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

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.

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: 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.

Continuity: At the end, when Tina is shown the photos of Brenda they are in a pile of three. The camera cuts to a long shot and there are two in a row. Cut back to Tina and they are a pile of three again. This happens on and off throughout the scene.

Continuity: Sara takes pictures of Brenda with an UV light camera. The camera used to film the episode for broadcast is barely able to show the walls in the background as tiled. When the UV pictures of Brenda are used in the interrogation, the photos show Brenda's back up against the tile wall.

Factual error: Grissom and Catherine are looking through a microscope and discussing a microscopic specimen (heart of frozen body). In reality they would not see anything as all microscope objectives are missing on this instrument (the microscope nose-piece is totally empty.).

Deliberate "mistake": When the runner is shot in the back of the head in the SUV, the bullet has come out the front of his head. However, blood is seen on the windshield instead of a bullet hole where the bullet would have continued to go through the glass.

Revealing: At the end of the episode, Grissom pins the newspaper article about the security guard's death onto the bulletin board and the camera zooms in on it. The article is three paragraphs long, however it is the same paragraph of text repeated three times. (A DVD player with a zoom feature can confirm this.)

Continuity: When Sara and Warrick are interviewing Meg at the end of the episode, the scene cuts between a medium shot of the dynamic duo, a close up of Meg's face and a close up of her hands which remain clasped on the table. The first time we cut to Meg there are tears in her eyes, but her face is dry. The second time we cut to Meg, there is a drying tear track on her right cheek. The third time we cut back to her, the tear track is gone, but there is a tear halfway down her left cheek. This continues throughout the scene

Continuity: When Gil and Catherine catch the couple in the bedroom, they are all sitting in the living room. Amanda is drinking a soda and it is about half full. Gil then asks for the straw. When we look at the soda again, it's full.

Continuity: While Sara is looking through missing person's files, Grissom comes in and starts talking to her. One shot her hair is in front of her face, the next it's behind her ear. This continues throughout the scene.

Continuity: When Catherine and Warrick are testing to find the distance the shots were fired from, when Catherine shoots at the shirt that's 2 feet away there is no gunpowder around the hole. When Warrick puts the victim's shirt next to it, for comparison, there is now an inch of gunpowder around the hole.

Continuity: In one shot Grissom puts a shoe on its side with a pencil. In the next shot the shoe is upright again.

Revealing: At the end of the episode when they view flashbacks of what happened when Zack died, there is a scene when Tyler is performing CPR on Zack. You can see that Zack is a dummy.

Continuity: In the scene where Warrick pulls the piece of clothing from the toilet, the amount of water and dirt in the bowl changes between each shot.

Plot hole: A head without a body is found early in the show. Then, a body that has been decapitated, skinned, and severed of hands and feet is found. The CSI team assume the two are related until the coroner states that the body isn't even human. He also mentions that he has no idea what kind of animal it is and they'll need to consult an anthropologist. Everyone is shocked to learn the body is that of a gorilla. The body is humanoid (2 arms, 2 legs). It is larger than human size. The only thing it can possibly be is a gorilla. It must be a primate for having a humanoid shape and must be a gorilla because that is the only primate larger than man. There was no need to bring in an anthropologist (which should have been a zoologist if they truly had NO idea what kind of animal it was). It should have been painfully obvious to the CSI team, who are experts in all fields, that the body was a gorilla.

Continuity: When Grissom first arrives at his own home, he turns on his stereo and adjusts one of the levels. In one shot, he uses his left index finger to push it up, but in the next, he is moving it with his right index finger and thumb.

Revealing: Ribbons is talking to Grissom and Nick in the autopsy room, and the latest post autopsy female lies on the table. Grissom says, "He choked her unconscious, and brought her..." and when the shot faces her head and shoulders, watch her neck - you can see the veins in her neck pumping.

Audio problem: In one scene, when Warrick is in the prints lab, Nick claps his hands twice, but the sound track has him clapping three times.

Factual error: In the episode where the worker got electrocuted in a construction site the main character, before replaying the victim's fall, says that "terminal velocity is 9.8 seconds squared". What he should have said was that acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared.

Other: When Grissom goes to the crime scene to investigate, he finds the worker's drill hanging over the edge, still plugged in. Dropping the drill (35-45 pounds) 5-6 feet (the height of the worker) over the edge would have ripped the plug from the outlet and cause the drill to fall all the way to the ground with the victim. (Grissom barely puts any effort into unplugging the drill when he inspects it).

Factual error: Grissom sets up a little experiment to see if the deceased's blood is conductive to electricity. All are amazed when the blood does conduct electricity. All blood is naturally conductive. As a matter of fact, cardiac output is measured as a function of blood conductivity.

Factual error: Several problems surround the electrocution death and the investigation. First, there is the insinuation that the boots should have protected the victim from the electrocution because of the rubber soles. Regular shoes and standard work boots will not protect anyone from electric shock. You are still grounded. You have to wear special electrician's boots to insulate you from electric shock. These boots cost about triple standard work boots. Second, the CSI crew found a nail embedded in the boot. They theorized that is how the boots were grounded out. The problem there is the nail had to be pushed all the way through the sole and through the insole for it to work (the close up of the boot showed the nail in all the way). Even if the nail was barely through the insole, the victim would have felt the nail poking him at every step. With the nail all the way through, he wouldn't have even walked two steps before puncturing his foot on the nail. Third, there is the nail itself. When Grissom is examining the boots trying to find why they failed (failed to prevent the electrocution), he poses the question "What is the most common item found during construction?" The answer is a nail, and the nail in the boot appears to be a roofing nail. The construction site is for a multi-story prison. Nails aren't used in the construction of multi-story urban buildings: concrete and steel are. Carpenters come in after the building is erected and work on the interior, but the are no roofing nails.

Factual error: When they are explaining why a nail was hammered into the electrocuted workman's boot, it is said that cars are protected from lightning strikes because they are insulated from the ground by their tires. Actually, tires conduct electricity, because they contain carbon (see: http://cartalk.cars.com/Columns/Archive/1994/November/11.html). Cars are actually protected from lightning by the Faraday Cage effect, which is explained on http://www.physics.gla.ac.uk/~kskeldon/PubSci/exhibits/E3/. Not a mistake CSI scientists would make.

Continuity: When Nick is staring intently at the doctors lapel area, the camera zooms in and we see some lint on the doctors left lapel. When Nick asks Catherine to get the tape on it, Catherine approaches the suspect and she starts to put the tape on the left lapel, but when the camera zooms in for a close-up of her getting the lint, the tape is being applied to the RIGHT lapel.

Continuity: Nick is eating a hot dog when he's handed a warrant. Depending on the camera angle, he goes from taking a bite out of the hot dog to holding the hot dog in one hand and the warrant in the other simply with camera angle changes.

Factual error: In the scene where Grissom is talking to the coroner about the bully who was shot, they talk about how the bully had "Dextrocardia" which is why all his organs are a mirror image of normality e.g. heart on right and liver on left. In actual fact Dextrocardia is only when the heart is on the right rather than left, the actual condition Grissom should have said was "Situs Inversus" not "Dextrocardia."

Continuity: In the scene where Nick and Catherine are interviewing Walden, Catherine's fringe moves from right to left and back to right. This continues throughout the interview.

Other: In the scene where Grissom is talking to the coroner about the man who was shot and strangled with his tie, you can see the actor that played the body breathing.

Continuity: When Grissom enters the cage in which the woman is found, he goes to the wastebasket to examine the pen that rolled on the floor. As he first picks it up, he grasps it right at the point where the black grip section meets the gray barrel section. As the shot changes and he continues bringing it up to examine it, he is now grasping it near the end of the gray barrel. As it is supposed to be a continuous shot (conversation is uninterrupted the entire time), there is no time for him to change his hand position.

Visible crew/equipment: When Warrick is talking to Greg in the DNA lab comparing Brass's DNA, the boom mic is reflected on the back wall.

Factual error: The treasury officer stated that the couple was from "Las Vegas County". Anyone from the government (local/county/state/federal) should know Las Vegas is in 'Clark County'. Sara (who works for LVMPD/Clark County) did not react at all.

Continuity: When Warrick is talking to Dr. Robins, his collar changes place. During the close-ups, only the right side of his collar is tucked in. During shots farther away, both sides are tucked in.

Revealing: When Grissom finds Isabelle Millander dead in her chair, you can see her blink as the shot changes, even though she's supposed to be dead.

Revealing: After Grissom finds Isabelle Millander dead in her chair, he walks towards the bathroom. When the shot changes, you can see her shift her legs even though she's supposed to be dead.

Continuity: Supposedly, Paul Millander was 10 years old when his father was killed. A newspaper report read by Sara in 1x08(Time 39:45) says this. It also says that his father died August 17th, 1959. In 2x13(Time 43:18), in the last scene, Grissom looks at Paul's birth certificate. It says that Paul was born August 17th, 1956, which would mean that he was actually 3 years old when his father died.

Continuity: When Catherine goes into the diner with a man and Sarah is sitting talking to her date, in one shot they are talking and in the next immediate shot he has a cup to his lips.

Revealing: In the shot looking across the four monks in the autopsy room, you can see the one closest to the camera taking a deep breath.

Continuity: Stephanie Watson's supposed killer is, on the TV, named as Mark Kelso, but later when Catherine is going over the DNA sample with Greg, it is a match to a Dwight Kelso - supposedly the same person.

Continuity: When Sara is waiting with Greg for the results for what was inside the tyre that exploded, she grabs the paper straight off the printer, reads it, looks at Greg and takes off immediately to inform Gil. When Grissom looks at the paper, you can see Greg's name is signed at the bottom as confirmation, but he never got anywhere near the paper.

Factual error: The CSI crew set up an experiment. They put some chloroform into the tire, set the bus on a dynamometer (or some other testing platform) and wait for the tire to fail. The tire fails in the experiment in the exact same amount of time as it did in real life. Problem: They have no idea how much chloroform was used and it would be impossible to match it by luck. More chloroform used would equal quicker failure. Then, there is the heat. The tire traveling over the hot asphalt road would build heat faster then on their testing platform. More heat would mean a quicker failure, too.

Factual error: Sara calculates the time needed to sabotage the tire at a minute to a minute and a half. That is, remove the valve core, allow the majority of the air to escape (cannot pour anything into the tire while the air is escaping) pour in enough chloroform to sabotage the tire, replace the valve core, and air the tire to pressure. Even with an industrial air compressor, it would take over 2 minutes to air that tire to full pressure.

Deliberate "mistake": A father, daughter (both construction\demolition experts) and the boyfriend try to frame the husband for attempted murder by planting a pipe bomb in her (wife\daughter\girlfriend's) car. The bomb is a stick of dynamite inside a pipe with 2 endcaps on it. A pipe is used to hold a improvised munition together: i.e., homemade explosives, or something like Anfo. The pipe provides the casing for the explosive material. Or, it is used to keep the shrapnel fragments around the explosives (like nails or pellets around a stick of dynamite). For dynamite, you simply drill a hole (in rock, in concrete, in whatever.) and drop the stick in. It needs no extra casing. The family would have known that. But the CSI crew needed some evidence to analyze and the blasting cap + detonator circuit would have given them nothing to study. The endcap with the hole drilled for the blasting cap was the case solver.

Continuity: When Catherine walks up the stairs, Horatio Caine aims his gun upwards. In the next shot he has his arms down.

Revealing: When the CSI from Miami and Catherine are in the autopsy, the guy goes to take a sample from the eyes of the dead woman. When he moves the swab towards her eye, you can see the actress' top eyelid move instinctively. She's supposed to have been dead for hours.

Revealing: As they recover the car from the canal and open the door to reveal the girls dead mother, you can see her still breathing as they lie her on her back to examine her.

Continuity: In this episode, Catherine is sent to Miami on a lead of a missing child. There they find a car in a swamp, and when the pull the car out and open the door, a female body falls halfway out. When this happens you can see the woman playing the victim breathing. You see her stomach moving up and down.

Other: Stokes tells "Michaelangelo" he is looking for a blue Honda, blue rims, blue tint. The picture Michaelangelo shows Stokes and Willows is an Acura RSX, not a blue Honda. (Note: The red Honda that the victim was driving is not the one that Stokes is looking for.) Just because the two car brands are owned by the same parent company does not mean that they are interchangeable when describing them. You certainly couldn't call a Cadillac a GM and not be considered wrong even though they are both made by the same parent company (GM).

Continuity: In the bit where Nick and Warwick decide who is going in the pool, Nick loses and begins to remove his top while still wearing his latex gloves. The camera switches to a different angle and while he is still taking his top off, his gloves have disappeared.

Continuity: When Sara is trying to match up bite plates. In the first two close-up shots of Sara's face, you can see an out-of-focus shot of Greg's sleeve on the right side of the screen, seconds before he actually appears in the scene.

Continuity: At one point Catherine is at the coffee shop and the parents of a murdered girl come to talk to her. She is holding her coffee in the right hand and her cell phone rings and she grabs it with her left. The shot switches angles while Catherine is talking and her cell phone has magically shifted to her right hand.

Plot hole: A large part of Nick's plotline revolves around the discovery that the couple's stolen ring has a fake diamond switched out for the real one. But the ring was left as collateral for a very expensive necklace for the woman to wear that night. There is no way that a jewelery store would accept a ring for collateral without appraising the ring's/stone's value first. And in that inspection, they would have discovered the switch and not accepted it.

Revealing: At the start when the camera pans away from the dead body, the "D.B." swallows when he's supposed to be dead.

Audio problem: When Nick and Warrick find the dead man's flying equipment, Nick says "Bingo" but his lips don't move.

Continuity: When Catherine is looking through the contents of the birds nest, she takes out the teething ring and places it on a pile on the left. When Gil comes in and asks her what she has, the shot shows the nest and the teething ring is back in it.

Continuity: In the scene where Catherine is going throw the nest she pulls out a baby rattle and sets it on the desk. Grissom enters the room, and the camera pans back to the nest, only the baby rattle is back inside the nest.

Plot hole: While searching through the dead computer guy's CDs Nick finds a CD supposedly burned that night, containing data gathered at the time of death, but by the time the CD was burned the guy would have already been dead, so who took it out of the computer and filed it away?

Other: Just after they arrest the Janitor, they are walking out of the building past the employee's. The girl sitting at her chair is not actually typing on her keyboard, her fingers never even press on the keys and her screen-saver is displayed on the screen.

Continuity: When Grissom and Catherine are looking at Rebecca McCormick's dead body, her mouth is closed in the first two shots, and when we see her again it's open.

Continuity: When Sara is showing Greg the route the old woman took in her car, she draws a blue line on the screen with her finger. When she says something about turning left she draws a continuous line to the "Meadows Lane," but when the shot changes and goes back the line is broken into two.

Continuity: When Sara and Warrick are looking at the dead girl in the prom dress, she is turned over by the coroners and her hands are almost touching straight above her head. But when the shot changes, her arms have moved quite far apart.

Continuity: The DB in the desert is in funeral pose. Sarah notices something on his hands, which are layed one on the other in a close shot. Cut to a wide shot and the top hand is off the other. Cut again to a close shot and it is once again atop the other.

Continuity: When Grissom is in the horse stall, one shot shows the door closed to Grissom's back. Cut to the next shot (a closer shot through the door) and it's open.

Factual error: Grissom does a quick analysis on the rough diamonds (chemical or laser) and immediately identifies the region of origin for the diamonds. He and Catherine then postulate that the diamonds are conflict diamonds. There is no way to identify the country or region of origin through any type of analysis. The United Nations and the world's diamond industry are looking for a way. http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/conflictdiamonds.htm http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/cenear/010212/7907sci1.html http://www.whitefirejewelry.com/wfbb/viewtopic.php?p=88&sid=b0e62206a64d98c81e53b600e053582f.

Visible crew/equipment: At the beginning during the robbery, you can see a boom operator in the glass when the woman grabs her son.

Continuity: When Grisson gets on the vibrating bed, in the close up shots he is sitting with his neck even to the top of the headboard and no pillow showing. In the wide-angle shot, he's hunched down lower with a lot of the pillow showing above his shoulders.

Continuity: When Brass and Grissom are interrogating the stoned nephew, shots of Grissom from the front show him with his head leaning against his right hand and then moving his hand down to the table, then it cuts to a shot from behind and his head is still leaning against his hand. This happens twice during the sequence.

Plot hole: Catherine is picking up the gun in the backyard. It is an unfamiliar weapon. She picks it up by using the loop around the trigger and pointing it towards herself. She then checks the clip, but never checks the chamber.

Revealing: The dead baby is obviously a doll.

Audio problem: When the Ranger is talking about shooting a coyote he says, "I took care of him." The shot is from behind and slightly to the right of the Ranger. When he says this line, his mouth is not moving.

Continuity: When Grissom's car window is broken in the first shot where you first see the break there is hardly any glass left in the frame and yet when he is at the gas station there is an almost perfect circle of broken glass and a lot more in the frame.

Continuity: When Catherine tells Grisson she liked the tough act (while listening to the guy testify) he said too much, she said not enough. Then he glances over at her. The guy is talking, which indicates a continuous line, even though the shot changes, but Grissom is not looking at Catherine during the shot change, instead he's got his head leaning against the glass.

Continuity: When Brown talks to David, David pulls out a pelvis from a vat of acid, saying he's cleaning it. In one shot the pelvis is hanging off the lower of the tongs, but in the next shot it's clamped between the tongs. This series of shots occurs a couple times during the conversation.

Other: This episode has four teenagers beat a contemporary to death with hammers, following a practice session with a pile of water melons. The boy is beaten to death sometime during the weekend, - probably on the Saturday.Prior to that is the practice session with the melons, which must be the Friday evening at the latest. The room with the melons is searched on a school day, Monday at the earliest. Yet the melons, in all that Nevada heat after lying around for three days, are still fresh looking, and there are no flies or other insects swarming over the juicy remains.

Continuity: Nick counts the bullet holes in the rabbit sign used for target practice and says there are only 9 holes. It shows a flashback to the guy shooting and he shoots a tenth hole in the sign near the rabbit's right arm. This hole is not shown on the sign Nick looks at.

Factual error: Grissom sees an information card for a 17th century suit of Japanese armour (just the card, not the suit itself), and immediately deduces that the suit must actually be from the 19th century, because the Japanese military was formed in the 1860s. That military was westernised, and did not wear armour. There was nothing on the card that falsely referred to that military as being established earlier, or indicated that the suit belonged to it. There was a reference to the "military class", but that was historically correct, and meant the Samurai.

Factual error: They talk about the type of tubes used in HIV tests. There are no special tubes specific for HIV testing alone. It is one generic tube that can be used for a multitude of tests including HIV. It did not seem as though Greg knew that she had gone for HIV testing before he ran the tests, so he should not have concluded that it was the type of tube used for HIV testing, only Catherine or Warrick should have made that connection.

Revealing: In the scene where the CSI team first arrive at the crime scene and Grissom is taking photos, the first photo he takes, you can see that the victim's eyelids flutter a bit.

Revealing: When Sarah and Catherine are looking over the body of the dead clown, in one scene his eye flutters and in the next he distinctly takes a breath.

Continuity: Sam's matchbox, in the interview room, changes from face-forward to back-forward several times.

Continuity: When Nick is showing the burger guy the pictures from the ATM, he holds one up while facing the see-through window. He turns and puts it on the table and it's a completely different picture.

Audio problem: When Sarah is interrogating the police woman, there are some shots from the left side of the woman when she is speaking and her mouth/jaw movement do not match the words that she is saying.

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.

Factual error: The murder kills the two students by drilling a hole through the adjoining wall of the victim's room at floor level, placing 40lbs of dry ice next to the hole, and allowing the sublimating carbon dioxide to pass through the hole into the victim's room and creating a toxic atmosphere. Since the two rooms are at the same air pressure, the only possible way for the CO2 to move from one room to the next is to be pumped through. The melting dry ice would fill up the vacant dorm room where the murderer was before it would flow to the victim's room.

Plot hole: How did the occupant of the room where the dry ice was placed only burn his index finger when he picked it up? His thumb, other fingers, and palm were all undamaged. Was he wearing special gloves that had only the index finger missing when he picked up the dry ice?

Continuity: In the opening scene, the female student is wearing green panties. When the two bodies are found, she is wearing red panties. It was a murder behind a locked door, so no one changed them for her.

Plot hole: The bodies were pink because of exposure to the lower temperatures created by the dry ice venting into the room. None of the CSI team noticed a chill when they entered the room? None of them noticed the bodies were cold to the touch? No one noticed that the body or liver temperatures didn't match with the estimated time of death?

Continuity: During the scene where Catherine goes to her father for the money to save Nick, the character played by Frank Gorshin is talking. At one point he is seen from the front and puts his hand up to fiddle with his collar/neck. The shot changes to a side view and both of his hands are suddenly in his lap with no time for him to have put his hands down.

Continuity: Season 5, Episode "Grave Danger" (parts 1 and 2); there are a number of shots of Nick in the grave which don't match what the CSI team see via webcam. For example when he is speaking into the tape recorder he is holding it above his head from the view inside the grave, but from webcam he is holding it further down.

Continuity: When Grissom is on top of the box, talking to Nick, and he tells Nick to put their hands together, you can see that from shot to shot, the alignment of their hands changes. In one shot (from Nick's angle), Grissom's hand is higher than Nick's, as well as Grissom's index finger lines up with Nick's middle finger. In the next shot, their hands line up perfectly. The alignment changes throughout those few shots.

Other: There is no way a body can be pulled out of a grave the way they showed. It would be a pretty tough trick to pull off with a 6', 200lb piece of lumber and virtually impossible with a body. If it was a solid, non-flexible piece of material, pulling on the rope would drag the item until it hit a ledge and then flip it out of the grave. The body is very flexible, especially at the waist. You'd have to pull a body from above, which they end up doing in real life.

Continuity: There are some major continuity errors in the rescue scene at the end: First, the loader is missing from the side of the grave during several of the shots. Second, the rope changes position. The CSI crew is shown manning the rope, which is running parallel to the ground, ready to pull Stokes out of the grave. (There is a physics problem with this anyway.) The next shot is a close up of Grissom and Brown and the rope is now going up at a severe angle. Brown can barely reach it. (The stuntman can only be pulled out from above, the aforementioned physics problem, and the rope is leading up to the rigging.) Third, immediately after the stuntman is pulled from the grave and right before the explosion, there is no one and nothing near the grave. The loader ends the scene right where it started: on the edge of the grave, bucket up, lights on.

Factual error: In Kiss-Kiss,Bye-Bye, Stokes and Brown are watching surveillance footage when a Trans-Am pulls up on screen. They are able to get the license plate number and when they pull it up, the computer says it is a 1978 Trans Am. When looking at the rear end of the car on screen, it is from a 1979-1982 model where the licence plate was placed on the rear bumper. The 1978 model had the license plate mounted between the taillights.

Revealing: At the end of the episode when Grissom and Archie are listening to the tape from Nick's kidnapping, the screen shows the audio being played. While the audio obviously changes, the lines that sketch what the sound would "look" like don't. In order for the sounds to be different, the lines would have to change too.

Continuity: When Warrick is in the hotel room at the start, the corpse's eyes alternate between open and closed.

Factual error: The CSI staff repeatedly refer to the murder weapon as a tire iron. It is a crow bar or demolition bar. It had a nail pulling head, not a socket for the lug nuts.

Continuity: When Nick "attacks" the kidnapper in the interrogation room, a single tear falls down from the boy's left eye. When the shot changes to a different angle, the tear is coming down from his right eye.

Other: "A Bullet Runs Through It," part 1; while Catherine is in the lab reviewing the audio tape of the police call to dispatch, the dispatcher claims that the first call she received was at 6:34. First, her lips do not match what she is saying and then when they show the screen with the audio playing, the screen reads "first call 5:43."

Revealing: The corpse's eyelids move/blink when the coroner slams the door in the morgue on the season finale of CSI.

Factual error: Brown states that silencers are not able to be purchased and are illegal. Not true. A silencer can be legally purchased providing the proper forms are completed with the ATF.

Factual error: The Titan arum, corpse flower, has some problems in this episode. First, the flower grows naturally in the tropical forests of Sumatra. It is not very likely to survive sitting on a bench in the arid desert sun of Nevada. Second, Brown and Stokes track the smell of decomposing flesh to the flowers on the bench. The question is asked who would have a corpse flower besides someone trying to cover the smell of a decomposing body. To start with, none of the plants shown are flowering. The corpse flowers stench comes about when the flower opens. Then there is the rarity of the bloom itself. The botanical gardens around the world with corpse flowers make a very big event out of the bloom. Also, the bloom lasts no more than 36 hours. And then there is the stench of the bloom itself. That stench lasts no more than 8 hours. All this makes it useless to try to hide the smell of dead bodies with this plant and makes it impossible for Brown to state the plants are giving off the odor of decomp.

Visible crew/equipment: Season 6 - "Bang-Bang": when Captain Brass is shot you can see the squib light appear on his right side just before the "bullet hole" in his shirt.

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).

Continuity: When Doc Robinson is checking the mouth of the suicide victim, when he opens the mouth you see a chipped tooth on the bottom middle, when they show the zoom in to see the sesame seeds there is no chip.

Continuity: When the fannysmackers attack Greg, they smash his car back window out. The next morning, when Warrick and Nick are processing the scene, Greg's car window is completely intact.

Continuity: When the woman first falls through the glass, she obviously breaks it all, toward the bottom of the window. Then her position changes and there is cracked glass in place. We then see several more shots of the dead woman, none of which have matching blood spatter or position of her body.

Revealing: Mickey Dunn is played as a young man by Rik Young with hazel eyes. His eyes are much darker than the older Mickey Dunn, played by Roger Daltrey. Roger Daltrey's eyes are notoriously as 'blue as the sky'.

Visible crew/equipment: You can see the reflection of the filming car on Mickey Dunn's car just before he is arrested.

Continuity: When the victim is hit by the car, it shows him get run over by the front right wheel of the limo. Later on, the body is "thrown 45 feet" and is ahead of the stopped limo.

Revealing: The elements of the miniature crime scene are not glued. They should not be in their respective locations, but all over the floor of the miniature.

Factual error: In the scene where Hodges describes the camera glass to Grissom, he states that camera lenses are curved on one side and flat on the other for a higher refractive index. The refractive index is a property of the glass and has nothing to do with its shape. Also lenses used in cameras can have any shape to them, with even a moderately good lens in a compact camera being made of several pieces of glass with few flat surfaces. This is not modern technology in camera lenses, they have been made like this for decades. Narrowing it down to a non-compact camera by Nikon, Canon or Leica is also wrong, as all manufacturers use these techniques.

Continuity: The short-haired brunette wannabe Lab Tech has a disappearing and reappearing necklace during her conversation in the lab with Warrick.

Revealing: As the phone number 702-555-0192 is supposedly dialed, you can hear in the sound overlay that the last two digits dialed on the touchtone keypad were the same two digits. Then it shows a close-up of the cell phone dialing the above number.

Continuity: Outside the brothel, there is an orange post next to the old man's trailer. Suddenly, it is gone in the second scene where the old man is approaching. In the third scene there is one again, but this time it is an orange cone instead of an orange post.

Continuity: When Brass is interrogating the bartender, there is a cup of coffee in front of him. In the next shot of the bartender's face, the cup is gone. It reappears later on in the scene in a shot from the side.

Visible crew/equipment: The prostitutes take turns telling their stories to Captain Brass in their dressing room. But as the long-haired brunette lady tells her story from a distance, you can see a cameraman in the mirror behind her waiting for his turn to film. When she is shown close up, you can see him closer in the mirror, filming.

Continuity: In the scene just after Hodges and Greg find the seafood they were hunting for in the "Pleasure Providers'" stations or whatnot, Hodges collects a sample of the shrimp by cutting off a little piece. He picks it up with his fingers. In the very next frame, the shrimp piece is in tweezers. Lightning speed.

Continuity: As Brass interviews people at the whorehouse, the curtains switch back and forth several times between shots: pulled back with no light, then stretched out with the sun behind them. They keep switching back and forth.

Continuity: In episode "The good, the Bad and the Dominatrix" When Sara takes the photos of Lady Heather's neck bruising you see 2 distinct ligature marks. When Brass serves her with the search warrant you can see only the remnants of one ligature mark then when she is in Brass' office later she again has 2 ligature marks.

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.

Other: In episode "The good, the Bad and the Dominatrix" When the night watchman is found dead, they say he was shot in the back, there is no bullet hole in his coat.

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.

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: 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.

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.

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.

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: 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.

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.