CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) - 155 mistakes in entire show

Other: Season 10, episode 4 "Coup De Grace": When Nick is doing the phenolphthalein test on the q-tip, it turns pink immediately and starts to overflow pink coloring all the way down the side of the stick, which is not how that test works. Normally it takes a few seconds and only turns color around where the blood is.

Continuity: Season 10, episode 3 "Working Stiffs": The picture of the employees holding a sign at work with the X's thru them at Paulie's house changes between two completely different photos when far away vs. up close.

Deliberate "mistake": Every time the investigators deal with IP-addresses, the addresses on display are impossible. Each of the four parts of an IP-address has to be between 0 and 255. As they do have to use IP-addresses some time, they could use addresses starting with 10. Those would be real addresses although not used as an official IP-address. This isn't the same as phone numbers using 555 - any IP address over 255 just wouldn't work. It would be like mentioning a phone number which uses the symbol for pi.

Continuity: Series 7 - Part 1: When Sara and Warrick are at the table discussing the case, Sara's box containing her veggie sandwich changes position depending on whether the camera is looking at her or Warrick. (It moves from directly in front of Sara, and then several inches to her right toward the edge of the table).

Other: In episode "The Good, the Bad and the Dominatrix" When the son goes to the bank he tells the manager that there was a million dollars in that account last week, there was 843,508.00 taken out leaving a balance of 31,053.86. That only adds up to 874,561.86. Not a million dollars. He doesn't say close to a million dollars He says there was a million dollars in that account.

Continuity: In episode 8-1 Dead Doll: When Warick finds the zip-tie in the trunk it is not looped, when he holds it up for Grissom it is looped. He would not have looped it himself.

Factual error: Season 9, Episode 9 - 19, "Down": Towards the end of the episode they are searching along railroad tracks. A MetroLink train passes by. MetroLink serves the greater Los Angeles area, but does not serve Las Vegas.

Plot hole: Series 9 episode 12: "Agent Hartford" had no fingerprints: the FBI "removed" them. But when they find the street piece that Vinny had, they dust it and say that Hartford's prints were all over it. This might be OK, if he were a real agent on the books (but they never heard of him at Quantico), or if he were a real criminal - but in that case, they would have sussed it all out earlier.

Continuity: Season 9, episode 3 "Art Imitates Life": When J. Skaggs is being interrogated by Brass he has his hands on his lap. In the next shot they are both on the table.

Plot hole: Episode 9-18, "Turn, Turn Turn": Greg states that the dead motel manager crawled up into the ceiling the same way that he did, and you see Nick open the access panel in the ceiling. The manager couldn't have closed the ceiling panel after him and no one was managing the hotel in the week he was missing. The panel should have been open when Nick came into the room. The new manager stated he didn't know if there was a panel in that room, since he just got there.

Continuity: In Episode 8-08, "You Kill Me," when Archie takes the first kilo of cocaine out of the case, he takes the bottom-most left-most kilo. When he takes out the second kilo, he removes the same package with the empty space being two to the left of the one he would have removed.

Plot hole: Lizzie had the car towed to icebox canyon. When you see her watching the car being lowered onto Sara, there is no tow truck there, there is no sound of any machinery lowering the car, and when the shot pans back there is nothing there that would have helped her move the car. She is not strong enough to hold up a car, put an unconscious person under it while holding it up, and then lower it without some kind of winch.

Continuity: In the Season 8 episode "Goodbye & Good Luck," near the beginning, Sara and Warrick bump into each other and Warrick drops his medicine. During their conversation, Warrick squeezes Sara's shoulder and then drops his hand. The shot instantly cuts to a view from behind Sara and Warrick's hand is back on her shoulder with no time (or reason) for him to have put it back.

Continuity: When Holly is first in Grissom's office and says that she feels light headed, Grissom offers her a chocolate-covered grasshopper and takes one for himself. Holly asks, "Is there a grasshopper in there?" and Grissom's right hand is near his waist. When the shot changes, Grissom merely smiles and eats the grasshopper, but his hand started off much closer to his chin without there being an opportunity for him to move it.

Factual error: There are some majors problems with the "jumper's" crime scene. The girlfriend bashes the boyfriend on the back of his head. He bleeds out all over the balcony (she cleans up the blood with towels) but the body leaves absolutely no blood behind on the carpet (It's white\off white so blood would stain badly). She drags his body across the carpet and carpet fibers get stuck in his watchband by the adjustment knob. Dragging a body across the carpet would snag fibers on the opposite side. The CSI crew experiment and conclude the boyfriend was pushed. The blow to the head killed him instantly (coroner's report): therefore, the girlfriend would have dumped the body. Dumping a dead body over a rail would provide a different trajectory than pushing a live person and would not have matched their experiments. Finally, the boyfriend is fairly muscular and heavy. The girlfriend is petite. It would be an extremely difficult task to stand a lifeless body up at the balcony rail and flip him over. (If she could have lifted him up and over the rail, she should have been able to carry him to the balcony instead of dragging him.)

Plot hole: Grissom examines the victim's body and immediately rules it a homicide because he was wearing eyeglasses. He states that suicide is a cowardly act and no coward wants to see their death and would have removed their glasses before committing suicide. What a completely unfounded, and unscientific, statement. Suicide being an act of cowardice is his opinion and not a scientific fact and they don't work off opinions: they always state how they work off the evidence.

Revealing: While the morgue's examiner opens Johnson's right eye with his fingers, the "corpse's" eyelid twitches repeatedly.

Audio problem: When Gil is talking to the drug dealer in the desert, he refers to him as a 'dumb punk'. But this has been dubbed over as what he actually called the dealer was a 'dumb prick' which you can tell by Gil's lip movements.

Deliberate "mistake": A plumber is looking for a leak under the floor of a house, and sees the bones of a hand sticking out of the concrete wall at the side of the house. The concrete is flat, this is because in construction boards are put up and the concrete is poured in, so how were the fingers sticking out of the boards during construction? In reality, the fingers would be inside the concrete, the workman would see nothing, no plot for CSI.

Factual error: The show falls into the Hollywood myth on polygraphs. Jesse is given a polygraph test after pleading guilty to the 4 murders. He answers all questions, except the last one, honestly. The 4 traces on the polygraph show no real movement on these questions. On the final question, Jesse lies and all 4 traces spike. If polygraphs actually did that, they would be admissible in court. But the reality is, it is the opinion of a highly trained operator that decides if there is a lie. The average person could not look at a polygraph results and point out a lie. There is no huge, visible spike. The producers could have replaced the 4 traces with a red\green light: Green is an honest answer and red a lie.