Best movie plot holes of 2014

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Before I Go to Sleep picture

Plot hole: The whole movie plot relies on a very unlikely assumption: that the ex-husband would not visit Kidman at her mental institution where he put her in, nor call for any news at all, for four whole years... Even though divorced, they still share a common child! And what about the parents / siblings / extended family/ friends of Kidman? Would they also never visit for four whole years? If any one of them had, then they would have known the (fake) ex-husband had taken her out and would have called the real husband to get news. Then Kidman would have been reported as kidnapped.

AnthonyA

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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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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture

Plot hole: When April O'Neil calls Vernon Fenwick (drives the channel 6 van), he answers his phone and immediately says "O'Neil". When the scene cuts back to O'Neil, we see she called from a payphone. Fenwick would have no way to know it was her calling.

ScRiZ

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Suggested correction: That isn't a plot hole. Vernon assumed April was the person calling him and was correct. People do this all the time in real life.

BaconIsMyBFF

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Gone Girl picture

Plot hole: SPOILER: When Amy comes back, doctors would have checked her non-existent head wound from the "abduction", from where she supposedly lost that much blood. That would and should have revealed all of Amy's lies.

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The Imitation Game picture

Plot hole: There is no logical reason to switch off the Bombe at midnight when the codes change. Firstly, Turing's proving the concept of automated code breaking, so even if it only finds the right settings days or weeks later, the experiment is worth doing, then you can work out how to speed it up to be operationally useful. Secondly, even in steady state operation, cracking "yesterday's" settings (and thus intercepted signals) is still going to be pretty useful in most cases. Threatening to smash the Bombe up at midnight is good stuff to add some movie tension but, in reality, it's nonsense.

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

Suggested correction: It's not a plot hole, it's how they operated it in reality.

I have a copy of British Intelligence in the Second World War, by F H Hensley (the official historian and ex-GCCS). I quote page 309 as an example - 'the knowledge of the Tracking Rooms was far from perfect on account of delays in breaking the settings...During the first half of 1943, however, while the traffic was read with delays that were sometimes less than 24 hours, days when the settings proven to be unusual stubborn were not uncommon...Between 10 March Andy the end of June the setting standards for an a further 22 days were either not broken at all or broken only after a long delay.'...'A delay of as much a said three days in learning that U-boats had been ordered to move to new position so could thus mean than intelligence was received too late to be of use in diverting convoys'. So pretty clear that they carried on attempting to crack the settings well after the end of a day so they can process intercepts which might still be relevant.

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Paddington picture

Plot hole: While on the boat, Paddington suddenly appears inside the mail sack, thus implying he managed to open the precinct, get inside the sack and find someone who closed the precinct again. An impossible task.

Sacha

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Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb picture

Plot hole: In Night at the Museum 2, the parts of the tablet that are missing were attached to the gate to the underworld, which implies it was originally attached to that, and those parts were left behind when it was removed. But in this film we see the tablet getting found on the wall in Ahkmenrah's tomb, and the missing parts are left behind on the wall of the tomb.

Aled Wesker

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The Lego Movie picture

Plot hole: In the scene where bad cop says "security cameras picked up this" it shows the footage of Emmet "convulsing with the strange piece." If they had cameras down there, then they would've already found the piece of resistance. (00:08:10 - 00:10:10)

Derpalicious

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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For picture

Plot hole: Towards the end of the "The Hard Goodbye" segment from the first film after Marv has killed Cardinal Roark, a newspaper clipping shows that the Cardinal's brother Senator Roark was decrying the atrocity. However, at the very end of this movie, Nancy kills Senator Roark with Marv's assistance. Since Marv was captured and imprisoned immediately after he killed Cardinal Roark, that means that the killing of Senator Roark had to have occurred before "The Hard Goodbye", which means Senator Roark should not have been alive to decry his own brother's murder.

Phaneron

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Annie picture

Plot hole: After Hannigan feels guilty for what she did, she confesses to the girls, and they find Mr. Stacks to tell him. The fact is, they went straight to where he worked - but Annie never told them the destination, and Guy himself never told Hannigan where it was either. So, how did they get there, and most importantly, know where it was?

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The Purge: Anarchy picture

Plot hole: Towards the end the Rich Purgers call for reinforcements, and Shane, Leo, Eva and Cali are hiding behind a wall. A guy somehow opens a door in front of them (without being seen by the three facing him), exposes himself and shoots only Shane, numerous times, to cause his death. He should have been spotted by the people looking in his direction. Also, if he was that well hidden he could have simply sprayed the entire group. He unloaded 5 or 6 shots to Shane's chest...when he could have taken them all out.

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Appleseed Alpha picture

Plot hole: The main plot of the film involves Iris and Olson's mission: Destroying the Mobile Fortress 000. But Iris is a special gynoid. Her primary function is to activate the Mobile Fortress. The antagonist of this film could unleash calamity if he had Iris and the fortress. So, which idiot has sent Iris on this mission? The logical course was to send a demolition team, or better yet, send no-one at all. Anything is better than sending the activation key outside the safety of the Olympus.

FleetCommand

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The Expendables 3 picture

Plot hole: Near the start we see Doc jump onto the back of a van and then on to some scaffolding. When he does this he is in plain sight of several armed men who are walking in the direction of Doc. These men would have seen Doc and raised the alarm, but they didn't. (00:16:00)

Ssiscool

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JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time picture

Plot hole: Once Time Trapper has been stopped by Dawnstar and the time vortex in the sky stops sucking things up, everything in the air just hovers unmoving completely. Except for the people. Somehow Batman and Robin and Superman are able to move around just fine in the same time and gravity frozen place, Robin even jumps from hovering rock to rock without them moving. In fact, as soon as the sucking stops, the tree that Karate Kid is hanging onto stops moving and does not fall, but gravity somehow instantly affects Karate Kid and he almost falls off the tree and has to catch on again. It makes no sense at all for the objects to be affected and stand still and the heroes to not be.

Quantom X

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Transformers: Age of Extinction picture

Plot hole: After everyone flees the family home, as Optimus is escaping he is pursued by a helicopter. He is driving down a road in a straight line. He never deviates. Yet the helicopter misses him every time, only narrowly hitting him on the side.

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The Maze Runner picture

Plot hole: At one point it is mentioned that they have tried everything to escape the maze, and that it is impossible to climb up because the ivy doesn't grow all the way to the top of the wall. Yet in the aerial shots the ivy is shown reaching the top of the walls.

wizard_of_gore

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 picture

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

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Good People picture

Plot hole: Tom told I.D. Halden, "My grandmother passed a few years ago and we inherited the family house." If there was a mortgage, who was paying it for a couple years? And if the house was inherited, there would not be a landlord, they would not be paying "rent", and owners do not get served with an eviction notice. (There was no mention of a legitimate reason, such as unpaid taxes.) There's a failure to discern home ownership (with a mortgage) from renting a house (which is not "inherited").

KeyZOid

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Suggested correction: It seems to be that it is about two different houses, the rented one they already live in, and the inherited one which is renovated.

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Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?! picture

Plot hole: When Mr. Shepherd arrives at the school he learn Joseph's (the student's) name but loses his memory. When they are telling him the nativity story Shepherd says "this Joseph" when referring to the student, but he shouldn't remember it.

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The Gambler picture

Plot hole: Lamar was a star basketball player who didn't pay attention in Jim's English Literature class (and wasn't "good in English") but needed to pass to continue playing. Lamar told Jim, "I've had four courses with you" and "I'm a Junior." Whether this was Lamar's 4th or 5th English course, neither make sense. A fourth course would equal 12 credits - enough to be Lamar's' declared major (unlikely) - and most students don't enroll in the same professor's courses when they don't do well ("easy A"). (00:43:56 - 00:46:40)

KeyZOid

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