The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory (2007)

26 corrected entries in season 1

(13 votes)

The Pork Chop Indeterminacy - S1-E15

Corrected entry: Sheldon asks Missy why she doesn't tell her friends that he is a toll taker on The Golden Gate Bridge. There are no toll takers on the Golden Gate Bridge. Tolls are paid by credit or debit card, a prepaid account or by invoice to the registered car owner's address. There is no way Sheldon would not know this.

Correction: S1-E15 aired in May, 2008, but the Golden Gate Bridge didn't switch to all-electronic toll collection until March 2013, and the decision to convert to electronic toll collection wasn't made until January, 2011.

Correction: Sheldon was just suggesting that being a toll taker or something of that profession is as ridiculous as her telling everyone he was a "rocket scientist." Even if the statement was indeed true it doesn't affect my point.

The Peanut Reaction - S1-E16

Corrected entry: At the apartment, after pretending to eat some of the granola bar, Howard throws the bar and wrapper down on the coffee table. He does not pick it up again before they leave the apartment. Later, at the hospital, he takes the bar from his pocket and eats some.

pinkwafer

Correction: No, he breaks a chunk off the bar and stuffs it in his back pocket so it would look like he took a bite. This is what he removes at the hospital.

Grumpy Scot

The Big Bran Hypothesis - S1-E2

Corrected entry: Sheldon is wrong about the physics of pushing the furniture up the stairs. This is not just a question of work (energy) but also of power (energy/time). Since he and Leonard cannot produce an unlimited amount of energy per second, they may need to push it slowly, contrary to what he asserts. This is a very serious and very basic error for Sheldon considering he has a PhD in Physics.

Correction: This is wrong. Not only does he not mention energy anywhere, the commenter is not correct. This is not a mistake, just a different way of saying it (even though he didn't, rewatch the episode and find anything about work there).

Correction: Both spellings are correct. I checked thirty six online dictionaries and they all list "collectable" and "collectible" as the correct spelling.

Correction: The figure he's holding is a genuine Star Trek figure in the correct packaging. It was produced by Playmates Toys and marketed in the Star Trek The Next Generation packaging as "Lieutenant Commander Geordie LaForge Movie Uniform"

Correction: The figure in the episode is specifically a 'movie uniform' outfit, as labeled on the packaging. Many of these made their way into the standard 'Next Generation' line of figures. This is not an error.

The Bat Jar Conjecture - S1-E13

Corrected entry: Sheldon is very particular about sitting in his spot and not allowing anyone else into his spot. We learn later on in the series that he has been this way since Leonard moved in. However at the very end of this episode, we see Leonard sat in Sheldon's spot and Sheldon sat in the arm chair. (00:19:00)

Ssiscool

Correction: At the start of the scene, Sheldon attempts to sit in his spot, but Leonard doesn't let him, because his Physics Bowl trophy is sitting there and then Leonard moves slightly onto Sheldon's spot to make fun of him using the trophy. Presumably, he is just sitting on the arm chair because Leonard wouldn't move and he is just sitting in that seat reluctantly.

Casual Person

Correction: The rotating of the cans is due to the various camera angles being used in the shot. Same with the straws.

Ssiscool

The Pancake Batter Anomaly - S1-E11

Corrected entry: When Leonard is standing outside the apartment his hair is tucked under the band of the wireless cam he has on his head, but when he is crawling on his hands and knees through the apartment his hair is out from under the band and is hanging in front of his face.

Jacy Sorkenn

Correction: They also find a gift bag in this time so it's clear there has been a gap of some time. Enough to sort the headband out.

Ssiscool

The Dumpling Paradox - S1-E7

Corrected entry: While the group are trying to figure out how to play Halo without Howard, Leonard jokingly suggests cutting Raj in half. Raj responds, "Oh sure, cut the foreigner in half. There's a billion more where he came from." But Penny is in the room with them, so there's no way he should be able to talk in front of her, or even if he's been drinking, the fact alcohol helps him isn't realised until the next episode, so the fact he can speak with her there should have surprised everyone, including him.

Correction: Penny is on the other side of the room and not in the conversation. Raj's comment was an aside to Howard and it can be reasonably concluded that nobody else could hear.

Knever

Correction: In Halo 3 you can change around some features of the remote, including which trigger fires grenades and weapons.

kristenlouise3

The Tangerine Factor - S1-E17

Corrected entry: Penny storms into Sheldon and Leonard's apartment to throw her boyfriend's iPod out of their window and yell at her boyfriend who has just left. Raj then finds the iPod on his way in. However, according to the layout of the building with the front door being to the left of the elevator, the front side of their apartment building would be on Penny's side, so she should have thrown it out of her own apartment window. The window through Sheldon and Leonard's apartment would lead to the back.

07marsh

Correction: There's no indication from the scene that she's catching him as he is stepping out the door. He could have had his car parked behind the building and was on his way round to the front.

Jay32183

Correction: I have just reviewed this scene. Sheldon makes only one movement with his right hand as Howard walks in. Between shots he was able to walk from behind the group to the side. This gives him ample time to move his right hand back down.

XIII

The Tangerine Factor - S1-E17

Corrected entry: When Penny and Leonard are talking to Sheldon about their date, Sheldon refers to Schrodinger's Cat, stating "The cat in the box is both alive and dead, until you open the box and find out." Yet the precise point of the Schrodinger's Cat example is that the cat cannot be both alive and dead. Schrodinger was arguing against physicists of the time who claimed that certain subatomic particles were special and could be in opposite states at the same time; his argument was that you can't make small systems special because a large and obvious system (e.g., the cat) could always be made to depend on the state of the smaller one, and for a large and obvious system to be in opposite states simultaneously is ridiculous. Now, this is pretty obscure and the misunderstanding of Schrodinger's Cat experiment is widespread, but this is Sheldon we're talking about.

Moose

Correction: This is not a factual error on Sheldon's part. He explicitly says that Schrodinger's experiment was an attempt to explain the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, which implies that the cat could be both dead and alive until the box is opened and observed. While he doesn't explain that the point of the experiment was to critique the prevailing thought of the time, his overall point to Penny fits within the context as given.

The Dumpling Paradox - S1-E7

Corrected entry: Sheldon states that reductio ad absurdum is "the logical fallacy of extending an argument to a ridiculous extreme and then challenging it". This is incorrect; this is the straw man fallacy. Reductio ad absurdum is the entirely valid inferential technique of demonstrating that the consequences of an argument being true result in a contradiction.

Moose

Correction: Sheldon is correct. "Reductio ad absurdum" (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence. Proof by contradiction is a specific form of Reductio ad absurdum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum A strawman argument is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html The major difference between the two is that an Reductio ad absurdum argument presents the opponent's claim correctly but carries it to an extreme. The Strawman argument presents the opponent's claim incorrectly.

Guy

Correction: Raj enters the room while Penny is in the bathroom about to take a shower. Raj does talk but, doesn't yet know she's there.

Correction: This point is addressed earlier in that episode. Leonard explains that he can talk once they're all mingled in with males (as in the audience).

Knever

Correction: Technically, when you use a network for the first time, there are many steps involved like creating a VPN, matching IP addresses, etc, hence the delay. Once you have connected and used it at least once, the go-betweens don't exist, hence there is no delay.

The delay wouldn't be that long.

Ssiscool

Correction: Penny says "whose head did I just blow off?" This can merely be an expression for killing someone. Not necessarily a literal reference.

Ssiscool

The Grasshopper Experiment - S1-E8

Corrected entry: Leonard wonders aloud "I wonder who's going to tell his (Sheldon's) parents they're not having grandchildren." Leonard and Sheldon have been sharing the apartment for long enough for Leonard to know that Sheldon's father has been dead for a number of years, but it is at least since S1E04, when Sheldon's mother says "God rest his soul" while talking about his father.

MFWills

Correction: Episode S01E04 ended with Sheldon asking his mother if Dr. Gablehouser is going to be his new daddy and her saying "We'll see." So he could be the other "parent." Or his mother could have met someone else between the episodes.

Captain Defenestrator

Pilot - S1-E1

Corrected entry: At the end of this episode when Penny asks to use Leonard and Sheldon's bathroom for a shower, when she goes down the hallway towards the bathroom/bedrooms, she turns past the bathroom (the door that is visible from the living room) and turns right and goes towards the bedrooms.

Jack Adams

Correction: Penny could simply be going to grab a towel from the linen closet before having her shower.

kristenlouise3

The Excelsior Acquisition - S3-E16

Plot hole: In Series 1, Episode 7, "The Dumpling Paradox, " Sheldon makes an oblique reference to his financial status: "Frankly, if I could afford the rent, I'd ask you [Leonard] to leave, " meaning he cannot pay the rent on his two bedroom apartment by himself - not that he doesn't want to, he can't. However, in "The Execlsior Acquisition, " we find that he does not even cash his pay cheques. He doesn't even deposit them into a bank account - he leaves them in a drawer in his desk. In Series 2 Episode 14 "The Financial Permeability", he lends Penny a large amount of money from a huge bankroll he just happens to have lying about - again, without cashing his pay cheques! He is obviously independently wealthy. Either he doesn't have enough money to afford the rent or he has enough to work without being paid while practically giving large amounts of cash away. Can't be both.

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

Suggested correction: Not being able to afford doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't have the money, especially a man like Sheldon. He works with a budget and he sticks to it. In his budget he has a certain amount set aside for rent, anything more than that and he can't afford it alone.

Nonsense. If he was sticking to a "rigid budget" he wouldn't have even thought of lending a hopeless credit risk like Penny a single cent. Instead he throws a huge bankroll at her without even discussing a repayment plan.

Rubbish, I stick to a strict budget but still have the money to lend to close friends. Like Penny is to him.

He might have different budgets for different things. People could get a higher margin because they could be of more use to the scientific mind of Sheldon.

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The Euclid Alternative - S2-E5

Question: Though it comes up in other episodes as well, this one is focused on Sheldon needing a ride everywhere he goes because he can't drive, not to mention his not being welcome on the bus. Of course, this story element would be nonexistent if there was a simple answer, but it does beg the question: Does Pasadena not have taxicabs?

MFWills

Chosen answer: It does. The variable cleanliness of the cab and the habit of taxi drivers to engage customers in small talk would be too much for Sheldon to handle, and not an option for him.

Captain Defenestrator

Answer: Sheldon DID finally use a taxi when going to the airport to see and propose to Amy in New Jersey.

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