Best comedy movie plot holes of all time

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Ferdinand picture

Plot hole: How does the little girl Nina know Ferdinand's name if only the animals can communicate with each other? They're all calling him Ferdinand before she "names" him that.

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Bolt picture

Plot hole: At the start of the movie, a great deal is made of the boom mic that enters the shot. This is ridiculous, because Bolt's view would not be restricted to what was onscreen, he'd have a perfect view of the person holding the boom mic (as evidenced by it not being stable). There's no possibility of him not seeing the person holding the mic either. As Bolt completely and utterly believes the world he lives in, and thinks the situations he finds himself in (saving Penny) are real, someone holding a boom mic would break the illusion for him. In all instances in the movie where an outside force (i.e. a dog handler) interacts with him, Bolt never gets to see the person handling him (handler approaches from behind), the boom mic operator however is literally right in front of him.

GalahadFairlight

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Suggested correction: He wasn't paying attention and considering that his focus was only on the "action", how the hell would he notice a boom mic when he's trying to protect Penny? His "reality" is never broken even AFTER he's in his trailer.

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Ocean's Eight picture

Plot hole: When Sarah Paulsen pulls the necklace out of the water, the necklace clasp is obviously closed. Since the circumference of the necklace is too small to fit over the top of Anne Hathaway's head, why would anyone believe that it fell off her when she was running to the bathroom? The only way that could have happened is if the clasp (which we were earlier told can only be opened by a magnet) had opened. The trained security guards wouldn't have suspected something wasn't right about a closed necklace falling off over of her? They were following her. They saw that at no point did she lower her head on her way to the bathroom for the necklace to fall off over her head to begin with. It also could not have fallen off her when she was vomiting into the toilet in the bathroom since the clasp was closed. (01:18:25)

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UHF (1989)

UHF picture

Plot hole: R.J. Fletcher is shown as a ruthless businessman who knows everything there is to know about Channel 62 - who owns it, how much it's worth, who is running it, the financial troubles it is having and so on and so on. He is also fully aware of the telethon and the fact that George is selling the station as a going concern for a total of $75,000.00. It is simply asking too much of audience credulity or 'suspension of belief' to think that such a hard-headed businessman would not work out that he could, using stooges, buy a controlling interest in the station for $37,501.00, saving himself a small fortune and closing the station down over the objections of his minority shareholders. Something this blatant could not possibly be a character mistake - he is already planning on buying the station for the full price (from Big Louis) so don't tell me he wouldn't just switch plans and buy it from George instead!

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Wild Things picture

Plot hole: Suzie pulls out some of her teeth with a pair of heavy pliers. This would leave conspicuous tool marks on the teeth that would be visible to the naked eye, let alone under forensic examination. The conclusion would be that Suzie is missing, not dead, and the whole plot would unravel from there.

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Shrek Forever After picture

Plot hole: In the second Shrek movie, we find out that Fairy Godmother and the King had a deal that Prince Charming would save Princess Fiona from the keep, hence becoming her true love and breaking the curse. In the fourth movie, we start with Rumple monologuing about how he almost had the Kingdom by signing a deal with the King. Why would the King be so desperate to try and reverse the curse by signing a deal when he knows he has a prior attempt through Prince Charming, assuming it would take the same time for the messenger to return with news about Charming and Fiona either way?

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Suggested correction: It is stated in the intro that when "days turned into years" of waiting for a Prince to rescue Princess Fiona, the king and queen resorted to more desperate measures - enter Rumpelstiltskin.

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An American Werewolf in Paris picture

Plot hole: When Andy turns into a werewolf, he kills both Amy and Detective Benbou. Later in the morgue, Amy tells him because of this that she is forced to become his "rotting sidekick." If this is completely true, then Detective Benbou should also be following Andy around but he isn't seen after Andy manages to escape from the morgue.

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A Fish Called Wanda picture

Plot hole: Shortly after the robbery, Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis get together in a little flat and Kline calls the police from a landline to tell them who committed the robbery. In England this would immediately lead the police to the flat from which the call was made, and the person reporting the robbery would be the first person the police would want to find and speak to. Otto has handed it to them on a plate. (00:12:29)

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Ted (2012)

Ted picture

Plot hole: Ted calls on John to tell him that he saw Lori leaving her apartment with her boss. How did he find him? He turns up not only at the right hotel but the right room! They have had no contact since their fight after the party and Ted hasn't been asking around after John as he tells him he 'just saw' Lori leaving with her boss. So how did he find John? Is he psychic?

PEDAUNT

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Suggested correction: A week has passed since the breakup and we don't see anything that happened during that time. There's nothing in the film to indicate Ted didn't try to reconcile with John (such as through text) or at least find out where he's staying. The only reason Ted decided to go to the hotel is to tell John about Lori leaving with her boss because he knows that would be a big deal to him. And Ted went to Lori's to try to get her to take John back (probably because of things John said to Ted during the week we didn't see). Once Ted is at Lori's and sees her leaving with her boss, he goes to the hotel to tell John he "just saw her leave" with him.

Bishop73

John had no reason to tell Ted where he lives, he didn't want him to come at all, that was shown. Ted wouldn't know where to go.

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Midnight Run picture

Plot hole: At the end of the film Mardukas reveals that he has been wearing a body belt packed with cash - "in the neighbourhood of three hundred thousand dollars" - ever since Jack detained him in New York. Are we to assume that Jack Walsh, an experienced, hard-bitten ex-police officer, now a bounty hunter who routinely chases down violent and armed bail absconders who would kill him without a second thought, didn't even perform a perfunctory search of Mardukas when he detained him? This man used to work for the Mafia! What if he was carrying a weapon? A body belt with three hundred one thousand dollar bills in it would be uncovered by even the most casual pat down.

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Suggested correction: He was using $1000 bills. That's 300 bills in the belt which spread evenly absolutely could have been missed near his waist as part of his clothing.

Rubbish. I specified $1,000 bills as that would be the smallest package he could have secreted about his person, and it would still be instantly detectable. If he used $100 bills the package would be ten times larger, and he would have to carry a rucksack under his shirt.

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Bring it On picture

Plot hole: Check out the final routine at the end of the movie for the Clovers. Watching carefully, approximately 20 seconds into the routine you will see two girls on the left hand side running face to face into each other. If this had been a proper competition they would have lost because it was a major error in the routine.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest picture Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest mistake picture

Plot hole: There are six metal bars mounted around the circumference of the water wheel's axle. In the wheel's interior, when Jack frees himself he lands on his feet, begins to run and promptly hits his head on one of those mounted axle bars, then falls out. Moments later, when Jack returns and runs in the wheel, he is shorter (way more than a foot) than all six of the mounted axle bars spinning with the water wheel, which would make that previous shot impossible, however humorous it is. (01:52:40 - 01:53:55)

Super Grover

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Ocean's Eleven picture

Plot hole: Where do the flyers come from that are in the bags that are carried out of the vault and into the van? Danny and Linus couldn't have taken them down there and there is no room with the Chinese man. They are carried out to the van before the SWAT team appears, which means they'd have to have been in the vault to start with? In the commentary by Steven Soderbergh he acknowledges that there's no explanation. (01:35:05)

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Road Trip picture

Plot hole: When Beth is in Josh's room she picks up the card that simply reads "Love Tiffany" and asks "who's Tiffany Henderson?" She couldn't have known her last name. (00:15:30)

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Charlie's Angels picture

Plot hole: In the Redstar mainframe, we are told that the floor of the vault will trigger the alarm if it receives more than 0.25 seconds of contact (apparently even with the security checks). What would be the point of the bosses going through all of those security measures if they would just set the alarm off anyway? Surely once the girls have faked the fingerprint and retina scans, they don't then need to flip across the floor! (00:33:55)

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Now You See Me 2 picture

Plot hole: Prior to the final show, when the horsemen are performing separately at different locations in London. [Scene X] Jack is busy with his card swap trick. While others are doing their tricks too, [Scene Y] McKinney is believed to be tricked once again by his face sharing brother at another location... Dylan gets a call and then he calls everyone to wrap up and meet somewhere. [Scene Z] Jack also wraps up and leaves the place... OK. Later after the expose in final show McKinney tells the story about how Jack successfully hypnotized his brother [in the Scene Y]. How could Jack be at two different locations at the same time? He was performing somewhere else when he did hypnotism at another location and then wraps up his trick back where he started.

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The Animal picture

Plot hole: Spoiler: At the end of the film we learn that the girl is the wild animal, having been saved by the same doctor. Yet at the restaurant she is wearing a bare back dress and does not have the giant X-like scar on her back, like he has or the model has, who the doctor marries at the end.

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Hocus Pocus picture

Plot hole: After Max and Allison rescue Dani from the witches, Max is driving his parents' car. Winifred flies up along side of them and asks Max to show her his driver's permit. How would she know about driving permits, since she's been dead for 300 years?

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Suggested correction: She did watch TV in the house of the man dressed as Satan so maybe someone said it on TV.

Mary Sanderson was watching television, not Winifred.

Movie Nut

Suggested correction: There is a lot the movie doesn't show us about who they've passed and what they heard all evening. One example being we don't know everything the bus driver said to them. It's perfectly reasonable they heard somebody make reference to a driver's permit and the movie did not show us this conversation deeming it invalid to the plot.

Not referring to a learner's permit. She would have known what it means. She's emulating a cop pulling him over. She would have to know what that means...and know the difference between a license and a learners permit. Enough to find it funny and relevant to the situation.

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Old School picture

Plot hole: When they are being told they have failed the evaluation, the dean tells them, "Yes, you people did finish with 84%, but another one of your pledges finished with a zero in every category." It then goes on to state that this drops them down to 58%. For one pledge to bring them down 26% there would have to have been less than four pledges, including Blue, i.e. only three actually taking the evaluation.

megamelv

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Knives Out picture

Plot hole: The killer shows up at the scheduled appointment at 8 AM. They kill the idiot blackmailer with an overdose of morphine. Remember, that morphine that supposedly killed Thrombey in 10 minutes. Marta finds the blackmailer at 10 AM...alive, and does CPR on them, keeping them alive long enough for the ambulance to come and bring them to the hospital, even if in critical condition. So we went from "kills in 10 minutes, you can't even try to save him" to "after 2 hours, you are still hanging on"? (01:56:10)

Sammo

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Suggested correction: Marta injected an absurdly large dose. A smaller overdose would not kill in 10 minutes.

I read that objection before. From 10 minutes to 2 hours there's quite a leap that the movie does not explain or address at all, if it were part of the plot they should have said why this difference, on something so time sensitive (of which they got the factual details wrong anyway). Even visually when you look at the dose injected to Harlan and the dose in the syringe for the murder, they do not look different. He even stabs her with the syringe. Which makes sense since he has no reason to leave her there with a small. Controlled overdose in her veins risking that she would be saved as it -almost - happens - it's amazing he got away with it to begin with because she is so dumb to show up for no reason in a derelict place without talking to her accomplice that passed her the toxi report, or anyone.Without a throwaway line from an investigator or anything of the sort ("but you injected her the wrong way, so she was still alive two hours after"), we are just left with an inconsistency.

Sammo

Suggested correction: You've assumed a hell of a lot! Marta said Thrombey was given a dose of 100 mg (instead 3) of Morphine and would die in 10 minutes unless given the antidote. You just asserted that "Thrombey would die in 10 minutes" as if it was fait accompli, while Thrombey didn't die of morphine overdoes at all! (He cut his own throat.) For all we know, Marta's 10-minute assessment was a worst-case-scenario assessment. Fran's age and physique, as well as Marta's CPR, helped negate the effect until the ambulance arrives. If the medics administered the antidote, it could have prolonged Fran's life. Finally, 2 hours is the time after which the viewer is informed of Fran's death, not her actual death time. Most importantly, this happens in the medical world all the time: A person who is supposed to die after 3 days lives for 16 years. There are case-by-case explanations for each one, but they baffle the medical examiners at first.

FleetCommand

Two hours is not my assumption or when the viewer is informed of her death; the killer gives the appointment to the victim at 8 AM and to Marta at 10 AM, so as I said, after 2 hours with 0 medical care on her she is still hanging on and with barely a little tap she is ready to dispense important clues. I go by what the movie says also about the 10 minutes overdose time. Of course if you tell me that baffling freak occurrences can happen all the time in medicine and that very precise statements from the movie don't matter because the character can just have gotten it wrong by over 10x and the movie does not acknowledge it at all, well, that's a very respectable opinion; mine is that fiction (a whodunnit, not a slasher flick with a killer surviving multiple gunshots and the like) is not reality and it should respond to higher standards than "I guess she was still alive somehow."

Sammo

I re-watched the movie to verify that Fran was given an appointment at 8 AM. I discovered something new: The bottle that was injected to Fran contained only 5 mg of Morphine. That's 1/20th of what was "supposedly" given to Thrombey Sr. So, yeah, 10x is OK. In fact, 20x is OK.

FleetCommand

No, no; it contains 5 mg of morphine PER ml, it's the concentration, not the total. Go back to the scene when Marta "messes up", the vials are the exact same as the one that Ransom injects (obviously, since they come from Marta's bag after all). It's new for you but I covered that already in the Factual Error about it. It's something that piles upon a previous mistake. She did not give him 100 mg of morphine because it would have emptied the vial (which is more than half full) and because a full vial of ketorlac would have killed Trombe regardless, at that concentration! The movie gets both the props and the medical facts wrong (100 mg of morphine does not even kill most patients, Harlan would have not died in 10 minutes especially since he takes safely big doses of toradol and morphine), but nothing - in the script - says that Marta or Ransom got basic medical facts wrong.

Sammo

Okay! It seems mistake after mistake is piling up. Now, it appears Fran lived 4 hours, during 2 of which she was unattended. Plus, 100 mg of Morphine from a 5 mg/ml vial amounts to 20 ml of liquid. Well, now, everything you say makes sense... or at least most of the things. On the whole, I think it was a complicated situation.

FleetCommand

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