CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000) - 29 mistakes in series 5

Continuity: When Brass and Grissom first enter the house of Ken Willard (the guy in the Polaroid), and Greg makes a noise at the door, the two of them turn around to see him. Then the angle changes, and they turn around again, repeating motion.

Continuity: When Grissom, Brass, and Greg go to the house of the guy in the Polaroid, Brass picks up a credit card from a table. First, he is holding it by his middle finger and thumb from the back, then the shot changes to a close-up and he is holding it with his index finger and thumb along the sides. Then, we return to the previous angle and he is once again holding it with his middle finger and thumb from the back.

Plot hole: Two women die after a medical error occurs after undergoing an "anti-aging" medical procedure. A 30% solution of hydrogen peroxide is given intravenously instead of a 3% solution. According the the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) a 30% solution is extremely corrosive and will blister skin on contact. 1) How did the women not bolt upright screaming as this extremely corrosive solution was pumped throughout their veins. 2) How did they not die in the clinic instead of the hours after as depicted in the show? Even in the CSI crew little experiment, the red blood cells immediately burst when exposed to the 30% solution.

Continuity: As Nick and Warrick are assessing Wendy Garner's travel path and find that there are 14 minutes unaccounted for, the screen says "Wendy Jones' House". Her last name is Garner, her old last name was Clancy, and her fiancé's last name is Lanner, therefore it makes absolutely no sense to have "Jones" on the screen.

Continuity: Season 5, episode 11 'Who shot Sherlock?'. In the scene where Sara Sidle sits down at the victims desk and computer, in the first shot you see the top corner of the notebook lid, saying IBM, then when you see the screen it says DELL on the bottom of it, and then in the next shot you once again see the lid with the IBM mark.

Factual error: Brown and Stokes are investigating a mysterious fatal accident involving a Jeep and a downed power line. They state that the driver would have been safe if the Jeep had made contact with the power line because the tires would have insulated the Jeep from the electrical current. Wrong. First, a car is a Faraday cage, that is an electrical current would pass on the outside of a car on the way to the ground. As long as you don't touch the outer surface, you are safe. Second, tires are (almost always now) steel belted radials and conduct electricity nicely. Lastly, it was an open top Jeep. The power line made contact with the roll bar thereby electrifying the inner surface of the Jeep. The driver is in contact with the inner surface. This is a list, from one year from one utility company, of people that died from contact with power lines. You will see that tires exploded from the contact and some caught fire. http://www.sigalarminc.com/HistoricalNotes.htm.

Character mistake: Catherine Dent's character, Kay Marquette, plays the Holmes character Irene Adler with an English accent. Adler was an American, as mentioned by Watson in "A Scandal in Bohemia".

Factual error: Brown and Stokes mix up enough ballistics gel to make a life-size dummy to test their theory. The entire production (getting a mannequin, making a mold from the mannequin, etc,.) takes place in one shift. Ballistics gel needs to cool in a fridge, or on ice, (32-41°F) overnight. That alone eliminates the possibility that it was done in one shift. http://www.recguns.com/Sources/XD3.html.

Factual error: Grissom expresses admiration for the (dead) Sherlock Holmes' attention to detail, since he has a cape, a deerstalker hat and a Meerschaum pipe. Grissom - and the dead Sherlock - should know better. None of these items appear anywhere in Conan Doyle's books; they were invented by Hollywood as part of Basil Rathbone's portrayal of the character, and are considered to be abominations by Holmes' afficionados.

Revealing: When Warrick takes out the contents of the wallet, he removes a few 100 dollar bills. If you look carefully, you can see on the top bill it says "For Motion Picture Use Only."

Continuity: In the scene where the CSIs are first crawling into the nursery, you can see Grissom's ungloved hand, which was gloved before entering and after exiting the crawlspace.

Continuity: When Sara and Jim Brass are interrogating Tonya you can see Jim open up her cell phone behind Tonya. Than they do a wide shot and Jim opens up the phone again.

Continuity: Season 5 Episode 16 "Big Middle" Sara Sidle marks a triangle on a bed sheet around evidence and then proceeds to cut along the inside of the triangle lines in order to remove the evidence from the sheet. In the next shot, Sara is shown removing the cut out from the sheet, which now has been cut along the outside of the triangle lines.

Continuity: The board behind the oddsmaker keeps changing. At the beginning, he has crossed out the odds on the game between Miami and Memphis from 5 to 7 1/2 to 10 1/2. When Brass comes in, the board is only showing 5. It then changes every time it switches from Brass to the oddsmaker- it will show the 5 crossed out and then not crossed out the next time. Finally in the final shot, it shows the board without the 1/2 after the 10.

Revealing: Season 5 Episode 18 "Spark of Life": when they show a closeup of the badly-burned woman during her debridement, it can be seen that even though her eyebrows and hair and, in fact, 90% of her skin has been burned away, she still has long, full eyelashes.

Factual error: Sanders is seen in the burn victim's OR, during debridement, wearing his street clothes (under a paper apron), and no mask or hat. Considering that the woman's skin is practically one continuous open wound, and her immune system is in an exceedingly fragile state, there's no way a breach of sterility like that would be allowed.

Other: Episode 18 Season 5 "Spark of Life": Late in this episode, the CSI crew is sitting around discussing the case. Sarah Sidle summarizes the facts in the case, including making the comment that Tara Matthews was attacked by the truck driver "just before her death"; in actuality, while Tara was severely burned, she remained alive in the hospital throughout the entire episode.

Revealing: Season 5 Episode 4X4. When Warrick and the young coroner are examining the dead woman in the RV, look closely as you can see her blink.

Character mistake: When Catherine slams the trash can lid shut outside and heads to the car to answer her phone, she tells her Mum 'Catherine threw something out', referring to Lindsay.

Factual error: As has been noted, the problem with pressure differentials will make it impossible to flood someone's room with CO2 from sublimating dry ice anyway, but there is another problem. Dry ice sublimates at -78.5 C. That gas is going to be very, very cold and it will rapidly bring the temperature of the room down to a very uncomfortable level. Before a sleeping person suffocates they would be woken by the freezing cold.