Best thriller movie plot holes of all time

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Sudden Death picture

Plot hole: It seems that an awful lot of time and effort was taken in planning this caper, what with all the bombs planted throughout the arena and all, but the terrorist were pulling this during game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. What if the series ended at game six in Chicago?

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Urban Legend picture

Plot hole: During the end the murderer is thrown out the front window of the building. The students leave the building through the front door, but yet there is no body, and that doesn't seem to bother them!

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Beverly Hills Cop II picture

Plot hole: Cain's hitman asks for a match to lit his cigar. Cain gives him the matchbook. When Axel later tests the matchbook for fingerprints, there is only one on it - Cain's. The hitman's fingerprint ought to be on it too.

Jacob La Cour

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The Peacemaker picture

Plot hole: When the diesel train stops in the tunnel, one of the soldiers tells another one how far they are from the spot where the nuclear detonation will take place. Do the math: the distances don't work out. At least one of the trains would have to do over 100mph AVERAGE to put enough distance between them. Military precision, indeed.

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The One picture

Plot hole: Yulaw just killed 3 cops, and went to Gabe's house and hid in the attic. He then pretends to be Gabe and asks TK to get the gun for him. Why didn't he just get a gun from the 3 cops he just killed or from the police car he just stole?

Quantom X

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Freddy Vs. Jason picture

Plot hole: In the institute, Will's friend gets out of his room to get the guard's keys. He couldn't have gotten out of his room because there isn't a handle or door lock inside the room.

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Dressed to Kill picture

Plot hole: After his mother's death, Peter sets a camera up outside her therapist's office, so he can see who goes in and who comes out; he thinks his mother's killer might be one of the doctor's patients - a tall woman with long blonde hair. All he sees is people going in and people coming out, and then he sees her - the tall blonde. Problem: He never saw her going in, only going out, which is critical, because the killer is the therapist - a tall man - wearing a long blonde wig and make-up. Of course no-one says anything about "We never saw her going in, only out, so it must be the therapist!"

kh1616

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Obsessed picture

Plot hole: A detective would never be assigned to a suicide scene, since suicide is not a crime. A detective would only be assigned if the suicide is actually found as a murder. Nor would a detective be assigned to find out about a potential sexual relationship or affair unless it involves a crime.

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Charley Varrick picture

Plot hole: Swapping his dental X-ray records with his deceased partner won't convince anyone that Varrick is dead - then (as now) the patient's name appears on the X-ray.

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Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines picture

Plot hole: The T-X did not hear Catherine in the Animal Hospital when she was only a few feet away and breathing loudly. Considering the scope of some of her technology, one would assume she would easily find her. (00:22:20)

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Suggested correction: This isn't a plot hole. It's just your unfounded assumption. There's no evidence to support the supposition that the T-X has such audio detection capability.

Even if she could detect it, how could she discriminate between the sound of Catherine breathing and that of the dozens of caged animals in the room? That's stretching even fictional technology a little far.

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Gone Girl picture

Plot hole: SPOILER: When Amy comes back, doctors would have checked her non-existent head wound from the "abduction", from where she supposedly lost that much blood. That would and should have revealed all of Amy's lies.

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Ultraviolet picture

Plot hole: Where did Cross get the blood on his hands? The gloves were clean of blood after he looked at the teeth and removed the gloves, so where did it come from?

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Changing Lanes picture

Plot hole: When Ben Affleck is meeting with the man who changes Samuel Jackson's credit record, the man remarks that Samuel Jackson should not have told Ben Affleck that he was in insurance. Samuel Jackson never told Ben Affleck that he was in insurance.

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Mission: Impossible picture

Plot hole: In the air vent, we see a rat. Wouldn't rats in the vents set off the alarms on a regular basis, because the lasers were on the upper side of the vent?

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The Thing picture

Plot hole: Through this film (and its predecessor) it is established that the creature imitates its victims perfectly, having all of their knowledge and memory. At the end, when the female lead tells the male lead she knew he was human because of his earring, he reaches for the wrong ear, confirming he is The Thing. Even if The Thing couldn't reproduce the earring, it would have known which ear it was supposed to be in.

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Suggested correction: It is also established in this film that the creature cannot perfectly imitate inorganic materials; the tooth fillings, metal plate, etc. Kate knows that Carter is The Thing and asks him a trick question about his earring to confirm it. The fact that The Thing reaches for the wrong ear means that it didn't know where the earring really was because it cannot perfectly imitate inorganic materials. There is no mistake here.

THGhost

The mistake has nothing to do with The Thing not being able to imitate inorganic material. The mistake is The Thing has all the memories and thus should know which ear was pierced based on these memories.

Bishop73

This goes with my theory that he was actually human because he didn't try to assimilate her when they we're alone and far away from people, and he didn't change when he was threatened and accused which was backed by (potentially false if the theory is correct) evidence which would make it defend itself.

You're obviously wrong here. The Thing imitates the human perfectly including the memory and I'm pretty sure that if you only have one ear pierced you'd know which one is it, therefore the imitation would know.

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Jumping Jack Flash picture

Plot hole: When Terry gets back to her computer, after escaping from the spies and cops, the time is after 3pm New York time. If Jack actually is in Russia or Eastern Europe, wouldn't he have already gone to, and been killed at, that 5pm meeting?

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X-Men 2 picture

Plot hole: When the Drakes (Bobby's family) arrive home they are acting quite naturally, until they find Wolverine there and get a start. Later on we see that they had parked their van in the driveway right behind Cyclops' car, which Logan and company had borrowed and parked there. Wouldn't they, seeing a strange car in their driveway, be suspicious or at least enter their house asking "Bobby, are you home?" (00:52:45 - 00:59:15)

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Into the Night picture

Plot hole: When Diana turns up at her director friend's house she finds it crawling with cops as his girlfriend Christie has been murdered and the house is now a crime scene. She explains she lent Christie a coat and is there to pick it up - and a cop helpfully finds it on the floor and hands it to her. Are we to believe that a homicide policeman will hand over an artifact from a murder scene to an unidentified woman without making any attempt to confirm her identity, or even if the coat is even hers!? They don't even ask.

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The Butterfly Effect picture

Plot hole: When Evan is in jail with the religious prisoner trying to get him to help him get his journals back he goes to the scene where he is drawing that homicidal picture in kindergarten, but he gets up and puts the spikes that holds documents through his hands, creating a stigmata-style scar. The religious guy in the cell with him is so amazed because of this he thinks Evan is a prophet and he decides to help him. If Evan had gone back in time and got those scars on his hands, he would have changed the original timeline and would have arrived in jail with those scars the whole time. Some people try to correct this using the "If I can create scars, then can I fix them?" statement Evan made to defend the mistake and suggest he can create instant scars but he was using the word "scars" to refer to the negative events; not literal scars on his body. The scar he got when he burned himself in the past didn’t magically appear on him the moment he returned from the past; it became part of a new, slightly altered timeline (just like the scars on his hands should have been) and it let him know he can change history.

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Suggested correction: This isn't necessarily a correction so much as a possible explanation. It's possible that the religious inmate (I think his name was Carlos) just simply didn't see the scars on Evan's hands when he first came to the prison in the timeline where he got the scars or Evan knew to hide them in the scar timeline (due to the fact that it was the sole purpose of him going back) and due to his fanaticism he didn't question him a second time.

Nope, after jamming those things in his hands Evan simply came into the prison with the scars already on his hands and would have never thought of showing the religious guy his powers using that particular moment in the past to convince him, or doing what he did a second time as he already had done it. It doesn't matter if the religious guy didn't see them before, they won't be the object of Evan convincing him. He would have had to try it some other way, each and ever time. That how this time travel works and its definitely a plot hole that it worked as it did, whilst it shouldn't have. Of course, it's a time travel movie and they never make sense.

lionhead

Additionally, the inmate was looking at Evan's palms when Evan traveled back, and when he returned to the present, the inmate remarked that the stigmata marks came out of nowhere.

Phaneron

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War (2007)

War picture

Plot hole: Spoiler! We find out that "Rogue" is actually Tom Lone, who killed the real Rogue and destroyed his face to prevent identification, then had plastic surgery and went underground to get revenge. But how is the body never identified? Lone was a cop, they'd have blood type, DNA etc. on file, which would have proved the body wasn't his.

Jon Sandys

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