Best comedy movie plot holes of 2019

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Knives Out picture

Plot hole: The killer shows up at the scheduled appointment at 8 AM. They kill the idiot blackmailer with an overdose of morphine. Remember, that morphine that supposedly killed Thrombey in 10 minutes. Marta finds the blackmailer at 10 AM...alive, and does CPR on them, keeping them alive long enough for the ambulance to come and bring them to the hospital, even if in critical condition. So we went from "kills in 10 minutes, you can't even try to save him" to "after 2 hours, you are still hanging on"? (01:56:10)

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: Marta injected an absurdly large dose. A smaller overdose would not kill in 10 minutes.

I read that objection before. From 10 minutes to 2 hours there's quite a leap that the movie does not explain or address at all, if it were part of the plot they should have said why this difference, on something so time sensitive (of which they got the factual details wrong anyway). Even visually when you look at the dose injected to Harlan and the dose in the syringe for the murder, they do not look different. He even stabs her with the syringe. Which makes sense since he has no reason to leave her there with a small. Controlled overdose in her veins risking that she would be saved as it -almost - happens - it's amazing he got away with it to begin with because she is so dumb to show up for no reason in a derelict place without talking to her accomplice that passed her the toxi report, or anyone.Without a throwaway line from an investigator or anything of the sort ("but you injected her the wrong way, so she was still alive two hours after"), we are just left with an inconsistency.

Sammo

Suggested correction: You've assumed a hell of a lot! Marta said Thrombey was given a dose of 100 mg (instead 3) of Morphine and would die in 10 minutes unless given the antidote. You just asserted that "Thrombey would die in 10 minutes" as if it was fait accompli, while Thrombey didn't die of morphine overdoes at all! (He cut his own throat.) For all we know, Marta's 10-minute assessment was a worst-case-scenario assessment. Fran's age and physique, as well as Marta's CPR, helped negate the effect until the ambulance arrives. If the medics administered the antidote, it could have prolonged Fran's life. Finally, 2 hours is the time after which the viewer is informed of Fran's death, not her actual death time. Most importantly, this happens in the medical world all the time: A person who is supposed to die after 3 days lives for 16 years. There are case-by-case explanations for each one, but they baffle the medical examiners at first.

FleetCommand

Two hours is not my assumption or when the viewer is informed of her death; the killer gives the appointment to the victim at 8 AM and to Marta at 10 AM, so as I said, after 2 hours with 0 medical care on her she is still hanging on and with barely a little tap she is ready to dispense important clues. I go by what the movie says also about the 10 minutes overdose time. Of course if you tell me that baffling freak occurrences can happen all the time in medicine and that very precise statements from the movie don't matter because the character can just have gotten it wrong by over 10x and the movie does not acknowledge it at all, well, that's a very respectable opinion; mine is that fiction (a whodunnit, not a slasher flick with a killer surviving multiple gunshots and the like) is not reality and it should respond to higher standards than "I guess she was still alive somehow."

Sammo

I re-watched the movie to verify that Fran was given an appointment at 8 AM. I discovered something new: The bottle that was injected to Fran contained only 5 mg of Morphine. That's 1/20th of what was "supposedly" given to Thrombey Sr. So, yeah, 10x is OK. In fact, 20x is OK.

FleetCommand

No, no; it contains 5 mg of morphine PER ml, it's the concentration, not the total. Go back to the scene when Marta "messes up", the vials are the exact same as the one that Ransom injects (obviously, since they come from Marta's bag after all). It's new for you but I covered that already in the Factual Error about it. It's something that piles upon a previous mistake. She did not give him 100 mg of morphine because it would have emptied the vial (which is more than half full) and because a full vial of ketorlac would have killed Trombe regardless, at that concentration! The movie gets both the props and the medical facts wrong (100 mg of morphine does not even kill most patients, Harlan would have not died in 10 minutes especially since he takes safely big doses of toradol and morphine), but nothing - in the script - says that Marta or Ransom got basic medical facts wrong.

Sammo

Okay! It seems mistake after mistake is piling up. Now, it appears Fran lived 4 hours, during 2 of which she was unattended. Plus, 100 mg of Morphine from a 5 mg/ml vial amounts to 20 ml of liquid. Well, now, everything you say makes sense... or at least most of the things. On the whole, I think it was a complicated situation.

FleetCommand

More Knives Out plot holes
Men in Black: International picture

Plot hole: Spoiler. Agent M points out as highly suspicious that the twin assassins knew the location of Vungus, and High T backs her up on this, saying that only a handful of MIB officers could have leaked that information. High T also established that those aliens were part of the Hive collective. It turned out that they were not part of the Hive, and the Hive connection was made-up entirely by the villain himself...which is the Hive! What he did was absurdly counterproductive to his cause: nothing except the report he himself made up connected the Hive at all with the case.

Sammo

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

Suggested correction: Maybe a wrong move by High T but more like a character mistake rather than a movie mistake. High T was trying to scare the agents into overreacting to what was perceived as a high risk threat. Then it backfired on him but definitively non a plot hole.

mauslyon

I don't mind the proposed changes of category, or even a 'demotion' to Stupidity. But I say it's more of a Plot Hole by the definition used in the website; " Events or character decisions which only exist to benefit the plot, rather than making sense." The whole plot moves along thanks to a deliberate decision by the villain who literally fabricates evidence to implicate himself.

Sammo

Sorry but it COULD make sense. We have 2 aliens from planet X (which is presumed to be a "hive" territory) that - at that point in the movie - are perceived as killers. It makes a lot of sense for HighT to reinforce in Agent H and Agent M the fear of an incoming invasion by waving the Hive scare flag in front of them. HighT could not have predicted at that point in time that the twins would say "we need that weapon for the hive" before being obliterated, Thus starting a doubt in H and M.

mauslyon

I fail to see why it makes sense for him to tip them off about the much larger intergalactic invasion when he just needs to send them on a wild goose chase to buy himself time for the last part of the plan. He amply demonstrates that he can fake anything about their background. Or simply not fake anything at all;they have no Hive contamination, and so they are just refugees from a dead planet. Instead, he fakes evidence that implicates his faction and is caught hiding that forgery.

Sammo

Maybe Stupidity is more appropriate.

mauslyon

More Men in Black: International plot holes
Pokémon Detective Pikachu picture

Plot hole: After Pikachu and Mewtwo begin falling down, Tim is suddenly on the ground in a matter of seconds, with little to no time to arrive there. There are multiple stairs, and he does not have any Pokémon to help him get down. He couldn't have gotten to the ground that fast.

More Pokémon Detective Pikachu plot holes
The Addams Family picture

Plot hole: Throughout the movie, the behaviour of the gate does not seem quite consistent; Gomez has to feed meat to it to distract it to let the camera crew out...but they came in just fine and on their own. Same for the angry mob at the end.

Sammo

More The Addams Family plot holes
Stuber picture

Plot hole: The 'real' villain needs Vic to investigate the drop and be there, so he'd be killed in an incriminating spot. Problem is, the boss also throws in a deadly ambush by a whole gang early in the day; if they killed Vic, Vic would have not been where the boss needed him to be. Even more absurd is the fact that the boss is also aware in advance that Vic is having Lasik that day, making it the worst day ever to pick for such a scheme. There was basically no chance Vic could pull off the investigation in that state, and even in the unlikely (it does happen in the movie!) case that he'd manage to show up blind as a bat at the drug deal and get killed as intended, nobody investigating would ever believe that someone with a major drug deal on his hands would have gone through eye surgery the same day.

Sammo

More Stuber plot holes
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood picture

Plot hole: Manson is able to walk right up to the Polanski residence door, but Sharon's girlfriend and Rick Dalton are prevented because there is a security gate.

More Once Upon a Time in Hollywood plot holes
Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture

Plot hole: Joker douses everyone in Arkham with the Ooze mixed with the water sprinklers. One of the first ones to mutate is Mr. Freeze, despite wearing a suit and helmet that keep him hermetically sealed from the external environment at the 0 temperature he needs.

Sammo

More Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles plot holes
Rim of the World picture

Plot hole: The girl in the basement of the JPL building comes across a locked door with a combination lock. She hits a few buttons and the door opens. There was no way she could know the combination. She is at JPL for the first time in her life and everybody - except her three friends she came with - is dead. (01:23:20)

toroscan

More Rim of the World plot holes

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.