implausible that Eddie could have gotten to him without Cold or Heat seeing him.

Knever

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Black Sails picture

I. - S1-E1

Plot hole: Why, of all people on board, would the cook know of a specific entry in the captain's log, exactly where to look for it, and that it contained very valuable information?

Friso94

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GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka picture

Show generally

Plot hole: During the episode "Superstition", Onizuka thinks he has cancer because the magnetic pain-pads he was wearing created strange blobs in the X-Ray he has taken. However, given the fact that the X-Ray was so strange, doctors would have given him a complete physical, and noticed the pads much sooner. Here, they literally just assume he has tumors, and fail to ever take notice of the pads. Simply impossible, given the gravity of the situation. (Obviously, this is to pay off at the very end of the episode.)

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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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The Event picture

Show generally

Plot hole: Episode 1: All passengers on cruise ships have a passenger card with their name and cabin number imprinted. They are not just identical key cards like in hotels.

Jacob La Cour

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Black Space picture

Season 1 generally

Plot hole: The police are looking for school shooters who wore unicorn masks. There are cell phone recordings of the individuals shooting and I believe CCTV recordings from inside the school. There is a forensic science technique of accurately estimating suspect(s) height(s) using CCTV/camera recordings and math to determine the height. The police could have further narrowed down their pool of suspects by using this forensic method, but they are going at the students blindly chasing dumb leads.

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NCIS: New Orleans picture

Musician Heal Thyself - S1-E1

Plot hole: To identify the owner of a severed leg, Pride asks Loretta if she can guesstimate the body's general build by the foot's boot size. A much simpler way would be to swab for blood where the leg was severed and run it through the military DNA database.

Cubs Fan

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MacGyver picture

Lidar + Rogues + Duty - S3-E16

Plot hole: Riley's father Ellwood shows up unannounced at Phoenix headquarters. The address for the Phoenix Foundation Headquarters is classified, as is Riley's job. How did he know where to go? (00:22:10)

toroscan

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Blue Bloods picture

On the Ropes - S14-E7

Plot hole: Early in the show, Jamie is in a patrol car escorting a witness when they are attacked by several guys in a van. The side windows of their cruiser seem shatterproof and withstand many bullets, while the rear window is shattered immediately. NYPD cruisers do not have bulletproof windows.

bnemirow

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The Strain picture

The Fall - S3-E10

Plot hole: The nuclear explosion is on Liberty Island, a small yield, but nonetheless big enough to move an enormous amount of water towards the coasts on all sides. When we see Sertrakian and the others at the harbor no water is heading their way - they should be washed away by it. (00:37:30 - 00:38:45)

lionhead

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Another Life picture

Nervous Breakdown - S1-E3

Plot hole: The episode's climax concerns Bernie rushing to the airlock to stop the rest of the crew, who are infected, from flushing themselves into space. Except that he's infected too, so they can't flush without him anyway.

Voluble

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