Best animated movie plot holes of all time

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Ferdinand picture

Plot hole: How does the little girl Nina know Ferdinand's name if only the animals can communicate with each other? They're all calling him Ferdinand before she "names" him that.

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Bolt picture

Plot hole: At the start of the movie, a great deal is made of the boom mic that enters the shot. This is ridiculous, because Bolt's view would not be restricted to what was onscreen, he'd have a perfect view of the person holding the boom mic (as evidenced by it not being stable). There's no possibility of him not seeing the person holding the mic either. As Bolt completely and utterly believes the world he lives in, and thinks the situations he finds himself in (saving Penny) are real, someone holding a boom mic would break the illusion for him. In all instances in the movie where an outside force (i.e. a dog handler) interacts with him, Bolt never gets to see the person handling him (handler approaches from behind), the boom mic operator however is literally right in front of him.

GalahadFairlight

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Suggested correction: He wasn't paying attention and considering that his focus was only on the "action", how the hell would he notice a boom mic when he's trying to protect Penny? His "reality" is never broken even AFTER he's in his trailer.

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Despicable Me 2 picture

Plot hole: Lucy jumps from the airliner and flies her hang-glider straight to Eduardo/El Macho's Cinco de Mayo party to find Gru. How did she know Gru would be there? He had no intention of going and only did so after he was pestered into it by the girls on the very night of the party, so he couldn't have told her himself. Shouldn't she have gone to his house instead? (01:09:50)

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Suggested correction: Lucy is hang-gliding into the town from about 12,000 feet. Gru's bizarre car would be visible for miles. She would see it parked outside El Macho's and realise instantly that he (and therefore, the girls) were at the party. If she was heading for Gru's house it would be a simple thing to change course in midair.

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Shrek Forever After picture

Plot hole: In the second Shrek movie, we find out that Fairy Godmother and the King had a deal that Prince Charming would save Princess Fiona from the keep, hence becoming her true love and breaking the curse. In the fourth movie, we start with Rumple monologuing about how he almost had the Kingdom by signing a deal with the King. Why would the King be so desperate to try and reverse the curse by signing a deal when he knows he has a prior attempt through Prince Charming, assuming it would take the same time for the messenger to return with news about Charming and Fiona either way?

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Suggested correction: It is stated in the intro that when "days turned into years" of waiting for a Prince to rescue Princess Fiona, the king and queen resorted to more desperate measures - enter Rumpelstiltskin.

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Ice Age picture

Plot hole: In the Ice Tunnel scene, Manny, Sid, and Diego come to a stop on the vertical block of ice. It breaks, and they slide through a 'field' of icicles sticking out of the ground. Their 'sled' is shaved down to nothing, indicating that the icicles are sharp. After going through the same tunnel as the baby, how did the baby make it through that field? (00:46:53)

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Suggested correction: A possible reason for the sled slowing down is not due to the ice tunnel but the sheer several tons of weight the sled had on it while it was sliding through the tunnel.

Good point. Without the weight, the icicles would had slowed down the sled instead. And since the baby hardly weighs anything at all, it wouldn't have been able to slide through the field, it would've just collided with the front icicles and stayed there. But it still leads back to question of how the baby got through the field.

Rassdyt

Not true, their "sled" is destroyed by the icicles.

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How to Train Your Dragon picture

Plot hole: When Astrid gets on Toothless for the first time, Toothless takes off uncontrollably and tries to scare her. Hiccup seems to have no control over him at this time. How is that so if with the new tail fin, Toothless cannot fly without Hiccup's precise control of the tail fin? That whole sequence would have fallen apart. This mistake was even admitted to on the DVD commentary. (00:53:35)

Quantom X Premium member

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Inside Out picture

Plot hole: Joy and Sadness are stuck outside of the control center. They are trying to figure out how to get back, and encounter maintenance workers who are discarding old memories. The maintenance workers show that they have the power to send memories back up to the control center to be played. Why couldn't they send the core memories that Joy had back up the same way? Better yet, why not use that method to send Joy and Sadness back up to the control center? The director of the film is even aware of the plot hole, and said "Yeah, well then we wouldn't have a third act," before explaining how the idea of recalling memories was added in later, "box[ing] [the screenwriters] in a corner a little bit."

manthabeat Premium member

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Suggested correction: Even if they do send the core memories up to headquarters, they wouldn't be able to get joy and sadness through the tiny gap that the workers send the memories up. Joy has to be in headquarters for Riley to be happy.

This mistake is large enough that the director is aware of it. I think that more than qualifies it to be on this site.

manthabeat Premium member

Suggested correction: Joy is a control freak, she wants to return the memories herself. She doesn't even imagine that the workers can do such a thing.

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The Lion King picture

Plot hole: Scar tells the pack he didn't make it to the gorge in time to help Mufasa. However Zazu was with them at at the gorge. He could have easily told Serabi or any of the other lions on the numerous times he spoke with them, exposing Scar.

Ssiscool Premium member

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Suggested correction: Actually, Zazu wouldn't honestly say that Scar was lying; he left Scar at the gorge, but for all he knows, when Scar talks about not getting to the gorge in time, Scar could just mean that he couldn't find a safe path into the gorge to help Mufasa and Simba escape.

Joey221995

So Scar would say he couldn't get to Mufasa in time. Not the gorge.

Ssiscool Premium member

Suggested correction: But it wouldn't have confirmed that he killed Mufasa.

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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn picture

Plot hole: In Bagghar, Allan knocks out Haddock by hitting him on the head from behind. Later, Haddock tells Tintin it was Allan who knocked him out - how would he have seen him?

LadyArcher

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Despicable Me 3 picture

Plot hole: Bratt's bubble gum is strong enough to withstand projectiles like bullets, lasers, and even strong enough to carry a tanker into the sky but can't withstand Gru's body weight when he crashes into it before "happy birthday Dan".

jbrbbt

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Brave picture

Plot hole: During the scene where Merida gives her speech on "breaking tradition", her mother, as a bear, moves silently behind the majority of the crowd, so they don't see her. Fair enough. However, Merida and her father's clan are all looking in the same general direction (towards the crowd) while she's speaking - how does no one from Merida's clan see a bear moving at the back of the room?

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The Princess and the Frog picture

Plot hole: When Charlotte kissed Naveen at the end, she should've turned into a frog as well because she was no longer a princess.

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Suggested correction: How? She was no longer a princess.

Tiana turned into a frog because she kissed Naveen without being a princess, so Charlotte should have, too.

Anson Gordon-Creed

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Toy Story picture

Plot hole: The spaces in the lattice used as hand holds in the blue plastic crate in which Woody is trapped are easily large enough for him to squeeze through. He could have escaped without too much trouble.

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Hotel Transylvania 2 picture

Plot hole: In the beginning, vampires are shown to be invisible in photos but then they seem to appear in videos like security footage and social media posts.

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Free Birds picture

Plot hole: When Jake first meets Reggie, he tells Reggie that the Great Turkey told him everything about him. Later in the movie, when Reggie goes back in time and introduces himself as the Great Turkey to a young Jake, he only tells Jake to find the "Pardoned Turkey" but never said that the pardoned turkey's name was Reggie, so there's no way the adult Jake would know Reggie's name when they first meet.

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South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut picture

Plot hole: The kids dig a hole and a spotlight goes over it. Wouldn't the operator notice the hole in the ground? (00:56:30)

Ssiscool Premium member

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Moana picture

Plot hole: When Moana first meets Muai, she opens her necklace to tell him he will restore the heart. Muai sees the heart but doesn't get scared until he sees it again on the boat. He should have been scared the first time.

Jeremy Buerkle

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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 picture

Plot hole: San Franjose was in California on the Pacific Ocean, Swallow Falls was in the Atlantic Ocean. How did Flint and the gang get back so fast?

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Suggested correction: He built a flying car... with a massive amount of boosters. Why wouldn't he be able to build something else?

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Brother Bear 2 picture

Plot hole: The whole plot of the first "Brother Bear" was that Kenai had to go to that mountain to become human. But at the end of this movie, the spirits were about to change Kenai back into a human in the middle of a cliff, which makes the entire first movie completely pointless.

Brad Premium member

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Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa picture

Plot hole: The newspaper headline showing young Alex being rescued from a crate is dated April 8, 1972. In the next scene, we see young Alex dancing in the Central Park Zoo, and watching him are Marty, Melman and Gloria as baby animals. This makes no sense at all. In the first film, Marty celebrates his tenth birthday. Key word: tenth. It is also known that the scenes of the main characters as adults take place in the present i.e. Alex confessing to breaking Marty's iPod. Seeing how the animals age quicker than humans, Marty, let alone his three friends, would have to have been born in the mid-1990s and the flashback scenes could not have taken place in 1972.

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