Best crime TV character mistakes of all time

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Law & Order: Criminal Intent picture

Anti-Thesis - S2-E3

Character mistake: Nicole Wallace has murdered and stolen the identity of Professor Elizabeth Hitchens, who was Australian. While speaking to Detective Goren she refers to her life in Melbourne, pronouncing it the American way : "Mel-born." No Australian would do such a thing - it is pronounced "Melbun." A detail-obsessed knowall like Goren would pick up on that immediately.

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Suggested correction: Not everyone who is Australian says 'Melbun' when referring to Melbourne.

Utter rubbish. I lived in Australia for thirty five years. Nobody - absolutely nobody - calls it "Mel-Bawn." It's "Melbun." Incidentally, this also applies to the American pronunciation of the capital of Queensland - "Bris-bayne." It's pronounced "Brisbun."

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Hustle picture

The Road Less Travelled - S5-E6

Character mistake: The plan hatched by Carlton Wood and Harry Fielding makes no sense at all. They recruit three people who they think were victims of Micky Bricks' crew, asking them each to deposit a cheque for £1,000,000 into an account that their accomplice Alfie will show to Albert Stroller to "prove" his wealth. They are on a hiding to nothing. A bank statement will always show a ledger balance - all funds including uncleared cheques - and an available balance, the amount of money in the account that can be withdrawn at any one time. Alfie's account will show an available balance of nil and will convince nobody of anything. A city wideboy like Wood would know this and would ask for the deposits to be made by account transfer or even in cash, or he could even cut out of the middle men and prepare a fake bank statement. A ruthless businessman like him would have no trouble at all arranging a simple thing like that. The way he does things is uncharacteristically clumsy and includes nothing but loose ends.

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Monk picture

Mr. Monk Visits a Farm - S5-E14

Character mistake: When Randy Disher is having Chinese food in his apartment with his new girlfriend in 3-12 "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", he gets a fortune stating that he is going to get money from his uncle, and says that he doesn't have an uncle. In this episode Randy inherits a farm from his uncle who appears to have committed suicide, but was actually murdered.

BrooklynGirl418

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Suggested correction: Randy says when that uncle dies that they were never close, so his leaving him the farm comes as a total surprise. It's still a character mistake, however, Randy is established as the sort of person who could "blank out" a relative that long-lost.

Captain Defenestrator

Randy says he can run the farm because he went there and helped his uncle every summer.

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Columbo picture

Suitable for Framing - S1-E5

Character mistake: Art expert Dale Kingston describes Goya as 'the penultimate artist'. "Penultimate" has nothing to do with greatness or artistry, it means second to last, and nowhere during his speech does he indicate that Goya is 'second to last' in anything to do with the discussion. In the context he uses it the word is completely meaningless.

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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation picture CSI: Crime Scene Investigation mistake picture

Too Tough to Die - S1-E16

Character mistake: Seven minutes into the show, Sarah Sidle is about to do an internal sexual assault exam/kit on an unconscious victim in the hospital, Sarah picks up a metal speculum and says aloud to the victim (in a presumed moment of empathy), that she "never really liked this part of my yearly exam. These things are always freezing" referring to the speculum in her hands. She then brings a speculum to her mouth and begins to blow open-mouthed on it two times, forcing her hot breath on it to warm it. She then begins to insert it into the victim as the scene cuts away. This is pure stupidity, as no trained CSI would ever contaminate the tool like this. Sarah just added her own DNA to the speculum via her breath so any saliva or body fluids are now on the speculum what she is about to use on this patient, who is now also exposed to any STDs from Sarah.

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Criminal Minds picture

What Happens at Home... - S6-E10

Character mistake: After the murder that takes place while the team is at the church meeting, they gather together to talk about narrowing down the suspect list to the people who didn't show up to the meeting. Spencer shows up with a stack of papers and says 18 suspects didn't show up. We then see his actor break character and almost laughs when he looks over at Ashley, whose actress too almost breaks character from laughing.

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White Collar picture

Live Feed - S5-E10

Character mistake: When Neal tells Rebecca about an Indian Idol and describes the idol to her, she tells him it's the Hindu Idol of Seeta, the goddess of wealth. Actually the idol is of Goddess Laxmi.

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Brooklyn Nine-Nine picture

DFW - S5-E17

Character mistake: When Gina tries to set up Rosa on a date, Rosa mentions the last person Gina set her up with (Justin) was a dork who rode a Yamaha motorcycle. She says "he might as well have picked me up in a station wagon." Rosa's bike is a Yamaha R1.

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The Blacklist picture

Anslo Garrick, Part 1 - S1-E9

Character mistake: As Reddington sets up the blood transfer between himself and Ressler he inserts the intravenous line in Ressler's arm first and then in his own arm. This way the remaining air inside the line gets into the recipient's body and could very well kill him. Judging the expert way he handles the set up he should know to first insert the IV in his own arm, let the line fill with blood and then insert the IV in Ressler's arm.

Lenore Scott

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Suggested correction: That amount of air would probably not cause any problem. It actually takes quite a lot of air to cause any issue.

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Blue Bloods picture Blue Bloods mistake picture

The Uniform - S2-E11

Character mistake: While handcuffing an auxiliary officer in his apartment, there is a poster on the wall reading, "attention military personal..." Personal is misused. It should read "attention military personnel." (00:16:02)

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Elementary picture

Possibility Two - S1-E17

Character mistake: They are in the interrogation room questioning the fiancé of the scientist Natasha when the captain says, "the blood we found at the scene of your fiance's murder, it didn't belong to Bobby Cordero." The characters name was Benny Cordero, which the captain says correctly a few lines later. (00:33:25)

More Elementary character mistakes
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Suggested correction: When Diggle is walking away from Felicity, he is still talking to her but it looks like he is talking to Nyssa.

Stephen Edmonds 1

People have already tried to correct this mistake. It is valid. In the scenes prior, Nyssa says Oliver will do what it takes to kill her and Oliver says "tonight, Nyssa Al Ghul faces justice." Nyssa is there to bring the team the news that Oliver is going to try to kill her. Felicity says "Oliver wouldn't", meaning Oliver wouldn't try to kill Nyssa. Diggle says "I think what she's [she being Felicity] trying to say to say is that Oliver would never do anything to hurt you" [you being Nyssa whom Oliver is going to try to kill]. He is meant to say "Nyssa." Otherwise the entire line means Nyssa or Laurel are there to convince Felicity that Oliver would never do anything to hurt Felicity.

Bishop73

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CSI: NY picture CSI: NY mistake picture

Communication Breakdown - S5-E19

Character mistake: When Mac, Stella, and Danny are trying to determine where the fired bullet entered the train car, none of them are wearing rubber gloves. But even though they're not handling any evidence, they're still processing a crime scene. (00:05:00)

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Suggested correction: Theoretically correct, but it can be argued that the only evidence present is the bullet (which has DNA and prints burnt off when fired) and the body (which can only be handled by the MEs) gloves are not required.

Andy Benham

What utter rubbish. No CSI would enter a crime scene without first putting on latex gloves - it is a carved-in-stone rule.

Exactly. Since Mac, Stella and Danny were processing a crime scene, they would need to wear gloves because without them, they would have contaminated a crime scene by not only getting their fingerprints over everything but, if one of them got a cut or scrape, their DNA would also be thrown into the mix and any defense attorney can call them out on their carelessness and have any evidence thrown out.

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Psych picture

Ghosts - S3-E1

Character mistake: When Gus goes to check the source of the creepy phone call, he finds Shawn who immediately ends the call before saying anything. Later in the episode, Haversham says he heard Shawn say "Gus?" before ending the call.

Bhelkweit

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Breaking Bad picture

I See You - S3-E8

Character mistake: When Hank is brought to the hospital with gunshot wounds, the ambulance and its two EMTs are met outside by two doctors. One doctor says "Let's get him two grams of oxygen. What's his hemoglobin?" This episode's technical adviser was perhaps away for this scene. How much exactly is two grams of oxygen? Orders for administering oxygen would be given in liters, such as two liters per minute (LPM). The line is presumably meant to be 'two liters of oxygen'. (00:02:25)

Super Grover

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Quantico picture

Answer - S1-E14

Character mistake: The diploma on the wall in Connor's office for the University of Kentucky, "university" is misspelled "universisty".

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JAG (1995)

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