That moment you notice a huge plot hole in the story

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I have some, mostly from the XMen films all of which I've watched recently. Spoilers below, stop reading now if you haven't watched them.

- Origins: Wolverine:
Stryker is holding Silver Fox's sister hostage as leverage. Silver Fox could have touched his hand and asked him to release her sister at any time since that's her mutant ability, biatch!
In the end Deadpool fight, he has massive katana length, adamantium blades come out of his wrists. How is he supposed to use his elbows when they're retracted?
Adamantium can't be damaged, even by other adamantium, yet an adamantium bullet somehow can.
We meet Emma whose skin turns to diamond as a teenager. But Emma Frost was about ten years or so older in First Class, ~30 years earlier. Are there two mutants called Emma who turn to diamond?

- X-Men: In the last fight, Wolverine sustains some injuries which heal up quickly. He clutches Rogue's unconscious form to him (for some reason her powers were off initially without explanation despite that she's alive) and she absorbs his healing factor. Why then do his wounds reopen after they've already healed? More on this phenomenon below.

- XMen 2:
Wolverine is shot in the head by a trigger happy cop. He falls down and the bullet eventually "pops out". His skull is bloody adamantium! Did it somehow find the same exact hole Stryker made? If so, why didn't it cause any brain damage?

A lot of these ones are plot hole/continuity issues made evident by other parts of other films:
XMen 3: We see Moira McTaggert here near the beginning and post-credits. She's 30ish years old. In First Class, she's mid-late twenties. How did she barely age in four decades?
XMen 3: Magneto gets de-mutanted in the film's climax but has his full powers back in The Wolverine's post-credit scene. If the "cure" was only temporary, why was it even called a cure, let alone prompt all out war? And why were the XMen defending the people who weaponised it anyway?
XMen 3: In the post credits scene, Charles reawakens in a new (previously brain dead) body. Why is he still in a wheel chair, and how does he look exactly the same?

The Wolverine:
How does venom disable Wolverine's healing? Does it rewrite his genetic code? Why does he have to "give up" his gift to give it to the Silver Samurai? Wouldn't a drop of blood or cheek swab have contained all the info it needed? Our understanding of genetics makes the Wolverine plot very hard to accept.

DofP:
How does Quicksilver have over the ear headphones in the 1970s? Considering the speed he is moving at, how is it the tape is a) not jogging and skipping and b) playing at normal speed. He did everything in less than a second of realtime yet plays much more than a second of audio.
There's a "temporary" cure that heals Charles' legs at the cost of his powers. As mentioned above, how the hell do they unheal themselves after the damage is healed?

Not plot holes, but completely unexplained phenomena that really deserve explaining:
- The post credits scene of The Wolverine with Magneto (fully powered) and Charles (alive)...when did it happen? They knew about the sentinel trouble, yet clearly the apocalypse hadn't arrived yet. Were they meeting him and warning him of danger 10 years before it happened?
- Speaking of, Xavier and Magneto, alive, powered, together on the same side. No explanation, nothing!
- DoFP: Wolverine has adamantium claws again in the future. How did he get them, considering they were cut off in The Wolverine.
- Kitty somehow developed a pretty useful ability to send people's minds back in time without explanation.

A few others I could mention but they can wait for another time. I haven't even started on MCU films yet.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure/Bogus Journey

Spoiler

In the movie we are told that as they travel throughout history then the present time will continue without them, and this sets a limit for how long they can spend traveling. But they are able to travel back to the present day; we even see them speak with past versions of themselves. What would have stopped them from gathering any number of historical figures and returning to the point when they first took the time machine? This is the exact trick used in the second movie when they spend sixteen months becoming rock experts and then return to the moment of the battle of the bands.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Clock Tower 3 had a lot of plot holes, making an already bad game even less bearable.

To summarise: The game is about a 14 year old girl who goes back home when specifically told not to because she will die.

Red Alarm #1: Throughout the game, she is constantly in danger. But she doesn't leave. The bad guys are incredibly bad at their job, and make no effort to chase her as long as you hide your ass behind a transparent fish tank (really, that happens) and you can leave at any time. But our amazing 14 year old hero refuses to.

Spoiler

Her grandfather tries to lure her into a trap and kill her. He's a pretty smart guy, but instead of just pretending that everything's ok, he puts on a black costume and an opera mask and tries to rape her.

Red Alarm #2: He just created a ton of problems for himself. Why would you basically tell her something is amiss?

The main character still does not leave when this happens.

Also, the main character inexplicably gains professional archery skills in order to fight ghost serial killers from the 40's with a magical bow created from a magical bottle and she turns into a magical girl.

 

[DaWaffledude]

Pacific Rim. Do I even need to say it?

Spoiler

The sword. Seriously? WHERE WAS THAT ALL THOSE TIMES YOU WERE GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED? Why did you ONLY use it ONCE??? They don't even TRY to justify it's absence up until that one scene in the movie or after the fact. The movie is already written like a mediocre anime, but that one scene just plunged it into bad anime territory for me. If I wanted gratuitous robot violence with baffling plot points, I'd watch G Gundam, because at least it's hilariously nonsensical.

Actually, after the sword is used the first time, they do continue using it.

Beforehand, they would have avoided using it as anything but a last resort to avoid spilling radioactive Kaiju blood everywhere. Sure, they could have made it a bit more clear how dangerous Kaiju blood can be, but it's not exactly a plot hole.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Why did I immediately think of Evangelion 3.0 again? Please, make it stop!

The difference between plot hole and just stuff left unexplained is a bit foggy with these, but a few of them are legitimate plot holes.

Spoiler: #1 The biggest one

Why in the name of cheeseburger Jesus doesn't Misato IMMEDIATELY go after Rei once Rei's taken Shinji in her custody? It's not like she doesn't have a reason to, know exactly where he's being taken, what he's going to be used for, and all the means to do it.

Spoiler: #2 The earliest one.

Why won't Misato explain anything to Shinji? It's not like she doesn't know what Shinji can inadvertedly do, have him by the nads with an instakill device strapped to his neck, and a pretty big fucking reason to keep him as calm as possible.

Spoiler: #3 Kaworu

Just... Kaworu. He's been hyped up for 2 movies, and has tons of screen time devoted to him and his relationship with Shinji. But I've seen 3.0 twice, but can't for the life of me figure out what his importance to the plot was at all. Getting Shinji to pilot Eva again and making... whatever Impact we're on at now? All well and good, but since that never happens and Kaworu ends up DEAD we never know what the stakes were or how it was supposed to affect anything. Also, he's an angel, and can seemingly take the kill-collar off with no effort at all, but in the end lets it kill him because... why?

Spoiler: Not really plot holes, just stuff I'm most confused about

Why haven't Asuka and Mari matured at all? They've spent the last 14 years in post-apocalypse, gotten out of their teens and are pushing 30 now. And yet they still are the exact same people they were last time, except Mari's kook factor, which was kind of interesting in 2.0, has in this film gone over 9000 and she's become nothing but a fanservice object with behavior so utterly inhuman I wouldn't be surprised if she was held in a padded cell when off duty.

Iron Man 3.

Spoiler

No one in Alaska recognizes Tony Stark, one of the wealthiest, most famous and succesful businessmen in the world and also a superhero who freaking flew a nuke into space in The Avengers, and in the very same movie has called the Mandarin out on live TV whilst surrounded by cameras? But hey, if he's wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie, then apparently that makes you just Joe Blow by default.

Apparently the alleged Mandarin's hiding place can be easily broken into by one guy with a bunch of homemade gadgets, despite being possibly the greatest secret in the world right now, and certainly the most vital in the real villain's plan. Gah, stupid stupid movie!!!!

Thor: The Dark World, which was also awful.

Spoiler

Heimdall, who's supposed to be the all-seeing eye of Asgard, can apparently detect warships the size of buildings only if they're 50 meters away from him. Furthermore, he says at one point that he can't detect the dark elves, but we never find out what this exactly means. Can he not see them in the literal sense? Can he not see them through his universe-o-scope or whatever? Can he not feel their presence because they're in hiding?

I remember in the end that we see Loki sitting on Odin's throne. What does it imply? That Loki is now the ruler of Asgard, having taken the throne under the guise of being dead? If so, did he kill Odin, or just... I dunno, lock him up? If the former, how did he do it? If the latter how did he do it? Loki himself hasn't been depicted as exactly super-powerful (though on the other hand, neither has Odin), and he's all by himself if I remember correctly.

I could perhaps point out many more in Thor 2, should I bother to watch that movie again, which i won't, because it was bad. The only good part were the end credits and the occasional funny moments.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The T-1000 traveling back in time in Terminator 2. Kyle Reese specifically said in T1 that only living tissue can pass through, and that the only reason the first terminator could go was because it was surrounded by living tissue. The T-1000 is head-to-toe metal. Oops!

Always made me wonder why they didn't put a massive gun inside some living membrane pouch thing to get it back in time.

According to the first film, the facility was blowing up around them, giving them very little decision time. Which makes you wonder how they were able to send back two more terminators, one of which was reprogrammed, for the sequel. Time travel... right?

 

[Silvanus]

XMen 3: In the post credits scene, Charles reawakens in a new (previously brain dead) body. Why is he still in a wheel chair, and how does he look exactly the same?

A similar thing seems to happen in Final Crisis. Darkseid inhabits the body of a human man, but it just looks identical to standard Darkseid, and it's easy to forget it's not.

...Actually, Ra's al Ghul inhabits the body of White Ghost in The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, but he looks exactly the same as Ra's did before in all the stories that came afterwards. This makes a little more sense, since White Ghost is Ra's' son, at least.

 

[Qwurty2.0]

Spoiler

They didn't need to, in the prequel comics it shows that the kaiju they were sending through the breach were doing enough damage before dying that they could keep sending the same category in over and over to get the job done. Humanity making the Jaeger's changed that, so they started sending in larger and more dangerous categories to adapt and overcome the Jaegers. To the point at the start of the movie there are only 4 Jaegers left, and three get absolutely curb stomped by the most recent Kaiju i.e Cherno Alpha getting over-powered by and even larger Kaiju, Leatherback. And Crimson Typhoon's three arms countered by Otachi's two arms and prehensile tail. Even the best Jaeger at the time, Stryker Eureka was put offline by Leatherback's EMP. The only reason that Gypsy Danger was able to beat them both was because they hard already destroyed it in the prologue of the movie, so they didn't send a Kaiju that was adapted to it.

Spoiler

The reason they know how many jaegers there are and what their specifications are is that that scientist drifted with them, right? That being the case, they should know about Gypsy.

Spoiler

Good point, but maybe he didn't know about Gypsy, his field seemed to be Kaiju and their brains, not Jaegers and their pilots. He might not have known it was even Gypsy that was being hauled into the base, considering how heavily damaged it was after the fight with Knifehead. And maybe if he did know it was Gypsy, he might not have known its specifications and weapons and what might have been added to it (e.g the sword). It's a lot of "maybes", "ifs" and "mights" though.

Spoiler: Lots of other wonderful Pacific Rim plotholes!

In the (20-min long) lead in to the title, Gypsy Danger hides its entire body under water whose depth only goes to its knees. Knifehead also pops up only a couple hundred meters from her position, how did it not see (with its eyes specifically designed to see under water) not notice a Jaeger sitting on its ass in front of it.

(Speculation): Why do they only send one Jaeger to take on Knifehead, or any of the Kaiju, for that matter? After Riley comes back and Marshall says there is only three other Jaegers, Riley says "I didn't know it was this bad.", implying that there used to be many more Jaegers. Why not make sure the Kaiju will go down by overwhelming them with superior numbers? Are the Jaegers destroyed faster than they can be built (hence a "shortage")? Was the Alaska base simply undermanned at the time?

How is Otachi able to maintain stable flight with wings that are supporting both itself and Gypsy Danger on the edge of Earth's atmosphere a couple of kilometers up? Why was it given wings anyway? Did the aliens go "Hey! Lets have some fun and fly some giant robots around!". They're water dwellers who seem obsessed with destroying anything on land.

How does Gypsy survive orbital reentry with barely any (visible) damage? It's designed to fist fight with giant monsters, but a couple thousand tons of metal and electronics can't survive striking the surface at what had to be close to terminal velocity.

It's argued that the Jaegers fight giant monsters with their fists because the blood is toxic and could cause damage to the environment, yet Gypsy Danger opens up with it's Plasma Cannon in the intro with little to no hesitation and kills Knifehead with a charged blast that almost certainly tore the body open. Crimson Typhoon uses it's spinning knifes to cut up Otachi. The "blood was toxic!" argument seems weak when arguing against going in guns/swords blazing.

While using that tanker to bludgeon Otachi was a cool "lol omg wtf XD" moment, it would have snapped in half instantly, if not outright disintegrate.

An entire nation's army of jets, missiles, tanks, and bombs are ineffective against the Kaiju, yet "fisticuff" robots were deemed effective to mass produce. They use giant robots to protect the human race, yet the battle at the city resulted intwo dead Jaegers, trillions in damage to the city, and possibly millions of civilian deaths (you don't think most of those buildings were still filled with people?).

Why not place a large nuclear device at the breach an detonate it when a Kaiju comes out? It would release radiation, but it would kill the kaiju instantly and vaporize the blood, saving money and lives in the long run.

Oh wait, the newest breed of Kaiju can apparently survive unscathed from the detonation of large nuclear device literally meters from its face. It received only some minor burns from temperatures that probably approached that of the surface of the sun, yet a metal robot can kill it no prob-blamo.

...

I went into the movie to watch giant robots fight giant monsters and didn't expect much from the story, so I enjoyed it.

 

[DrOswald]

Pacific Rim. Do I even need to say it?

Spoiler

The sword. Seriously? WHERE WAS THAT ALL THOSE TIMES YOU WERE GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED? Why did you ONLY use it ONCE??? They don't even TRY to justify it's absence up until that one scene in the movie or after the fact. The movie is already written like a mediocre anime, but that one scene just plunged it into bad anime territory for me. If I wanted gratuitous robot violence with baffling plot points, I'd watch G Gundam, because at least it's hilariously nonsensical.

That is super easily explained: The sword is a shitty backup weapon that isn't very effective.

The Jeagers all fight with a strategy. Crimson Typhoon cut the Kaiju to pieces. Cherno Alpha beats them to death. But Gypsy Danger and Striker Eureka beat them until they slow down the monster enough to have an opening and then use short range finisher weapons. The plasma gun reduces a Kaiju to a hollow husk in a few shots. Cutting weapons were far less effective, as we saw with Crimson Typhoon - their successful cutting attacks hardly phased the Kaiju. I mean, later on they literally stab a Kaiju though the head with the sword and it was basically only effective at pinning it down while they burned it to death on a thermal vent.

Just because the sword was tactically ideal in that one exact moment does not mean that it is a god smiting super weapon with no flaws. It is a subpar weapon that they only use when they can't use their guns. They were out of ammo when they used it the first time, they were under water where their guns would not work later.

 

[regalphantom]

I've recently started playing the Phoenix Wright games, and I found one:

Spoiler: In the First Game, Third Case

The defendant, an actor, is accused of murdering his co-star. The end result is that the victim drugged the defendant, stole his costume (which completely hides the person wearing it) and attempted to kill the producer who was blackmailing him regarding his involvement in the accidental death of another actor years earlier, while framing his rival. In the end it is revealed that the producer killed the victim in self defense, then moved the body in order to frame the defendant.

The plot hole arises in that the producer was never in any real legal danger prior to framing the defendant, she had a witness who saw the victim attack her, and later helped her move the body. She could have admitted to justifiable self-defense (accidental self-defense at that) with a witness to collaborate her testimony. Justifiable Self-Defense is even mentioned in the later game as a viable plea to avoid prison. The producer doesn't even have a reason to frame the defendant, he was just a convenient target since he didn't have an alibi (the game outright states 'there was no motive'). The knowledge of her blackmail and the producer's prison sentence could have been completely avoided if she didn't try to unnecessarily frame the defendant.

 

[Something Amyss]

The TARDIS isn't mentioned until the very end, when they've made it off the island by boat and are on the mainland of the planet. At the end, they get in the TARDIS and leave. It's never explained how the TARDIS got there when they had gotten there by spaceship and boat, and it's never explained why they were never with it in the first place.

The TARDIS has the potential to break any story it's involved in, and has been hand-waved or explained away since at least the Second Doctor in various ways. I honestly think it's probably worse that New Who spends so much time trying to explicitly explain it by taking the TARDIS out of the picture every three minutes. It rivals the Sonic Screwdriver from the classic series.

I'm not sure this is so much a plot hole as it is a compromise we have to accept to allow the show and related media (the audio plays, novels, etc) to work at all.

That was one of the biggest plotholes dr who ever had!

I'm reminded of:

Spoiler: Da Rules

I hate that plot hole, but I doubt it's even in the top ten. I doubt it's even in the top ten Steven Moffatt holes. I bet most, if not all of those, go to River Song (directly, as I know she's heavily involved in ATM).

 

[happyninja42]

Pacific Rim. Do I even need to say it?

Spoiler

The sword. Seriously? WHERE WAS THAT ALL THOSE TIMES YOU WERE GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED? Why did you ONLY use it ONCE??? They don't even TRY to justify it's absence up until that one scene in the movie or after the fact. The movie is already written like a mediocre anime, but that one scene just plunged it into bad anime territory for me. If I wanted gratuitous robot violence with baffling plot points, I'd watch G Gundam, because at least it's hilariously nonsensical.

You know, that's in the same category of North Korea attacking the US in Homefront in terms of hand waving explanations. In both cases, there's brief snippets of news footage. In Homefront, North Korea's basically got all the territories of World War 2 Era Imperial Japan. But it flashes up so quickly, everyone misses it. In Pacific Rim, again, in a montage of news coverage, Kaiju blood is really poisonous, and considering how much of it there is in any given beast, that's bad. That's the reason they fight with fisticuffs. To avoid poisoning the last of the Blue Whales.

You do care about the Blue Whales, right...?

As for Plot Holes, this one was patched, but why the fuck can't I send my Super Mutant/Ghoul/Robot companions to deactivate the Purifier? They even suggest it themselves.

If they're so worried about Kaiju blood spilling everywhere, then why oh why did Gypsy Danger blast the gorilla kaiju with the blaster gun like 12 times? Seriously watch that scene again. Blood is splattering all over the place as he just keeps shooting and shooting and shooting. Then they just turn around and walk away. The amount of kaiju blood they splatter everywhere is probably more than a single sword slice would've caused. And even if it is equivalent, they didn't seem too worried about it in any case. So yeah, the "too dangerous to spread blood everywhere" reason doesn't hold up, as evidence by the movie itself.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Pacific Rim. Do I even need to say it?

Spoiler

The sword. Seriously? WHERE WAS THAT ALL THOSE TIMES YOU WERE GETTING YOUR ASS KICKED? Why did you ONLY use it ONCE??? They don't even TRY to justify it's absence up until that one scene in the movie or after the fact. The movie is already written like a mediocre anime, but that one scene just plunged it into bad anime territory for me. If I wanted gratuitous robot violence with baffling plot points, I'd watch G Gundam, because at least it's hilariously nonsensical.

Wasnt that just something to do with getting their blood every where which was toxic? I know, that would make sense until you realise they never use the swords when fighting in the water. Anyway the biggest plot hole is that the world is getting their arse kicked by the monsters. Except we know they all come through the same rift in the ocean. So why not have a load of the robots stationed near the rift that can kick the crap out of every monster as soon as they appear. Why do they wait till they are near cities?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Doctor Who is one big plothole.
But one plothole was absolutely horrific and huge.

The leaving Amy and Rory in 1930s new york.
There is zero reason for them to be there at all.

It's total and utter contrived, desperate, crap!
There is absolutely nothing stopping them going to another place, then he picks them up.
He could park the tardis somewere and get a bus or drive to new york. Agree to meet them outside new york.
They could take ship to the UK, canada, or anywere, then he picks them up.

There are countless ways to get them home and back to the present.

But noo, he left them in the past.
That was one of the biggest plotholes dr who ever had!

I think he was locked out of that time period, but you're right it is still a plot whole and a bit contrived. As in if he couldn't go back to 1935, he could've just gone back to 1936 and picked them up. Then they'd only been stuck in New York for a year. I'm sure they could've handled that. Better than spending the rest of their lives there.

 

[LegendaryVKickr]

Are there really 143 pages of this or is Escapist just bugging?

Anyways, God of War II has a big plot hole, and I'm not very observant to storyline holes, so this one must have been huge for me to see it.

Kratos spends the entire first game, trying to atone for all the sins he committed in his past life, almost committing suicide towards the end of the game over the fact that he isn't allowed to forget the atrocities he's committed.

In the second game, he wants to get back the power he had in the first game, which Zeus took away. He seeks out the Fates, hoping to alter the strands of time to change the past...In order to get his power back to mess Zeus up.

Like, what? Why not go back to before you killed your family, or before you had to summon Ares to save yourself in battle? You made a lot of huge mistakes but all you wanna do is go back a couple weeks to kick Zeus in the ass?

Screw you Kratos, if you're that stupid you deserve to be miserable.

 

[solemnwar]

The GECK is now a magic world-creating device that atomizes everything in a radius to create new life. Okay. Uh, so, uh, why isn't there like, a countdown timer on the GECK? Why does the person who uses it immediately die? Wouldn't that be extremely impractical? Can it be remote-activated? Why don't we just do that?

The reason you die activating the McGuffin is because your father releases a fuckton of radiation inside the control room earlier in the plot to attempt to kill whats-his-face (can you tell I have a hard time with names?). It doesn't have anything to do with the GECK. You die because of extreme radiation.

And having played most of Fallout 1 and part of Fallout 2, the GECK has always been a magical world-creating device, hasn't it? I mean, its name is "Garden of Eden Creation Kit". Its whole point is to make the world anew after everything goes to shit. I think the term is "terraforming"?