Ask Lemmy

One of the biggest ones in mystery is “Why didn’t X simply Y”

They can literally just be stupid. Or ego driven. Etc.

There’s a great series of mystery games where the final villain even admits this exactly. He found evidence of a murder plot against the sister of his dead girlfriend, and instead of reporting it or detaining those involved, he let it almost happen. It was literally all so he could feel like a hero saving them at the last second, and he says as much directly.

Ex-wife and I saw that in a theater by ourselves. Not another human came or went. What an experience.

He's not Judge Judy and executioner!

Yarp.

I 100% agree with this.

One of the classic examples often given (and one of the top results if you search for "famous plot holes") is from The Lord of the Rings. "Why don't the Eagles just fly them to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring, allowing them to bypass all the trouble getting there?" It's often cited as a well-known plot hole and given as an example to define what a plot hole is.

Yet it's not a plot hole at all. It's just characters making decisions the reader might not agree with.

A character acting out of character may not technically be a plot hole, but for the consumer of the media, it is tantamount to the same thing. The character's previous characterization is equivalent to "the existing rules of the story".

Not to say that characters cannot change, but you can tell when a character suddenly does something out of character simply because the author decided that some event has to happen for the plot to work, and it makes the plot seem impossible.

"Wait a minute, so you expect me to believe a politician blatantly and openly do corrupt things and still won over the voters? Twice?" 🤣

By definition, no it's not. If it's a thing that can actually physically happen, it's, by definition, not a plot hole.

Honestly, if Primer had any, I'm to dumb to spot them.

Primer is very smart about explanations in that it never fully explains anything. You’re only seeing their understanding of what they’ve stumbled across, which we can reasonably assume they barely understand themselves. After all, they accidentally invented time travel trying to create a device that reduces the mass of objects lmao they have no fucking clue what’s happening. The scene where they are debating what happens since he accidentally brought his cell phone back highlights how out of their depth they are. I don’t remember the exact lines, but Aaron says how cell phones work by pinging different towers until they find your phone. Then when Abe asks him “are you sure?” He says “no.”

They always kind of understand what’s happening but are ultimately making educated guesses.

How was Dark’s finale not a plot hole?

I had a hard time following the whole plot, so I could have easily missed something.

Maybe not any plot holes per se, but there's definitely some character inconsistencies, a whole lot of convenient timing and coincidence, and they stretch plausibility to its absolute limits. But hey that's what makes great television.

Closest I can think of is the magnet thing in the season 5 pilot would definitely not work IRL

Unfortunately, due to different showrunners, there are a couple.

Like how Tony didn't figure out hydra was infiltrating SHIELD when he hacked everything in Avengers 1. Probably should have figured that out.

And I know people like to say there are too many hydra people for them to not be well-known or easier to discover, but personally I don't take issue with that.

If hydra has infiltrated key personnel, they can move whoever they want. I'd say they concentrated their forces at headquarters and on the carriers, since that was part of their big master plan. So of course there will be a lot of bags guys in the main areas and in the carriers, and it's a testament to how few there really were that they failed. And they had sizeable resistance from non-compromised personnel.

Quentin! Oh Quentin Darling! Be a dear and bring me some of that white dudes dropping the hard r.