Best movie plot holes of all time

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The Animal picture

Plot hole: Spoiler: At the end of the film we learn that the girl is the wild animal, having been saved by the same doctor. Yet at the restaurant she is wearing a bare back dress and does not have the giant X-like scar on her back, like he has or the model has, who the doctor marries at the end.

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The Equalizer 2 picture

Plot hole: Robert first shoots the electrical transformer on the pole's top, then enters the bakery, slices the wheat sacks and uses electrical fans to create a dust cloud for a dust explosion. How are the electrical fans supposed to work after the electricity is cut?

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Premonition picture

Plot hole: When Bridgette ran through the glass and Linda and Jim were at the hospital Jim tells Linda he called her mom and told her what happened and she was coming to stay over the next day. Yet apparently her mom forgot what happened because she had her committed because Linda didn't remember what happened to Bridgette's face. Also, Bridgette was like 9. How come no-one just asked her what happened?

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The Cell picture

Plot hole: Peter goes into Carl's mind to save Catherine. When he's in there he sees the tank with the water nymph. On the tank are strange symbols which provide the FBI with the clue needed to find the latest victim. Makes sense so far. But, go back to the scene just after the FBI have captured the comatose killer and are looking in his basement. The FBI are looking at the contraption that the killer uses to suspend himself over the victim. On the contraption is the same symbol seen later on the water nymph's tank. Why didn't the FBI follow up the symbol then?

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Speed picture

Plot hole: When they get Sam the driver off the bus and onto the trailer, it's stressed how important it is to get him to hospital, but in all subsequent scenes, the trailer never leaves the side of the bus and no-one takes Sam off.

GalahadFairlight

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Suggested correction: It is unlikely, but they could have transferred him a second time to another vehicle off-screen.

It could've happened during the scene where the older scared woman was trying to leave the bus, and the cops told her to "grab my hand." They KNOW the hostages leaving the bus risks the bomb going off, and they still tried to get that lady off. It's literally these cops' first day on the job.

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Basic Instinct picture

Plot hole: This is another movie where the cops are too dumb to go out by themselves. The woman who icepicks the first victim (we see) to death would have left enough forensic evidence on the scene to convict her ten times over - skin, hair, sweat, saliva, vaginal fluid, possibly blood, and they all contain DNA in abundance. She had vigorous, sweaty sex with this man and she didn't clean up afterwards (and she couldn't have done so thoroughly enough anyway) so she's left calling cards all over the place. The killer also handled the icepick (which the police take away in an evidence bag) with bare hands - her prints would be all over it. She might as well have left a signed confession, but they can't even identify her. Sharon Stone, for instance, leaves her fingerprints (on the chair and fixtures in the police station) and her saliva (containing epithelial skin cells which are an excellent source of DNA) on the cigarette butt she discards, also in the police station. She went there of her own accord and these artifacts are legally accessible by the police. It is obvious to anyone that the women who had sex with the victim killed him, and Catherine is most certainly a suspect. They don't have enough to charge her but they would if they did a simple series of tests on the dead man's body - and if she didn't do it, that would eliminate her as a suspect. They don't even check.

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Jurassic Park III picture

Plot hole: The spinosaurus manages to smash through a metal reinforced wall designed to stop dinosaurs getting past it without too much effort, yet it can't get through a wooden gate secured by some metal bars. It makes no sense.

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Suggested correction: The Spinosaurus used its full body force to smash the fence. The gate, being a smaller target, was too small for the Spinosaurus to use its full body force.

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Battlefield Earth picture

Plot hole: The facilities at Ft. Hood have working electricity to power the simulators, projectors, etc. even though it's been 1000 years, with no logical reason for the Psychlos to have kept the facility maintained, and the fact that the Psychlos should by rights have leveled the place when they invaded 1000 years before. Even automatic backup generators would have no fuel after 1000 years dormancy except for a nuclear system, which would still have required regular maintenance over a 1000 year interval to maintain automatic functionality.

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The Princess and the Frog picture

Plot hole: When Charlotte kissed Naveen at the end, she should've turned into a frog as well because she was no longer a princess.

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Suggested correction: When ordinary people kiss a frog, they don't transform into anything. (Perhaps they die from infection after a few days.) Charlotte was just an ordinary person. Tiana was chosen. She wished upon the star. Naveen and the consequences of kissing Naveen were a result of Tiana's wish.

FleetCommand

Suggested correction: How? She was no longer a princess.

Tiana turned into a frog because she kissed Naveen without being a princess, so Charlotte should have, too.

Anson Gordon-Creed

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Where Eagles Dare picture

Plot hole: Why do all the Germans abandon the cable car control room after the alarm has been sounded? If the cable car is critical for access to the castle then you would expect a hard core of SS troops to remain behind to control access and protect the machinery in the event of an attack. (01:42:55)

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Sphere picture

Plot hole: The first time they communicate with the "entity" in the spaceship, they find a correspondence between numbers sent by the entity and letters of the alphabet. The entity presents itself as "Jerry". Later on, the entity tells Dustin Hoffman, "Stop calling me Jerry" - and then Dustin Hoffman realizes that the number-letter correspondence was wrong, and the actual name of the entity was "Harry". But if that is true, how could they have communicated without problems before? The very first word that the entity used was "hello", which would have to be displayed wrong, since it begins with an "h" and has an "e".

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The Time Machine picture

Plot hole: When George stops the machine for the first time, the candle burned down to about half of its size, which took according to his observations 98 minutes. But as the trip continues it takes seven hours for it to burn down completely. (00:25:45)

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom picture

Plot hole: Being transported from the west of Costa Rica all the way to Northern California by ship would take about a week. Are we to assume that Owen, Claire and Franklin were staying put in the back of the truck the whole time undetected? They would have to eat and use the restroom, at least.

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Suggested correction: Maybe they did have to sneak around but the director thought making us watch Owen sneaking away at night to take a whiz wasn't really important to the plot.

It was established in the plot's timeline that the ship travelled overnight. A ship like this travels at about 12 knots and would take for them about 9 days to complete that voyage.

Nauticalisimo

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Spider-Man: No Way Home picture

Plot hole: The whole premise of the movie is that due to a botched spell, people who happen to know that "Peter Parker is Spider-Man" are pulled inside this universe. It's a bit of a stretch already that amongst those people is...Peter Parker himself, twice over, but let's say it makes sense. The problem is that Jamie Foxx's Electro does not meet this condition; he never found out. You could say it's a retcon or it's a different universe from the original movie's, but even this cop-out explanation is negated by the movie itself when Max Dillon makes a joke that shows that he didn't know Spidey's identity or even race.

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Although Max didn't discover Peter's identity on film, an explanation of why Max knows his name IS offered. When the villains are talking about what happened before they found themselves in the MCU, Max indicated that once he tapped fully into the power grid and information systems, there was nothing he didn't know at that point. Since we know there is a clandestine organization tracking Peter from the end of ASM1, it's possible Max gained the info from their database.

In the interest of clarity, you refer to the one line that goes "I was stuck in the grid, absorbing data."? Nothing about tapping fully, and becoming omniscient as the correction presents. So we have to give it that specific meaning and make a connection to the obscure postcredit scene by Fiers in the unfinished trilogy that asks Connors if he said anything to the boy imagining that it produced data that was 'on the grid' somehow, and Electro never processed this information in the movie. Not sure if it's quite an"explanation offered", since the movie offers none. It's a 'possible' explanation like the other one people use, about hearing Gwen say Peter's name (I like this one better because at least it would give a special meaning to a throwaway line and I do I love attention to details).

Sammo

Suggested correction: I don't find it such a stretch that he knew Peter's name but didn't know what he looked like.

Electro didn't learn Spidey's name during the events of the original movie.

Sammo

When Spider-Man is explaining his plan to defeat Electro to Gwen, Gwen addresses him as "Peter." Electro was laying on the ground nearby and likely would have heard this. Presumably, knowing that Spidey's real name was Peter was enough to pull him in.

There are almost 10,000 "Peter" in New York alone in our world. Knowing just the super-common first name wouldn't cut it and the movie does nothing to support this theory, in fact does everything to undermine it (Strange's explanation, Electro's joke, complete lack of addressing it, etc). Also if he overheard that bit in the original movie, he would have also learned their plans to defeat him.

Sammo

It's not shown, but Harry could have shared details off-screen.

What kind of details and for what purpose? Harry himself learns that Peter is Spider-man when Electro is already dead and they had a very improvised and loose alliance to begin with.

Sammo

Suggested correction: I guess we're all going to ignore the fact that this Electro has a completely different look than the Max we saw previously. It's quite possible he's from a different universe.

DetectiveGadget85

He's not from a different universe than the Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The Lizard and the Andrew Garfield version of Spider-Man both know who he is, and he talks about events from the aforementioned film. His different appearance is also explained in the film.

Phaneron

All that means is he went through similar experiences and has a similar appearance as the Max they knew. Ala J. Jonah Jameson.

DetectiveGadget85

Suggested correction: It's not people who know who is Spider-Man that are spilling in, it's people who are connected to him in any way.

lionhead

No, no. Strange says it explicitly "That little spell you botched, when you wanted everyone to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-man? It started pulling in everyone who knows that Peter Parker is Spider-man" and so on. That's why in the end they fix it by making everyone forget who Peter Parker is, not who Spider-man is.

Sammo

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Venom picture

Plot hole: At the angle of descent and the speed it was traveling (still burning from reentry even), when the space shuttle crashed in the opening of the film, it would not have left much of anything behind. The kinetic explosion that would have resulted would have downed the forest around it for a good distance leaving a crater, and the clean up crews would have been lucky to find any piece of the ship itself still intact bigger than a football. Much less been able to find any discernible remains of the crew. Yet bodies were being taken out in still relatively good condition. And probably most unbelievable is that the glass containers holding the Symbiotes were not even broken.

Quantom X

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Suggested correction: Since this is in the Marvel universe the capsule could have at least partially been made of Vibranium or Adamantium.

lionhead

Adamantium is exclusive to the X-Men films which for the time being are under Fox, and Vibranium is exclusive to films within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This film is part of neither. There were rumors and speculation prior to this film's release that it would be adjunct to the MCU, but there are things within the film that contradict it. Particularly Eddie Brock being dismissive of the symbiote being an alien life form. An alien invasion was one of the major plot points of the first Avengers film, so an alien being wouldn't be something people would be skeptical of going forward.

Phaneron

Like Phan said. But also, i'm referring to the glass of the container staying in tact. Those two super metals don't make glass.

Quantom X

I just thought that although there can't be a mention of Vibranium, it doesn't mean it's not there. What I mean is if Vibranium softens the bow of the impact the glass containers would stay intact. But I suppose if it's not allowed to exist for the films, then I guess it doesn't exist. The glass can be nanotechnology though.

lionhead

I see what you're saying, but that wouldn't mater with an impact like that. Space Shuttles are even made of Titanium, and would still be smashed to millions of little pieces from a reentry impact like that. The momentum and resulting kinetic explosion would devastate everything around it and level the forest for a good distance, leaving a massive creator, possibly as big or bigger than a football field. We are talking a few megatons of force.

Quantom X

This movie is not set in the Marvel Universe. It has been confirmed by the film crew that Venom is a standalone movie so it doesn't take place in the MCU at all.

I didn't say MCU, I said Marvel Universe. Some Marvel Universe anyway.

lionhead

There's only the MCU and since this movie doesn't take place in it, the ship is probably only made from the materials that most rocket ships are constructed from.

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The Thing picture

Plot hole: It's never explicitly stated or shown that the Thing reproduces with each victim until the movie is nearly over (when Palmer infects Windows). Most viewers figure it out from the context, but it's unclear just when and how the characters themselves have come to this conclusion. This was an inadvertent result of an editing decision and a visual goof: there is a deleted scene in which Blair explains much more directly that the Thing multiplies according to how many victims it takes, and in its place in the final film is a scene containing a computer simulation that director John Carpenter acknowledges was a failed attempt at explaining the organism's life cycle.

TonyPH

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Dracula Untold picture

Plot hole: When Vlad enters Mehmed's tent, the entire floor is covered in silver coins and Mehmed remarks on Vlad's weakness to it. There's no way that Mehmed could have known about Vlad being a vampire or about his weakness to silver, as Vlad had killed every Turk after becoming a vampire, so nobody would be alive to tell him. Even the Turk found on the battlefield in the morning lived long enough only to deliver Vlad's message, but died immediately after that.

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Hocus Pocus picture

Plot hole: After Max and Allison rescue Dani from the witches, Max is driving his parents' car. Winifred flies up along side of them and asks Max to show her his driver's permit. How would she know about driving permits, since she's been dead for 300 years?

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Suggested correction: She did watch TV in the house of the man dressed as Satan so maybe someone said it on TV.

Mary Sanderson was watching television, not Winifred.

Movie Nut

Suggested correction: There is a lot the movie doesn't show us about who they've passed and what they heard all evening. One example being we don't know everything the bus driver said to them. It's perfectly reasonable they heard somebody make reference to a driver's permit and the movie did not show us this conversation deeming it invalid to the plot.

Not referring to a learner's permit. She would have known what it means. She's emulating a cop pulling him over. She would have to know what that means...and know the difference between a license and a learners permit. Enough to find it funny and relevant to the situation.

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Saw (2004)

Saw picture

Plot hole: Det. Kerry says at the scene of Paul's trap, "He had two hours." There is no way she could have known that. The clock simply said 3:00 and the tape specifically says "you have until 3 o'clock or this room will become your tomb". No way to know that's two hours after the fact. (00:17:30)

Ssiscool

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Suggested correction: In the flashback of the razor wire trap, it shows the clock as a few minutes past 1, so he did know he had 2 hours.

Paul knew he had 2 hours as like you said he could see a clock counting. But how did detective Kerry who made the remarks in the first place as listed in the mistake?

Ssiscool

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WarGames picture

Plot hole: McKittrick says the computer will not accept the launch codes unless they are at DEFCON 1. At the end of the climax the computer is trying to guess the code while they are at DEFCON 1. So why couldn't they just go back to a different DEFCON before the correct code was guessed?

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