Best mystery TV plot holes of all time

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Hustle picture

Getting Even - S4-E3

Plot hole: At the end of the episode, having conned Veronica Powell out of £600,000 - the purchase price of the house and contents they sold her - Danny taunts her by telling her that they did nothing wrong, implying that she has no legal recourse to recovering her money. He's wrong. One of the gang, Billy Bond, bids against her in the auction for the house, boosting her bid from £220,000 to her final offer of £600,000. Bond has no money and no access to any, and no assets that could be realised to cover the bids he made, something that would be easy for a lawyer to prove. It's called shill bidding and it is very illegal indeed. Since Bond and Ash Morgan (who gave Powell false information during the auction, spurring her on to bid against Bond) are both standing next to Danny when he makes his announcement I find it hard to believe that a shrewd, hard-hearted businesswoman like her would not realise that she had been conned and would not get her lawyers and the police on the case on the spot.

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Jonathan Creek picture

The Sinner and the Sandman - S5-E2

Plot hole: Ian Avery-Cooper loses his lottery ticket which is immediately picked up and appropriated by Leonard Corbyn. However, Avery-Cooper immediately reports the loss to the shopkeeper who sold him the ticket. All lottery sales staff are trained in what to do under these circumstances, because it happens a lot - they cancel the lost ticket and issue a new one. Since Avery-Cooper used the same numbers every week this would not pose a problem, but even if he didn't the ticket would be recorded on the seller's computers and could be precisely reconstructed. This would be even easier since Avery-Cooper reports the loss within a minute of it happening and we see that he has the receipt for the sale in his hand. Corbyn's stolen ticket would be worthless and Avery-Cooper would be able to claim his rightful winnings. If nothing else Ian could have simply bought another ticket with the same numbers.

PEDAUNT

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Columbo picture

The Conspirators - S7-E5

Plot hole: Columbo is in the Pauley's hotel room trying to figure out how the bottle landed upright next to his body after he was shot. Devlin - the murderer - turns up unannounced and uninvited. How did Devlin explain that he knew where the victim was staying when he was murdered? Media reports might have mentioned the name of the hotel but there is no way they would have included the room number.

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Law & Order picture

For Love or Money - S12-E3

Plot hole: At the end of the episode McCoy and his team tape a conversation between Melissa Corbin and her mother Lorraine in order to record her admitting to murdering Alan, her first husband. Trouble is, she says nothing incriminating. The closest they get is Lorraine asking her why she killed Alan, and she replies "You didn't have to sleep with him." That means nothing, and in fact Lorraine says absolutely nothing of any legal significance during the entire conversation.

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Charmed picture

Be Careful What You Witch For - S2-E22

Plot hole: When teenage Prue has run away with the demon, and Phoebe and Piper find her in the park, teenage Prue is 'killed'. Her sisters drive her home to get Leo to heal her, but shouldn't they have just been able to call to Leo to orb to them when Prue was first hurt, and heal her in the park, and save driving back to the Manor, risking Prue dying?

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

Suggested correction: I see orbing to the park but he didn't heal her, she was already dead and he can't heal the dead, that's why the genie brought her back - that's what Phoebe wished for.

But if they would have called for him right away - he would have been able to heal her before she died. However at this point in time I don't think they knew how to call for him.

Yes, they did know how to call him. At least Phoebe did, because when Piper got sick in the hospital from the disease she inherited from the illegal fruit, Prue and Phoebe screamed out Leo's name until he appeared in the attic.

They did, they first tried it in the episode when Piper was sick with an exotic disease and dying in the hospital.

It bothers me that they never used it again until Season 4. When Prue was held by Abby, Leo could have helped if she called, and so many other times... so annoying.

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Monk picture

Mr. Monk and the Astronaut - S4-E14

Plot hole: There is no drug in the world that could render a healthy adult unconscious for two days with a single dose, but let's go with the dramatic licence and allow that there is. Any such drug would be instantly detectable in any one of a dozen toxin screens carried out during an autopsy, and isn't someone going to wonder how a comatose woman hanged herself?

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Agatha Christie's Poirot picture

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - S3-E1

Plot hole: Can't fault this massive plot hole to the adaptation, but to the source material; the culprit (forgetting the stupidity of writing an incriminating letter detailing the plan to murder someone, and put it in a desk he shares with her) since there are people outside the room that are about to enter, tears the letter in 3 neat vertical strips, rolls them, puts them in the vase on the mantlepiece, and then opens the side door to slip away...instead of simply pocketing the letter and going through that same door. Nobody was going to search him or anything and could have burned it, torn it into confetti, anything, later. It takes way way longer to do what he did, which needed him to stay there in the room increasing the chances of being found out. And of course he and his accomplice do not retrieve the letter after.

Sammo

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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation picture

Bad Words - S4-E19

Plot hole: A central plot device in this episode is that there is no six letter word made up of the letters EXVIN, so the murdered man cheats at the word game by playing a word he knew to be inadmissible - exvin, a wine connoisseur who no longer drinks. Since he is supposed to be a stone cold killer player at this word game, don't you think he would have thought of Vixen? Sara Sidle points that word out later - why wouldn't a world champion word game player have figured it out, using a safe, common word and avoiding a possible challenge?

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

Suggested correction: If you watch the episode (timecode 00:36:20), in the flashback it shows exactly why he did not use vixen. There were 2 spaces between the "x" and the "n" on the board, so Adam played a bluff and used the fake word exvin.

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The Haunting of Bly Manor picture

Show generally

Plot hole: If the Lady of the Lake walks every night to her room and kills those in her path, why didn't Flora and Miles' parents die in their room by the hands of the Lady in the Lake when they first moved in?

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The Blacklist picture

Berlin: Conclusion - S1-E22

Plot hole: At the end of this episode Red takes off his shirt revealing his burned back, which leaves us to think that he might be Elizabeth's dad. However, this particular mark should have been noticed and written down in Red's prisoner file when he was taken into custody the first time (Episode 1). In that case Elizabeth would already know that Red is burned and could have asked some questions about it.

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Fringe picture

And Those We Left Behind - S4-E6

Plot hole: The very ending scene where Peter (in this version died in the ice as a boy so Walter's wife never met him) takes off some of the dust covers then picks up a toy airplane. The toy airplane he got as a child from ... Walter's wife when she was trying to placate him in an earlier episode for trying to run "home". This toy airplane wouldn't have been his as a child in this version of the universe. (00:42:00)

juarlita

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The X-Files picture

Darkness Falls - S1-E20

Plot hole: At The End, a man is attacked while standing in the light of his automobile's headlights. Supposedly, though, the bugs were terrified of light. (00:38:45)

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Lupin picture

Chapter 1 - S1-E1

Plot hole: The protagonist gets in the exclusive, multi-millionaire, invites-only auction because the invitation is on a printed letter that he faked. This means that the guards at the entrance don't have a guest list to check, and since nobody knows who this person is, the staff does run a background check on his identity when he makes the first outrageous bid...by looking his name up on Wikipedia. That's mighty low standards of security, especially for an auction that was supposed to be for a selected audience and the most important in France.

Sammo

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Castle picture

After Hours - S5-E8

Plot hole: Beckett and Castle lose their cell phones and wallets and are being chased by the mob. Beckett steals a cell phone from a car but can't use it, since it is locked and then shut off remotely. Any cell phone can always dial 911, whether locked or blocked from service.

Grumpy Scot

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The Mentalist picture

Strawberries and Cream: Part 1 - S3-E23

Plot hole: In the heat of killing fake Red John, Jane forgot to notice that Craig O'Laughlin never knew about the mall setup to lure Red John. So definitely Gale Bertram himself was in contact with the serial killer which he may have missed first up, but all that time in jail afterwards he could have figured it out.

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Vigil picture

Show generally

Plot hole: Burke is murdered so that Doward will be sent out to replace him, as both hold the same rate of CPO sonar operator. But there are many CPO sonar operators in the Royal Navy. How can the GRU be so sure that Doward will be the man chosen to replace him?

Necrothesp

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Supernatural picture

Hook Man - S1-E7

Plot hole: When Sam and Dean realise they need to destroy the hook to stop the Hook Man, they find out that it has been reforged into something else. They state it needs to be set on fire to stop him, but if it was melted down and reforged then it has already been set on fire and the Hook Man shouldn't be latched on to it in the first place.

brianjr0412

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24 (2001)

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