Sammo

12th Mar 2022

Death on the Nile (2022)

Plot hole: This adaptation further exacerbates the problem of previous movie and TV versions; in the novel, Jackie would make the female designated witness talk over and over pretending also to get drunk after Linnet left to go to bed. In the Ustinov version it happened too, but the diversion didn't seem to last more than a couple minutes. Same in the Suchet version. Here, Simon even provokes Jackie practically the moment his wife exits the room. There's no time whatsoever for her to change and get in bed, let alone fall asleep.

Sammo

Inspector Kenmochi the Murderer File 2 - S1-E20

Plot hole: The brief intermission when Busujima meets the 'killer', or at least the person wearing the hat, does not make sense plot-wise and is merely a dishonest way to trick the audience. It's not even something Busujima tells someone, so it can't be characterized as a 'unreliable narrator' device. (00:18:30)

Sammo

Plot hole: This movie adaptation adds an odd bit where an attempt is made on Poirot's life using a cobra. How in the world did the culprit manage to get a hold of a venomous snake, is never explained or addressed and goes against the carefully designed plot, since the culprit would have needed to obtain it through a third party (a member of the staff, perhaps) and that would expose them. Poirot actually says "you found another use for that serpent" but the idea that Simon actually obtained the snake before they devised the plan and somehow just happened to carry it around on honeymoon when the plan for his uxoricide was entirely different and carefully prepared, is even more absurd.

Sammo

Death on the Nile - S9-E3

Plot hole: Much like the 1978 movie adaptation, in this version there is an absurdly short time elapsing between Linnet leaving the bridge table and the incident and murder; it's barely two minutes when she'd have to go to her cabin, do everything a proper lady of the time would do to prepare to go to bed, and fall sound asleep. That's because the witness character (Cornelia Robson here) in the novel is supposed to be droning about her boring life for a long time, but there are no gaps in her speech to imply that a long time passed - at most there's the waiter bringing a drink at the very beginning who sorta comes out of the blue.

Sammo

Murderous Intent of Below Freezing 15 Degrees - S2-E9

Plot hole: Kindaichi's explanation of the trick does not make sense; he says the culprit put the towels outside to freeze in the bin, but if they were frozen solid they would have been impossible to reshape easily and quickly, and if they were already in the shape they wanted, that would have been just too big for the bin to contain. (00:14:25)

Sammo

19th Feb 2022

Scream 2 (1997)

Plot hole: It's never explained or questioned not just how Cotton Weary just happened to stumble into Dewey inside a remote recording room, but why was a non-student not from the area wandering around the student campus at 10-11 PM during a curfew to begin with.

Sammo

Plot hole: Harry learned about Max Dillon watching the Ravencroft video that lasted just a few seconds; from that he can infer the hatred for Spider-man, but not much else, and he's instantly locked off his Oscorp account, and building, after that.However, when he meets Max, he also knows that he is the one who submitted the design for the Oscorp power grid, which is information he shouldn't have since he had no time nor opportunity to investigate further - plus, all data about Max has been erased, and he never got proper credit for that to begin with. (01:28:50 - 01:36:30)

Sammo

Plot hole: The crux of the plot (one of the many plotlines, that is) is that Harry Osborn hates Spider-man because he refused to help him when he is quickly dying of the same genetic disease that killed his father. You can see the problem in this sentence already; he is a teenager, but he's dying super-quickly (he already has a large ulcer on his neck) of a disease that didn't bother him with severe symptoms before and that took away his father at 63. No reason is given of this sudden outburst in Harry's case, in fact nobody even acknowledges that such a difference exists.

Sammo

The Prison Prep School Murder Case File 3 - S1-E12

Plot hole: Kujiragi's textbook is missing. It's a plot point and it's something the culprit did to plant an evidence using a page from it. However, when the case is solved, this point is glossed over; only a page from the book was needed, which the culprit could have ripped away at any moment without stealing the book, and more importantly, when Kindaichi finds the book, there was no window of opportunity for the killer to put it back; Kindaichi and Kujiragi were right there in the corridor the whole time. The live version adaptation fixes this hole because the character finds his book only the day after, in class.

Sammo

The Alchemy Murder Case File 3 - S1-E8

Plot hole: The locked room mystery is original, but besides the fact that it requires melting part of a door on the spot and being able to repair it absolutely flawlessly so that nobody would notice any bump and discolouring and irregularity when they check the lock later investigating the murder, it also requires them to do it in total silence so the other guests don't notice, and part of the process shown involved cutting through it with a screwdriver and bashing it with a hammer - they show that and there's even a loud sound effect for it. (00:18:00)

Sammo

The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case File 4 - S1-E4

Plot hole: Miyuki has been peacefully waiting for over a day at a stranger's house because she was told that the whole Hong Kong was under lockdown and her friends were in another location. That cover story (which would have been exposed if only she looked out of the window, people were NOT in lockdown) does not explain at all the kidnapping in the clothing stall or why she didn't have her phone or talk to Hajime at any point. She'd have to be braindead not to question even slightly what was happening.

Sammo

The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case File 2 - S1-E2

Plot hole: An essential part of the plot relies on the fact that thanks to Saki's handheld camera, Kindaichi can examine Ran's arse dragon and therefore investigate even in her absence. But what set the plot in motion was the fact that Ran appeared in a professional modelling photoshoot displaying it. Stupidity of the girl aside, that means that the culprit never needed the girl, having HQ shots of the tattoo at their disposal. They even work for the company.

Sammo

17th Jan 2022

What If...? (2021)

What If... Ultron Won? - S1-E8

Plot hole: Ultron cuts through Thanos like butter and acquires the Infinity Stones. He does so after he kills all life on the planet (-2). So Thanos has all the Stones (except Vision/Ultron's) years earlier than normal continuity, for no reason. Not just that; Ultron proceeds then to 'silence' the rest of the universe one planet at a time (which would take forever; Thanos wanted the gems exactly to avoid doing that and make genocide efficient). Amongst those planets, one where he fights The Guardians of the Galaxy, including...Gamora, who should be dead or Thanos could have never got the Soul gem.

Sammo

Opera House Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E23

Plot hole: For Kiryu's murder, the killer's trick consisted in the fact that he wore her shoes after hanging her with a cable while she looked down from the window. First of all, it would have never worked as shown and the cable would have clutched her shoulders and arms rather than wrapping around the perfect spot on her neck to trick people to think she was hanged. Second, she was in her room and most likely not wearing shoes, thirdly; he'd still would have left a mark putting her shoes on unless he did it in midair, but still unless she had unusually big feet they would have never fitted him, and he couldn't leave the perfect prints that resulted.

Sammo

Opera House Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E23

Plot hole: In the first episode, Hidaka screamed twice, but nobody heard the first scream, and everyone instantly came when they heard the second, but couldn't hear the sound of the crashing chandelier. She herself did not hear the alarm bell, but that is explained; trouble is, the fact that a curtain could make the stage totally soundproof is just impossible. A thick stage curtain can dampen the noise but not nullify it.

Sammo

10th Jan 2022

Ghostbusters 2 (1989)

Plot hole: The Ghostbusters go underground to search for the slime using a map. Even excusing their initial dumb decision to try to dig a hole in the middle of Manhattan when they could have taken that route to begin with, there's no excuse why after their acquittal they never went looking for that river of slime until Vigo burns their lab; they spent weeks studying small samples of the thing but never tried to reach again the source of the infestation to monitor it, which is absurd. (01:00:00)

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: The Ghostbusters know from Ray's initial journey down the hole that the river of slime is in the old pneumatic transit system. They are busy re-opening their business and will eventually go back to the river, but that mission gained more urgency once they linked the river to Vigo. Also, they know that the river has been there for years if not decades, and therefore realise that returning to explore it can wait a few weeks.

Hida Mechanical Mansion Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E20

Plot hole: The plot is based on the fact that a certain character was disguised as the presumed first victim. At the same time, the two characters have a different body type (otherwise the gap in the window would be obviously too small), so the turn of events does not make sense. Moreover, supposedly the victim suffered serious burns in a fire, which would be absent in the corpse.

Sammo

Gentleman Thief's Murder: File 3 - S1-E12

Plot hole: The murder trick works only because the cordless phone is not addressed at all. We never see the killer dispose of it or anyone look for it - the fact that it was misplaced would have exposed the trick instantly.

Sammo

Hiren Lake Legend Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E6

Plot hole: As it often happens in this sort of murder mystery, there's a switching act at one point, and one of the 'disfigured bodies' is not who it is presumed to be. Good, but the problem is that the presumed victim and the person who really died have radically different skin tones, and it'd be practically impossible for anyone who knows them to mix them up - even moreso for the genius detective Hajime Kindaichi.

Sammo

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