Best crime TV plot holes of all time

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Batman: The Animated Series picture

Two-Face (2) - S1-E18

Plot hole: When Two-Face and his men have broken into the new D.A.'s office to find dirt on Rupert Thorne, one of his men finds a file detailing Thorne's record of Swiss bank accounts, money laundering, blackmail and payoffs that Two-Face tried for years to subpoena when he was D.A. When Thorne finds out that Two-Face has the file, he states that he will be ruined if Two-Face gives the file to the police. If Two-Face tried unsuccessfully for years to subpoena the file, then in all likelihood that means Thorne paid off the right people to prevent the subpoena from happening, so Two-Face giving the file to the police shouldn't be a problem for him. Additionally, if giving the file to the police would be all that it would take to bring Thorne down, then the new D.A. could have already done so. If the new D.A. was also paid off by Thorne, then it wouldn't make sense for Thorne to allow the D.A. to keep the file since they could easily lose the file or even double-cross Thorne. (00:10:45 - 00:14:20)

Phaneron

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Father Brown picture

The Daughters of Jerusalem - S2-E6

Plot hole: Dinah Fortescue's fingerprints are supposed to be on a teacup but she's wearing gloves in the flashback. So how did they get there? (00:24:35 - 00:33:34)

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Batwoman picture

Down Down Down - S1-E3

Plot hole: The demented villain is not keeping tabs on the elevators! The rescue teams can move freely around the tower, the elevator doors can be pried open with ease like Sophie and her husband do, so his threat is completely empty and ineffective, somewhat surpassed in idiocy only by Batwoman's response, who during the ultimatum gets back home and keeps busy spraypanting the suit and finding a wig for her date with the crazy guy at the top of the hour rather than taking 10 minutes or so to free the people trapped in the 7 elevators first, unopposed as she is, and go challenge the idiot later when he has no more hostages. It shoud also be noted that the villain made the "hostage" situation and the "one hour" ultimatum known only to Kate! The police and the Crows have no reason at all not to intervene with full force to check out who the crazy bomber guy is, but the police does not swarm the building and nobody finds odd to see a madman on top of the building under terrorist attack.

Sammo

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The Listener picture

The Bank Job - S3-E1

Plot hole: When Toby, McCluskey, and the others are looking at the bank's security camera footage, Toby asks to zoom in on Newman's tattoo, and then Toby asks if he can borrow someone's cell phone so he can ask Oz about the bank manager. It cuts to Oz at the hospital as his cell phone rings - when Oz picks up his cell he presses the button and promptly says, "Hey, Toby, what's up?" It's quite impossible for Oz to have known that it was Toby calling him if Toby was using someone else's cell, and he did not even have the chance to hear Toby's voice. Those telepathic abilities belong to Toby, not Oz.

Super Grover

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Weeds picture

The Godmother - S1-E10

Plot hole: If Andy really did enlist into the Army Reserves and "forgot about it" like he claimed a warrant for his arrest for desertion would have been issued, which the police would have seen when he was arrested for pot possession in the episode "Lude Awakening." After seeing the warrant, the police would have called the Army, and he would have been returned to military control to face desertion charges. He would not have been released and sent a letter a few weeks later simply telling him to report for duty or face military prison; the option to report for duty would have no longer been available when he was gone long enough to get put in deserter status.

AD

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Ashes to Ashes picture

Show generally

Plot hole: At the very end of series two, there was a shootout during an armed robbery. WPC Granger somehow had access to a firearm. Surely the fact of her uniform rank would not have allowed this.

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The Twilight Zone picture

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street - S1-E22

Plot hole: The street sign in the beginning is all wrong: it faces the camera rather than the street where the story takes place. In a typical American city, street signs are almost always placed in the direction of the street they are indicating, so drivers on the other street in the intersection know what they are turning onto or passing. In other words, the story is not set on Maple Street! Maple Street is the intersecting street at the end of the road the story is set on.

mirtom

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Justified picture

When the Guns Come Out - S3-E6

Plot hole: Raylan has a hunch that Winona took the money again from the evidence room, so checks the locker, finds the empty box, and assumes she stole it. When they returned the money in the previous season, he said "Put it back anywhere except for where you found it", so as to make it easier for someone to assume it had been misplaced, rather than lost. So the locker being empty is hardly a smoking gun for him to assume Winona's taken the cash.

Jon Sandys

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Dexter picture

Are You...? - S7-E1

Plot hole: It's out of character and against his code for Dexter to kill Viktor at the airport. Airports have security cameras everywhere (you can see one on the ceiling when he is wheeling Viktor into the unclaimed baggage storage), and using the unclaimed baggage storage as the kill room is equally unwise, because any airport employee could walk in at anytime and catch him red-handed. Dexter was caught murdering Travis Marshall by Deb just hours before, so if anything, he should be even more cautious.

Phaneron

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Wu Assassins picture

Ladies' Night - S1-E8

Plot hole: The captain's wife tells him that she's taking his daughter with her, not giving him a chance to even say goodbye. During the episode it turns out that she's angry because he missed lunch with them, and when the Metal Wu texts the boss, it also turns out that all this just happens at 1:11 AM! It does not make much sense: she waited over 12 hours to complain to her husband, and she's driving her kid in the middle of the night.

Sammo

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Brooklyn Nine-Nine picture

Halloween III - S3-E5

Plot hole: Amy lets Scully place the witch in the break-room, but how could she have known that after captain Holt steals the crown out of the locker, he would go there? And not for example goes back through the window he came from.

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Martial Law picture

Deathfist 5: Major Crimes Unit - S2-E15

Plot hole: The whole case is solved because of astronomical coincidences, since the culprit is someone related to the actor, who is teaming up with the investigators for an entirely unrelated reason. Los Angeles is kinda too big for this sort of 'coincidence'. Moreover, had they committed the crime any other day (there was no particular reason) there would have been no connection.

Sammo

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Vega$ picture

The Lido Girls - S2-E16

Plot hole: Michelle and the girls are winning at Baccarat every time due to a system where they know the cards in advance by seeing through them. However, all betting in that game is done before cards start coming out of the dealer's card chute onto the table. So even with their cheating system, they realistically couldn't always win, as the cards are not already face down on the table.

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Narcos: Mexico picture

Camelot - S1-E1

Plot hole: In the bathroom, Kiki Camarena tells El Azul he has blood on his shoes. Kiki doesn't even raise an eye to this. This is not deliberate either - we can tell Kiki isn't new to busting drug lords - so why would he miss this?

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Bosch picture

The Four Last Things - S3-E2

Plot hole: A major plot device is Harry's fingerprints on a whisky glass at the murder scene. We see the glass being taken after he drinks from it at a bar. Why are there only his prints on it and not the bar staffs'? And why does no-one wonder why the victims prints aren't on it as well? If they think it is an attempt to frame him, why do they not even check if it matches any other glasses in the apartment or is an odd one out?

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Line of Duty picture

Episode #4.1 - S4-E1

Plot hole: When DCI Roz Huntley kills Forensic Coordinator Tim Ifield the crucial piece of damning evidence is her DNA under his fingernails after scratching her arm. Problem being, at the time of his murder, he was wearing surgical gloves. (00:56:40)

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The Event picture

Show generally

Plot hole: Episode 1: All passengers on cruise ships have a passenger card with their name and cabin number imprinted. They are not just identical key cards like in hotels.

Jacob La Cour

More The Event plot holes

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