Best movie plot holes of all time

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Fargo picture

Plot hole: After the kidnappers kill the trooper and then one chases after the 2 eyewitnesses you can see that they are on a straight road (no turns and he catches up to them fairly quickly) but the next morning when Marge arrives on the scene of the 2 bodies she arrives from the direction of the trooper's body (the first shooting). After examining the bodies of the eyewitnesses she asks her deputy "where the trooper is" and the Deputy points in the direction she just came from and states "down the road a bit" how did she miss it? She would have had to have driven right past the trooper's crime scene to get to the 2 bodies.

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Suggested correction: The trooper wasn't visible from the road, he was dragged into the ditch. She also could have been asking if he was in the hospital or morgue.

rswarrior

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Under Siege picture

Plot hole: An American battleship with an active supply of nuclear warheads on its missiles would in no way allow a helicopter full of strangers to land and deploy without those men being screened for any weapons by the security guards on the ship (even if Krill already knows).

jbrbbt

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen picture

Plot hole: Simmons stands outside the 'The Monastery' at Petra (not to be confused with 'The Al Kazneh' at Petra where Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed) and looks at the horizon, and he is able to see the Air Force landing with Optimus by the pyramids. It then appears to take them mere minutes to drive over there. This is outright laughable, even accepting that they make the trip in an alien robot car. Petra and Cairo are separated by hundreds of miles of desert, not to mention Israel being between Egypt and Jordan. (01:45:18 - 01:46:35)

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Cliffhanger picture

Plot hole: This happens after Gabe has killed the guy in the cavern and is reaching for the radio. We hear Frank trying to reach them, so they must be on the same frequency. Then, Hal finds out that a bomb has been planted, grabs a radio from the bad guys and starts yelling for Gabe to get out of the cavern because of the bomb. Why didn't Frank hear any of this on his headset?

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Gothika picture

Plot hole: In the scene where she goes to her house after escaping there is no police tape on the front door even though it is a crime scene. Earlier the police searched and taped her office - it only makes sense that they would do the same to her house.

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Ready Player One picture

Plot hole: In all scenes where special or heavy items are used against the sixers, they are 'zeroed' in waves or circles. This can be seen by their stations turning red in clusters. This makes no sense as the stations have fixed positions, meaning that the sixers would have identical positions in the Oasis and have no freedom or own will to move relative to each other.

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Suggested correction: From a military point of view it makes perfect sense. AOE weapons would be most likely to hit members of the same squads, companies or battalions. It would make sense for squad mates in the oasis to stick together in stations as well. I just watched that scene. As long as the Sixers are trained soldiers or players it makes perfect sense.

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban picture

Plot hole: Harry never notices that the name "Peter Pettigrew" appears on the Marauder's Map, right next to "Ronald Weasley." Way beyond a character mistake, as there's no way that wouldn't be cause for interest. If nothing else, Ron's brothers who had the map for years before giving it to Harry, would most certainly have wondered why their brother was sleeping with a person named Peter Pettigrew.

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Suggested correction: JK Rowling explained why Ron's brothers didn't wonder why Ron was sleeping with a man named Peter Pettigrew. Here is the link: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/11447/why-couldnt-harry-or-anybody-else-see-peter-pettigrew-aka-scabbers-on-the-marau.

jon snow

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Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief picture

Plot hole: In Aunty Em's Emporium, when Medusa turns the older woman to stone, she has hold of Annabeth's wrist and Annabeth cannot free herself. Grover comes along later, as Percy is keeping Medusa busy, and breaks the arm of the statue that is holding Annabeth (near the elbow). Annabeth is able to easily pry the statue's severed arm's grip from her wrist, even though the fingers and thumb weren't broken at all, meaning she could have easily freed herself at any time.

randy29

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Batman Returns picture

Plot hole: When The Penguin is controlling the Batmobile, Batman punches through the floor to take off the transmitter. We still see a video feed of The Penguin. Why? Batman pulled off the transmitter, so there is no reason for there to still be a video feed.

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Suggested correction: We see the Red Triangle gang spends a while fiddling with the Batmobile's workings before installing the transmitter. It's likely they made multiple 'modifications', thus the transmitter was for controlling the car's engine and steering, and the video feed was made possible by another, separate means.

Suggested correction: I concur with the other correction. There are multiple shots showing the gang working on the car and doing other things to it beyond just putting on the transmitter. (You see them playing with wires, moving parts around, etc.) Hacking into the computer/video-feed so Oswald could taunt Batman is likely among the other things they are doing. There's nothing into the movie that suggests taking off the transmitter should (or even could) interrupt the video-feed. The fact that Batman has to punch the screen to get rid of the Penguin's image is another point to the fact that the transmitter itself had nothing to do with the video feed.

TedStixon

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Dr. No picture

Plot hole: It's assumed that Dr. No had Professor Dent slip the spider into Bond's hotel room that night but if it were that easy to do that then why not just hide an assassin in the room to begin with. Someone had to be in the room to tamper with Bond's briefcase, the closet, and possibly the bottle of liquor so just hide an assassin instead of waiting for the spider to kill Bond. (00:40:00)

jbrbbt

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Sister Act picture

Plot hole: Delores is walking into the murder scene at the beginning of the movie just as Ernie is shot. Later, while she is being questioned, she tells the two detectives what the thugs said and did, yet, she was not eavesdropping or looking through the door.

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Wrong Turn 2: Dead End picture

Plot hole: As we have seen in part 1, these inbreds have high tolerance to pain. They are stabbed with different objects, hit by cars, etc. Yet in this movie the mother is in labor and acting like a normal woman giving birth. If they can't feel pain, why is she carrying on like a normal woman?

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Aliens in the Attic picture

Plot hole: In the scene where Ricky is fighting granny, she elbows Ricky in the neck and knocks off the alien control sensor. But later when he goes to the other girl's house, he is once again controlled by the alien joypad (without a sensor on his neck). (01:02:15 - 01:19:40)

Tonycdrive

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Wrong Turn 4 picture

Plot hole: No one wonders what happened to all the staff and patients at that sanatorium? No police ever came there and checked the place out after 30 years? And all the patient records, furniture, etc are still there?

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Silent Hill: Revelation picture

Plot hole: The motivation of the cult in this film - a dark entity trying to birth their demonic god - is completely different from the cult of the original film, which was portrayed as fanatical Christian witch-burners. No satisfactory explanation is given in the film to explain this and in fact the film explicitly implies they are the same cult on several occasions. The explanation that the cult of the original film is some sort of offshoot or different sect of the cult from this film cannot explain this as it is pure fan speculation and conjecture (thus non-canonical) and in fact raises several more plot-holes.

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Despicable Me 2 picture

Plot hole: We see the purple form of the minions be able to devour any kind of metal easily, so how it's possible that El Macho is able to confine them in a metallic cage?

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The Imitation Game picture

Plot hole: There is no logical reason to switch off the Bombe at midnight when the codes change. Firstly, Turing's proving the concept of automated code breaking, so even if it only finds the right settings days or weeks later, the experiment is worth doing, then you can work out how to speed it up to be operationally useful. Secondly, even in steady state operation, cracking "yesterday's" settings (and thus intercepted signals) is still going to be pretty useful in most cases. Threatening to smash the Bombe up at midnight is good stuff to add some movie tension but, in reality, it's nonsense.

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Suggested correction: It's not a plot hole, it's how they operated it in reality.

I have a copy of British Intelligence in the Second World War, by F H Hensley (the official historian and ex-GCCS). I quote page 309 as an example - 'the knowledge of the Tracking Rooms was far from perfect on account of delays in breaking the settings...During the first half of 1943, however, while the traffic was read with delays that were sometimes less than 24 hours, days when the settings proven to be unusual stubborn were not uncommon...Between 10 March Andy the end of June the setting standards for an a further 22 days were either not broken at all or broken only after a long delay.'...'A delay of as much a said three days in learning that U-boats had been ordered to move to new position so could thus mean than intelligence was received too late to be of use in diverting convoys'. So pretty clear that they carried on attempting to crack the settings well after the end of a day so they can process intercepts which might still be relevant.

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Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb picture

Plot hole: In Night at the Museum 2, the parts of the tablet that are missing were attached to the gate to the underworld, which implies it was originally attached to that, and those parts were left behind when it was removed. But in this film we see the tablet getting found on the wall in Ahkmenrah's tomb, and the missing parts are left behind on the wall of the tomb.

Aled Wesker

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The Purge: Election Year picture

Plot hole: When the security guy goes inside the secret hole, there is no way he'd have been able to cover the rug. When the other guys come in the rug is covering the hole.

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American Dreamz picture

Plot hole: Cutting plastic explosive and disguising it as chewing gum wouldn't hide the smell from bomb sniffing dogs.

Mark Poliner

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