CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Pilot - S1-E1

Continuity mistake: When Holly is first in Grissom's office and says that she feels light headed, Grissom offers her a chocolate-covered grasshopper and takes one for himself. Holly asks, "Is there a grasshopper in there?" and Grissom's right hand is near his waist. When the shot changes, Grissom merely smiles and eats the grasshopper, but his hand started off much closer to his chin without there being an opportunity for him to move it.

Cool Change - S1-E2

Deliberate mistake: Willows collects fingernail scrapings from Holly's left hand in the morgue for DNA matching to Holly's shooter. In the flashback, Holly uses her right hand to scratch her assailant while her left-hand remains gloved. (00:32:47 - 00:36:22)

missylv81

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation mistake picture

Cool Change - S1-E2

Visible crew/equipment: When Nicky is dragging her ex-boyfriend across the hotel room floor you can see green screens outside of the balcony doors and windows. (00:39:45)

Cool Change - S1-E2

Factual error: There are some majors problems with the "jumper's" crime scene. The girlfriend bashes the boyfriend on the back of his head. He bleeds out all over the balcony (she cleans up the blood with towels) but the body leaves absolutely no blood behind on the carpet (It's white\off white so blood would stain badly). She drags his body across the carpet and carpet fibers get stuck in his watchband by the adjustment knob. Dragging a body across the carpet would snag fibers on the opposite side. The CSI crew experiment and conclude the boyfriend was pushed. The blow to the head killed him instantly (coroner's report): therefore, the girlfriend would have dumped the body. Dumping a dead body over a rail would provide a different trajectory than pushing a live person and would not have matched their experiments. Finally, the boyfriend is fairly muscular and heavy. The girlfriend is petite. It would be an extremely difficult task to stand a lifeless body up at the balcony rail and flip him over. (If she could have lifted him up and over the rail, she should have been able to carry him to the balcony instead of dragging him.)

Rlvlk

Cool Change - S1-E2

Plot hole: Grissom examines the victim's body and immediately rules it a homicide because he was wearing eyeglasses. He states that suicide is a cowardly act and no coward wants to see their death and would have removed their glasses before committing suicide. What a completely unfounded, and unscientific, statement. Suicide being an act of cowardice is his opinion and not a scientific fact and they don't work off opinions: they always state how they work off the evidence.

Rlvlk

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

Suggested correction: This is correct, that was not scientific on Grissom's part, however this wouldn't be the last time Grissom formed an unscientific opinion that he was sure of based off what he thinks to he true as have the rest of the CSIs in several cases throughout the series. This also happens in real life; people involved in crime scenes making assumptions thus making errors off it. It wasn't right; but I would hardly call this a plot hole as this is something Grissom legitimately believes.

Friends & Lovers - S1-E5

Audio problem: When Gil is talking to the drug dealer in the desert, he refers to him as a 'dumb punk'. But this has been dubbed over as what he actually called the dealer was a 'dumb prick' which you can tell by Gil's lip movements. (00:23:50)

Who Are You? - S1-E6

Deliberate mistake: A plumber is looking for a leak under the floor of a house, and sees the bones of a hand sticking out of the concrete wall at the side of the house. The concrete is flat, this is because in construction boards are put up and the concrete is poured in, so how were the fingers sticking out of the boards during construction? In reality, the fingers would be inside the concrete, the workman would see nothing, no plot for CSI.

tolby

Blood Drops - S1-E7

Factual error: The show falls into the Hollywood myth on polygraphs. Jesse is given a polygraph test after pleading guilty to the 4 murders. He answers all questions, except the last one, honestly. The 4 traces on the polygraph show no real movement on these questions. On the final question, Jesse lies and all 4 traces spike. If polygraphs actually did that, they would be admissible in court. But the reality is, it is the opinion of a highly trained operator that decides if there is a lie. The average person could not look at a polygraph results and point out a lie. There is no huge, visible spike. The producers could have replaced the 4 traces with a red\green light: Green is an honest answer and red a lie.

Rlvlk

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation mistake picture

Blood Drops - S1-E7

Continuity mistake: At the end, when Tina is shown the photos of Brenda they are in a pile of three. The camera cuts to a long shot and there are two in a row. Cut back to Tina and they are a pile of three again. This happens on and off throughout the scene.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation mistake picture

Blood Drops - S1-E7

Continuity mistake: Sara takes pictures of Brenda with an UV light camera. The camera used to film the episode for broadcast is barely able to show the walls in the background as tiled. When the UV pictures of Brenda are used in the interrogation, the photos show Brenda's back up against the tile wall.

Rlvlk

I-15 Murders - S1-E11

Factual error: Grissom and Catherine are looking through a microscope and discussing a microscopic specimen (heart of frozen body). In reality they would not see anything as all microscope objectives are missing on this instrument (the microscope nose-piece is totally empty.). (00:21:00)

Fahrenheit 932 - S1-E12

Deliberate mistake: When the runner is shot in the back of the head in the SUV, the bullet has come out the front of his head. However, blood is seen on the windshield instead of a bullet hole where the bullet would have continued to go through the glass.

Joel Amos Gordon

Boom - S1-E13

Revealing mistake: At the end of the episode, Grissom pins the newspaper article about the security guard's death onto the bulletin board and the camera zooms in on it. The article is three paragraphs long, however it is the same paragraph of text repeated three times. (A DVD player with a zoom feature can confirm this.) (00:44:30)

Boom - S1-E13

Character mistake: At the end of the episode when Grissom puts the news clipping up, the word "sacrificed" is spelled as "sacraficed" in the article.

Pilot - S1-E1

[To a room full of dead corpses, after Holly Gribbs was frightended into hysterics.]
Gil Grissom: You assholes!

More quotes from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Sounds of Silence - S1-E20

Trivia: For those who don't (or can't) read American Sign Language, at the end of the episode, Grissom says to Dr. Gilbet is that his mother lost her hearing when she was eight years old. He once asked her what is it like to be deaf, and she told Grissom (who loved to swim) that it was like being underwater. She also taught him that being deaf does not make one inferior to others. Dr. Gilbert then replies that she teaches her students the same lesson.

Cubs Fan

More trivia for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Play with Fire - S3-E22

Question: Why would Catherine take the blame for the lab explosion? If anyone was to blame it was Hodges. Since he accidentally turned on the hot plate and even admits that sometimes it gets switched on by others accidentally, if he had bothered to make sure he didn't switch it on before leaving the room, the explosion never would have happened.

More questions & answers from CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.