Sammo

7th Jan 2022

Kindaichi shônen no jiken bo (1997)

Academy's Seven Mysteries Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E3

Plot hole: A corpse has been buried inside the walls of the building for 10 years. It's covered by just a poster, and a poster from a current high schooler. If we assume the first victim was the one who put the poster there, then it means that it was just randomly uncovered by the earthquake from episode 1, which would make the chain of coincidences nothing short than miraculous. She basically one day said "I heard there was a murder here where we all hang out all the time" and the ground by its own accord opened to reveal a skeleton without her doing anything.

2nd Jan 2022

Shining Song Starnova

Plot hole: In the common route, Mariya explains that in her former idol group, Quasar, "Your dance position has nothing to do with skill. It's based on a popularity poll." However multiple times in different routes and parts of the story they cross paths with Kaori ignoring who she is. She is number 5 of Quasar, the overwhelmingly most popular group in Japan. It's absurd they wouldn't know one of the most popular performers of their industry, and direct rival.

31st Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

The Prison Prep School Murder Case File 5 - S1-E14

Plot hole: The victim managed to write a dying message with chalk on the inside of the locker, but the only moment when he could have done that was when his assassin was standing there watching him die waiting to drag his corpse away. Since the writing was basically the killer's name, it's absurd that the killer never bothered to wipe out the signs; it's chalk on hard metal, not a single trace would have remained. It also does not match the position of his hand in the second episode.

31st Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

The Prison Prep School Murder Case File 4 - S1-E13

Plot hole: The basic causality principle is reversed when explaining the murder with the corpse discovered on fire. The lesson was about combustion and took place before (or during, rather) the murder, so it couldn't be something used to disguise an unexpected problem that hadn't surfaced yet. Additionally, there's no reason why the murderer couldn't act as first responder or place the body near the river or in the bathroom.

28th Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

The Alchemy Murder Case File 4 - S1-E9

Plot hole: The ending is funny, but it does not make sense, since as it was mentioned in the first episode, there was literally 1 ton of metal to remove, and it was in the shape of a door. Not only it would have needed 32 trips (as the nerd girl says in the first episode) from the secluded house to a large boat they somehow needed to have standing by and was undetected when the island was searched earlier, but they also needed to dismantle the door, since that's what the gold was turned into.

28th Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

The Alchemy Murder Case File 3 - S1-E8

Plot hole: The death of the director is never shown, and for a reason; it would have been impossible for the killer to drop from the ceiling and kill her on the toilet stabbing her in the chest without her even noticing. (00:13:55)

27th Dec 2021

Kindaichi shônen no jiken bo (1997)

Opera House Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E23

Plot hole: So the culprit checked in at a hotel without any document or... face, left the room right away using an inflatable boat contained in a medium size suitcase (which he left in the room) and with that reached the coast - because the hotel is on an island so remote that it took a relatively long trip by ship for the others to reach it. It's a plan all kinds of ludicrous and impossible - that's also without considering the fact that the hotel was booked by the cast of a Phantom of the Opera play and the staff knows the play, and one person hiding their face completely would be a pretty big coincidence they make nothing of.

25th Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

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

Plot hole: The plot involves mother and daughter having a matching tattoo on their butt. This episode tells us that they had the matching tattoo since Ran was literally a child since her father himself did it. It's easy to understand that since kids, you know, grow and all, a dragon on the buttock of a 6 years-old would be quite different when they are all grown up. And it's no small tattoo and it needs to be accurate because it's a map.

25th Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case File 3 - S1-E3

Plot hole: The surprise reveal of the killer doesn't make any sense, because Kindaichi gathered everyone involved in the case, and the killer very much is; they are absent for no reason, so the denouement shouldn't have even started and the audience would have to be napping not to notice.

25th Dec 2021

Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Returns (2014)

The Hong Kong Kowloon Treasure Murder Case File 1 - S1-E1

Plot hole: The plot of the four-parter is complete nonsense even for a kid show. It is tied together by unbelievable pure coincidences; Miyuki is the perfect doppelganger of a missing model, Kindaichi randomly bumps into a high school mate who just happened to be in HK as well (!), and they both equally randomly (so they think) bump into the model who was just chilling on a park bench (so much for disappearing!), he befriends the son of the victim from 20 years before.

24th Dec 2021

Diabolik (2021)

Plot hole: Diabolik blinks in Morse code to his accomplice the location of one of his hidden stashes. He says it's in 'the third brick to the left' and the street name, but no address or other reference. She (who previously knew nothing about the location) finds it immediately. It's worth noting that the movie is a faithful adaptation of a couple issues of the comic, but this bit of subplot is a fresh addition and the original hiding spot in the 1963 issue was a plausible one (cave behind a specific waterfall).

23rd Dec 2021

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Plot hole: It is of course possible that Eddie Brock heard nothing at all about the biggest news in the whole city and State if he did not turn the TV, check the phone or computer for about 24 hours. But there has been a manhunt for Kasady for that long of a time and nobody including the police checked on the one man Kasady is trying to kill, and who was chilling at home all along. Also, obviously the "breaking news" moment is not breaking nor news. (00:40:25)

23rd Dec 2021

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)

Plot hole: Venom has a photographic memory; he reproduces Kasady's sketch, an outline that matches perfectly a result (already on screen) of the google image-y search page for Rodeo Beach, California. Sure, it's a movie, but this plot device straight from Rise of Skywalker means that Kasady also had to have a photographic memory and that someone took a photo exactly from that one precise spot that happens to be also the exact one that showed up in "WebFindit." A couple of coincidences too many. (00:11:10)

23rd Dec 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Plot hole: Otto Octavius in this movie instantly recognizes the Green Goblin as Norman Osborn, a fact that was never public at least as long as Ock lived. On the other hand, he does not react to Lizard being revealed as Curt Connors, who was a colleague of his in 'his' universe but never a freaky mutated dinosaur like in the 'other' universe.

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Suggested correction: Green goblin died and his identity would've been public after his death.

Wrong. Peter placed Norman's corpse on his bed and was discovered by Harry. It's not like he left Norman's body in the building ruins to be discovered by the authorities. Harry himself didn't even know his father was the Green Goblin until the very end of Spider-Man 2. Even Norman's dying wish to Peter was to not tell Harry the truth about him.

23rd Dec 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Plot hole: Strange says he can't turn back time any more since he does not have the Time stone, so he'll resort to "a standard spell of forgetting." The statement is already quite odd since even with the stone he never showed anything close to the ability to revert time on a global scale for the WEEKS it would take to get back to that moment. But no worries; the "standard spell" is in fact more powerful than the Time stone; for it to work, it can't just make the people forget, or else people would learn back about Peter from the gigabytes of pictures and stories published, the Daily Bugle's archives, Flash's published book, T-shirts etc.

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

Suggested correction: He didn't understand the workings of the time stone as well as he did other spells. The time stone is definitely more powerful, able to trap an omnipotent cosmic being in a time loop. The spell focusses on 1 person's secret identity being forgotten from memory, hardly more powerful than what the time stone can do. In any case, the difference in power is not important to the plot.

The Time Stone in movies always focuses around limited areas, including Dormammu, with Strange concentrating during the activation. It's also a unique artifact and the most powerful in the universe. This is a "forgetfulness spell", but it needs to alter reality (physical evidence) to work, or it's useless, and it's a "standard spell" according to Strange. Was he downplaying it? Let's say he was; it's still a 'fire and forget' sort of deal that alters reality years back.

Suggested correction: I wouldn't say that a spell making everyone in the world forget about Peter is more powerful than the time stone. Memory loss is something that happens regularly (and pretty easily, T.B.H.) to people as a result of anything from illness to a bad bonk on the head. Therefore, it doesn't seem like it'd be something that'd be hard for a wizard to do. He's just applying that to a global scale, which doesn't seem like it'd be impossible if it is indeed a basic spell. As for evidence of Peter, it's really not hard to use conjecture to assume he also made evidence of Peter vanish from existence as part of the spell... making things disappear is a very basic wizardry/magician trick. Heck, it's basically a cliche.

I don't get the logic, sorry. It is easy to do it with a person, therefore it's also doable on a global scale? It's easy for a wizard to move a rock, then by that logic it'd be not that hard to move every rock? Instantly? And since it does that but also makes every physical evidence of it vanish, it is not a spell of forgetting. It has to restructure time and space on a massive scale in a very precise way, and here it is trivalized because the movie does not address the consequences (you will see proposed corrections of this entry that assume it changed nothing physical and it's just no biggie). For instance in the latest Strange movie, there's a magic item that is more powerful than any Infinity stone, but it's not something any wizard can access. The fact that a clichè exists (it's not like I haven't read One More Day, for instance) doesn't mean it fits every context (it's not quite the same doing it in the Tooth Fairy movie and here).

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that making people forget about something and making some stuff disappear restructures time and space. The film explicitly states that it doesn't - Strange says the spell "won't turn back time." It just makes people forget. (And presumably makes evidence disappear.) There's even a joke in the movie where Strange implies he uses the spell regularly, including an instance where he used it to make Wong forget about a party. Doesn't mean the party didn't happen. Just means Wong doesn't remember it. It seems like you're really over-reading and over-complicating the spell in your head. Forgetting about something (or making some books and computer files vanish) does not necessitate the rewriting of space and time... it just means people forgot and things disappeared. If I forgot about something, and the only piece of evidence vanished, to me, it basically never happened. Doesn't mean history was necessarily re-written.

The boundaries of what constitutes "over-reading" and "over-complicating" are subjective; to me saying "it's a basic spell of forgetting", castable on a whim, for something that necessarily has also to act globally if not universally (Nick Fury is not on this planet and he would forget, most likely) and does not 'merely' affect minds but a plurality of records and physical items dating back over a decade (remember we talk about the whole life of Peter Parker here, not just his association with Spider-man), is over-simplifying on top of misrepresenting. One of the writers answered on the subject by saying they have an answer to that they are not at liberty to reveal currently. We'll see if that is true, (or will just be ignored and dumped on the Sony writers who already spectacularly got it wrong in Morbius); the MCU is not just one movie, and Strange in the previous movies never showed the ability to change the universe deleting selectively parts of it with a 'standard spell'.

I think I can get where you're coming from with this. I just personally didn't see it as that big an issue. I think it's probably just an agree to disagree situation. Sorry if I came across as rude.

Suggested correction: Even if we assume the video footage of people saying that Peter is Spidey still exist, this wouldn't matter much. If anybody saw a video of themselves recorded a week ago saying something that they never remembered saying, they would laugh it off and assume it was some "Deepfake" or something.

Besides the fact that I would sue whatever media outlet published my deepfake and most certainly not laugh it off, if there's no magical alteration of reality/space/time to make that spell work, it would be entirely useless. Anyone could just type "Who is Spider-Man" on google and find out from a million sources.

23rd Dec 2021

What If...? (2021)

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

Plot hole: At the end of the previous episode, the Watcher gets surprised (literally saying "wait, what?") by the arrival of Infinity Ultron inside Party Thor's universe.In this episode we find out the story of Ultron.Ultron realises for the first time that there are other universes to conquer right then because he can'hear' the Watcher talk (to whom?) and goes after him.So the two episodes don't match;Ultron couldn't have reached the other universe "before" his realization, and Uatu is again surprised by it.

21st Dec 2021

What If...? (2021)

What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands? - S1-E4

Plot hole: The episode has wonderful writing from a pure storytelling perspective, however it has zero coherence with the MCU it is supposedly part of. The show was written way before "Loki", for instance, and concepts like "Absolute points" are at odds with it. Likewise, Strange and the Ancient One's powers are radically different (Strange can't foresee the future but can go back at will without rewinding and his mentor can seemingly see past her own death).

21st Dec 2021

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Plot hole: The original "Make everyone forget that Spider-man is Peter Parker except..." spell went horribly wrong and Strange at the end of the movie is struggling to prevent a complete collapse of reality because people from the whole multiverse who fit the exception shoehorned by Peter have been drawn to this reality. Strange then does a new spell that supersedes the other by making everyone forget Peter Parker, period. The problem is, by that logic everyone would forget who Peter is also in all those universes involved and so Maguire and Garfield's life are likewise ruined and one wonders if they are even allowed to remember their own name (after all, the initial spell did affect them, so the radical undoing of it should too).

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Suggested correction: There is no indication that Strange's spell works on the multiverse. I'd say that is a bit of a stretch. The spell was focussed on MCU's spiderman, and him being forgotten fixed the multiverse (temporarily probably). The initial spell was flawed and broke down the multiverse barriers, causing other universes to spill in. The new spell fixed that, not change those universes.

I came here because I had realised the exact same thing Sammo had. The villains are not there because they know who MCU-Peter is, they are there because they know that Peter is Spider-Man in their universe. The first spell is still active, the second spell adjusts the consequences of it, because why else would the second spell send them back? The only way the villains can vanish is if they forget who Peter is in their universe as well, which means the other two Spideys are in the same situation.

The spilled over Spider-Men and villains can vanish because the second spell restores the flaws of the first spell, which caused the barriers of reality to come down. With the flaw restored, everything that spilled over is returned automatically. Not because they too don't know who Spider-Man is now, but because reality is restored.

That's not really the way they presented it in the movie. The second spell is "Make everyone forget who Peter Parker is." If it works the way you say, wouldn't they have been able to accomplish the same with a spell with less severe consequences, like "make everyone forget my middle name"?

MCU's Peter Parker, because MCU's Spider-Man is not forgotten. My point was that since the spell failure DID affect people from the whole multiverse, "everyone who know that Peter Parker is Spider-man" even when it's not THEIR Peter Parker, why would the fix (which happens when the beings have already broken in) be a selective one on a specific Peter? Happy if they address it in one of the next movies.

The first spell was also focussed on the MCU's Peter Parker but the failure caused tears in the multiverse and caused people to spill in, the spell didn't directly affect them. The fix was again specifically aimed at the MCU's Peter Parker, to supersede the failed spell and cause the tears to heal and the spilled over people to return. This one did work and thus only the MCU was affected whilst the others were returned (still with memories from changes by MCU's Peter).

As I said, hard to say it "didn't directly affect" those people when they were sucked into a different universe against their will, and they were because they had one peculiar trait the movie keeps hammering in; knowing that Peter Parker, any Peter, is Spider-man. It's the characters that use it in the exposition and then in the resolution, with two different meanings that don't match.

It was stated near the beginning that the spell went out of hand because it was changed six times mid-spell. Changing a spell while it's in the middle of being cast causes the spell to go berserk. The spell cast at the end is not changed mid-cast, so it was more controlled than the old spell.

If he just needed to cast properly, he could have casted it again in a more controlled way, but he cannot since "they're here." So it is a different spell, but if the condition "being Peter Parker" was not sufficiently clear the first time around (and Peter even interrupted the spell saying "everyone who knew that *I* was Spider-man before", not "everyone who knows Peter Parker is Spider-man"), there's no reason why it should be now.As I said, I'm pointing out that the meaning keeps shifting.

Suggested correction: That this was only limited to the MCU universe is a given because extending it to every possible universe is an impossible plot element to put into the story, for one simple reason: Our universe is officially part of the Marvel multiverse, and if the memory alteration extended to every universe, then we (the audience) would no longer remember Peter either.

20th Dec 2021

Kindaichi shônen no jiken bo (1997)

Opera House Murder Case: File 3 - S1-E23

Plot hole: For the murder to happen, the killer needed to be next to the alarm bell and at the same time up in the stage rafter to cut the support cable, all while making sure the victim stayed exactly on the spot she needed to be for this demented trap to work.

19th Dec 2021

Kindaichi shônen no jiken bo (1997)

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

Plot hole: Even considering the fact that the corridor was dimly lit (but not in complete darkness), it is impossible to plan the 'switch' the way it happened. For the plan to work, the killer needed to go through a revolving door at the same time as Kindaichi; there was no guarantee which of the two halves of the door he'd make spin, though, and he needed precise timing (against someone running through the door at full speed) and not make a sound with the keys he was carrying. The corridor (and therefore the door) is also so narrow that you wouldn't be able to ever pull it off.

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