Best drama TV plot holes of all time

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More Hey Arnold! plot holes
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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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

More Batman: The Animated Series plot holes
Mobile Suit Gundam picture

Destroy Gundam! - S1-E2

Plot hole: Char is able to escape from Side 7 simply flipping a couple grenades he had on his person (shaped like the old style pineapple grenades) who tear huge holes into metal walls with a visible thickness in excess of a meter, including the outer wall of the space colony a salvo of Mega Particle Cannon from the battleship didn't break. If Zeon has such explosives at their disposal, then maybe they should not fight with battleships and giant robots, but simply have footsoldiers toss tiny grenades at the enemy. (00:15:00)

Sammo

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Gossip Girl picture

Show generally

Plot hole: In the pilot episode Chuck mentions his mother speaking as though she is still alive and he knew her but in later seasons it is reveled that she supposedly died while giving birth to Chuck and he never knew her.

gossipgirl

More Gossip Girl plot holes
Roswell picture

Pilot - S1-E1

Plot hole: In the lab when Liz makes the slides of her cheek cells and the cells from Max's pencil, the first time she doesn't add stain and the second time she does. If she's going to be a molecular biologist she really ought to learn to apply techniques consistently. (00:07:30)

Phoenix

More Roswell plot holes
American Horror Story picture

Season 1 generally

Plot hole: It's been established that if you die on the property, you remain as a ghost for all of eternity. However, in Season 8, Moira's bones are retrieved and buried in a cemetery so that her ghost can escape and join her mother. However not all the ghost's bones are buried on the property, we know for sure that the Black Dahlia was not buried on the property and it's not likely Tate, Vivian, Ben or some of the others are buried on the property as well so they should not be tied to the house.

ctown28

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Tate's victims from the school shooting are ghosts who can move between different locations. There's nothing to suggest that the ghost of the Black Dahlia isn't merely choosing to be in the Murder House rather than being tied to it. The same goes for Vivien and Ben, since Violet is going to stay in the house, so might they.

Tate's victims cannot move around freely to different locations. The only time that they can is on Halloween, when all ghosts can move around freely but then return to their death location at the stroke of midnight. "OP" is a valid mistake.

ctown28

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The 100 picture

Unity Day - S1-E9

Plot hole: The grounder's leader Anya states that the missiles (flares) burned a village to the ground. If this were true, the flares couldn't have flown very far, otherwise that village would have been too far away for the grounders to know about. In a previous episode, when you saw the flares from space, it was obvious the flares traveled hundreds if not thousands of miles away. (00:31:30)

Mike Walker

More The 100 plot holes
X-Men: Evolution picture

Grim Reminder - S1-E11

Plot hole: In the end of the episode, Wolverine is seen recuperating after surgery removes the microchip in his brain, and his head is bandaged. Performing invasive surgery on Wolverine's brain isn't possible, since that would require going through his adamantium-infused skull and no conventional material is capable of that. Only a less invasive technique (such as going through the cranial sutres or cranial foramen) would have been effective and that most likely would not have required Wolverine's head to be bandaged (especially with his rapid healing mutant ability).

More X-Men: Evolution plot holes
It Takes a Thief picture

Boom at the Top - S2-E19

Plot hole: While Mundy is trying to disarm the briefcase bomb in the study, his time-sensitive work is interrupted no less than 6 times by people barging in from the party out front. The plot device adds comic relief, but there's no earthly reason why he couldn't have locked or barricaded the door in the first place. (00:36:00)

Jean G

More It Takes a Thief plot holes
Zoey 101 picture

Zoey 101 (Pilot) - S1-E1

Plot hole: There is no way that Zoey could've seen those boys hanging Chase's bike from a tree. She was way far from the window to even recognize his bike, and when Chase looks through the window, the bike was just now being lifted from the ground.

JuliaD

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The Legend of Korra picture

Reunion - S4-E7

Plot hole: Guards at a security checkpoint attack Varrick and Bolin, because a wanted poster identifies them as fugitive traitors. The problem is that poster cannot have been there. Varrick and Bolin escape in the previous episode (Battle of Zaofu) but are captured minutes afterwards. (So, no posters needed.) The next day, they escape again by blowing up their imprisoning train car. Their captor, Bataar, thinks they are dead. Indeed, Varrick intended to die. Later, Bataar is actually shown reporting them dead. One might argue that the poster wasn't a wanted poster, but one that warned people about the empire making an example of the traitors.This argument is too flawed: The empire had many examples already, some very high-profile. And a propaganda poster must be placed in plain sight, not in a security booth corner especially designated to let security guards compare the passing individuals. (00:14:00)

FleetCommand

More The Legend of Korra plot holes
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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Once Upon a Time picture

New York City Serenade - S3-E12

Plot hole: When talking to Hook about the photos, Emma states he could have photoshopped them to make it look like she and Henry were in Storybrooke, however she had taken them directly from Henry's camera and had them developed. So Hook had no way to photoshop the pictures from inside the camera. (00:27:00)

Marj Spiritdove

More Once Upon a Time plot holes
Beverly Hills, 90210 picture

The End of the World as We Know It - S9-E23

Plot hole: Noah cancels the club's scheduled Monica concert because Dylan pays him to have her give a private performance to Dylan and Gina instead. He seems really excited and proud of himself for some reason. Even if Dylan paid him much more than he would have received from the gate (which is likely), this could cost Noah money in the long run. Many customers would probably get angry and decide to stop frequenting a place that would cancel a concert at the last minute for no good reason. Then again, Noah was never exactly a genius - in business or otherwise.

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Mad Men picture

Shut the Door, Have a Seat - S3-E13

Plot hole: Pierce getting fired would invalidate his work visa. His existing visa would have been for overseeing the management of a foreign firm with a US presence. He would have had to leave the country and reapply for an investor visa. (00:41:25 - 00:42:00)

More Mad Men plot holes
Magnum, P.I. picture

The Case of the Red-Faced Thespian - S4-E12

Plot hole: Magnum is incredibly slow to unveil the charade at the base of the episode; he does it based on something marginal (Robin Masters does not do "research" for his novels), but he completely overlooks the key plot point of 1-17 "J. Digger Doyle" was that he does not use a typewriter, but he dictates the novels.

Sammo

More Magnum, P.I. plot holes
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

More Justified plot holes
Strike Back picture

Project Dawn #10 - S2-E10

Plot hole: After Grant finishes her video confession, Latif puts the video recorder in his cargo pant pocket. A few scenes later, he's blown up without ever having taken the video camera out of his pocket. He was at the epicenter of the explosion and he and his clothes were very much on fire, which should have completely destroyed the video camera and its recording.

More Strike Back plot holes
Skins picture

Pure - S7-E3

Plot hole: In Part 1 look closely when Cassie is showing Maddie the 'Oblivion' website that contain pictures of her. Some of the pictures are those we actually see being taken of her in Part 2 (the following episode). How could they be on the website before they've even been taken?

Liam D

More Skins plot holes

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