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"Now why hasn't anyone cursed Galbatroix? You apparently don't need to know his name to work this sort of magic, but no one has done this. Why? It seems so easy. Just say the magic words and poof. Do you know what we call this? We call this a plot hole."
People hate plot holes in movies. At least, that's what they'll tell you. But sometimes, if a movie is awesome enough, people will overlook even the most retarded gaps in reason and logic. ...At least, until some asshole on the Internet points them out and makes a big list of them.
Plot Holes are those annoying gaps in a story when things happen without a logical reason. When a plot hole involves something essential to a story's outcome, it can hurt the believability severely for those who are bothered by it.
Plot holes can come in many forms:
- Characters suddenly having knowledge that was never passed to them.
- Characters acting completely out of character.
- An event does not logically follow form what has gone before.
Plot holes occur for several reasons:
- The author really wants to write a certain scene, even if the scene makes no sense. Rather than toss the scene out, the author goes right ahead and writes it anyway.
- The author forgets what was written earlier, and unknowingly creates a scene that goes completely against something that happened earlier. Can happen with really long stories, or ones that take a long time to write.
- In a multi-author continuity, one writer forgets (or ignores, or rejects) what another wrote.
- The scene that would have filled the plot hole was cut due to time constraints.
- While adapting a story to a new medium, the adaption team made a wrong assumption about a future plot point, and added a detail which was later contradicted by the creator of the source material. (Compare Overtook The Manga.)
Even unrealistic, fantastical stories suffer when plot holes arise, as audiences are willing to suspend disbelief as long as the story makes sense within its own rules and consistency.
Plot holes are sometimes plugged up or ignored with a Hand Wave, or occasionally dealt with by a Lampshade Hanging, and some writers think Plot Holes that only become apparent well after the story is over aren't worth sweating.
In some cases, what one person sees as a plot hole could be seen by another as something that makes sense if enough thought is put into it, or makes sense but was not adequately explained. Examples here will therefore be subjective. Contrast What Happened To The Mouse for plots that get dropped... and picked up.
Of course, some stories contain plot holes as part of their basic nature. This includes many ludicrously comical works, and everything involving Time Travel.
Can overlap with Ret Con.
Examples of actual plot holes:
Literature
- The Legend Of Rah And The Muggles, naturally, has plot holes you could comfortably march the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann through. One notable example is where the titular Marty Stu discovers an Inexplicable Treasure Chest in a cave. For some reason it has his croquet medal on the top, perhaps because croquet is Serious Business in the setting. We never find out for sure, because when he's taken ill with an allergic reaction to the moss in the cave nobody ever goes back for the chest and it's not mentioned again. Perhaps the reason that the moonlight can shine through a cloud that the sunlight can't in the intro is that one of these plot holes is in fact a wormhole with one end on the Moon and the other end hovering somewhere above Muggle-Land. It would make about as much sense as anything else in that book.
Anime
- Nadia The Secret of Blue Water suffered from at least twelve episodes (the "Island/Africa" episodes, which were shoehorned into the series just to cash in on the show's popularity) in which members of the cast go completely out of character, with no explanation. The Lincoln Island and Africa episodes are especially guilty of this, particularly in the characterizations of Nadia, Grandis, Ayerton, Sanson, Marie, Sanson, and Hanson.
- In Dragonball Z, perhaps in order to enhance the idea that the main characters have a superhero-esque role, the main public doesn't know about Ki Attacks, super speed, flight or many of the other techniques used by the characters of the show. The public (and the Fake Ultimate Hero) treat these as tricks or acts of god, and are completely against believing in them, and thus, when the main characters enter the World Tournament in the last saga, they have to hide their powers. All this despite such techniques not only exhibited in earlier world tournaments not ten years prior, but many of them being world famous, and the ones who invented revered throughout the world only a decade or so ago. Amnesia dust all around... One Big Bad acknowledges this, pointing out that mankind has already forgotten Goku.
- Trunks' sword. Specifically, Future Trunks has the sword somehow, though the events detailing how he acquired it were in a movie that couldn't have happened in Trunks' timeline.
- Cell informs the heroes that he can regenerate from any wounds as long as some cells in his brain isn't damaged. But after having his entire upper body obliterated by Goky's Kame Hame Ha, he is still regenerating completely.
- When Transformers: Cybertron was translated into English, it was changed from a standalone series to a sequel to Energon; unfortunately, this meant that several characters who were Killed Off For Real in previous series were alive and well. It was explained that the reappearance of these characters was due to the Unicron Singularity
 screwing up space and time, which led fans to jokingly refer to the Singularity as the biggest plot hole in the universe.
- However, the English version did fix a plot hole that was present in the original Japanese. In the English version, Cybertron spends the series hovering perilously close to the Singularity. In the Japanese, however, it was sucked into the Singularity in the first episode, and yet several subsequent episodes show the characters walking around on the surface.
- Up until midway through the Soul Society Arc, it was assumed by audience that Yoruichi, Bleach's talking cat character, was male. So it was only natural that the anime would give it a male voice. Then, it is revealed that ""she"" is actually a female shapeshifter. The mangaka had to bail the anime team out by retconning in a bit about how Yoruichi spoke with a masculine voice while in cat form.
- In Naruto, the entire Uchiha clan is killed in a single night (save for Sasuke). None of the other clans seem to so much as care, not even Kakashi who got his main powers thanks to a Uchiha member, or the Hyuuga clan whom they seemingly owe the creation of the Byakugan to. No one in the village even cares that they lost their police force, or that the killer is still at large. The concept of no one leading a bounty hunt against Itachi after this incident is simply preposterous.
- There are quite a few S-Class criminals out there; Orochimaru comes to mind, as he was, according to Anko and the Third Hokage, too powerful for any Konoha ninja except the Fourth Hokage to defeat, and Itachi is even stronger than Orochimaru, so while the ninja may want Itachi and the other criminals dead, they may not be strong enough to do it. Itachi's true motivations and reasons may play a role in this, as well as the deals he made with Danzo and the Third Hokage regarding Sasuke and his having infiltrated Akatsuki. The Sharingan was supposedly created from the Byakugan, not the other way around.
- In the Pokemon episode, "Here's Looking At You, Elekid", Team Rocket meet up with the Magikarp salesman who says that he's willing to give them a powerful Weepinbell. Through a lot of hard thought, James is forced to give up his Victreebell...or they could have just saved themselves a lot of trouble and stolen it from the salesman, especially seeing as how they could easily overpower him.
Film
- The Terminator ends with the revelation that John Connor was born in a Stable Time Loop having sent his own father Reese back in time to prevent The Terminator from killing his mother and during the mission both his mother and Reese fall in love and have sex before Reese dies, and the Terminator is defeated, the second film (and a deleted scene from the first) reveal that Skynet was also created from this Stable Time Loop. The problem begans when end of the second film shows John and Sarah Connor preventing judgement day which would destroy the Stable Time Loop, the only way this makes sense is if the rules of time travel change during the ending of the second film.
- In The Fifth Element, why the hell does the Corrupt Corporate Executive want the Great Evil to come and destroy everything, considering that "everything" most certainly includes himself and all his wealth?
- It is quite clear to this editor that Zorg is a) in it for the money b) under direct threat of pain, a.k.a. extortion. It is entirely possible that he believes his "benefactor" to be an extremely wealthy and eccentric art collector and/or that he was never informed of the whole "doomsday" thing in the first place.
- No, Zorg is the "so-called art dealer". He's quite aware that Mr. Shadow is literally as scary as hell, and seems to believe that the destruction will benefit society and him personally. Exactly how is unexplained, but then the exact nature of the doomsday was a bit vague too.
- In Batman And Robin, Mr. Freeze is stealing large diamonds, which power his freeze ray, so he can freeze Gotham, so he can ransom it for... money to continue his research. Or he could have just sold the diamonds and skipped the entire "freezing a city" portion of the plan.
- Or in Star Wars, where Luke Skywalker lives by that name, with his legal uncle and aunt (meaning that they officially recognize him as a child of Owen's
halfstep-brother) for 19 years without Darth Vader ever even trying to check on them. After all, it's his home planet.
- Timothy Zahn's novel Allegiance shows that Vader was aware of Luke, just unsure or unwilling of how to act.
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back suffers from one as well: "when Luke gets trained by Yoda on Yoda's planet; To break up the sequence, the film cuts to the Millennium Falcon getting chased by the Empire to Lando's cloud city. When they arrive, they get captured; at which point Luke has finished his training. ...So, were they being chased for months? Or was Luke trained in an afternoon?" (McGarrigle, #1) Which all goes to show that old George "Franchisicide" Lucas stopped caring a lot longer ago than most people seem to think.
- Numerous scenes in the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives suggest that, as in the original, the wives have been replaced by robotic duplicates. However the ending reveals that they have all 'merely' had microchips planted in their brains... which completely condradicts the ATM wife earlier in the film.
- A movie normally considered One of the best ever according to those monocle-wearing types who refuse to even consider ''Robocop'' for the title. has perhaps one of the largest plot holes ever in a non speculative fiction setting. The movie? Citizen Kane which starts with a whole slew of reporters trying to discover the significance of Kane's last words: Rosebud. Via flashbacks the audience eventually discovers the true meaning but also finds out that Kane muttered Rosebud just before dying alone. Alone as in no one around to hear his last words. So how did the reporters know? It's kind of stupid when you think about it.
- Legend has it that someone pointed this out to Orson Welles. Welles then supposedly stared for a long time then said "Don't you EVER tell ANYONE of this".
- Wells was able to Authors Saving Throw it at the last minute: the manservant in the last scene mentions he heard Kane; he may have been in the room with him or just outside the door.
- In Hellboy: The Golden Army, the majority of the plot is spent trying to keep Prince Nuada from completing the crown that will wake up the titular indestructible army. At the very end of the movie, Liz destroys the crown with her pyrokinesis, raising the question of why she didn't just do that earlier, since the heroes had been carrying around a third of it for the whole movie.
- Given that it's not easy to kill yourself when you don't want to...
- The movie Battlefield Earth is notorious for containing an alarming number of plot holes, which are quite ridiculous even inside the framework of the story. Primitive cave dwellers with no knowledge of technology manage to control 1,000 year old jets (jet fuel has a shelf life of seven years) better than most trained pilots in a week's time with no explaination as to how or why.
Live Action TV
- The last Star Trek series (to date), Enterprise, has the crew of the titular ship encounter Borg drones 200 years before they were encountered by Captain Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise-D. This comes as a direct result of what happened in the film Star Trek: First Contact. The pieces of a crashed Borg cube are discovered in Antarctica. The crew see and fight Borgified crewmen on an alien freighter. The ship's doctor, Phlox, is infected with nanoprobes (but manages to cure himself, something Beverly Crusher wasn't able to do with Picard). They have sensor data on the Borg-augmented ship and their audio transmissions. Nevertheless, 200 years later, no one knows what the Borg look like, how they attack people, or what their technology does to starships and living beings. As the satirical website First Tv Drama.com put it so eloquently:
"You can lay this side by side with Archer not bothering to ask the Ferengi for their name after they hijacked the ship. This time, they have tech, records, photos, scans, DNA samples, dead nano-bots, etc, and it only creates a bigger plot hole. There's an entire massive debris field site in the North Pole. How do you cover up something like that. They either nuked it (which would surely get the attention of the Vulcans), left it (which means it's still there), or they cleaned it all up, which means they further learned stuff from it. Remember kids, there was NO cover up that took place. So how do you explain this plot hole?"
- This troper recalls an episode of Next Gen that featured an Klingon in engineering, threatening to shoot the warp core. This was resolved when he fell through the glass walkway, dying. I soon realized...why not just transport him out of there and deactivate his weapon mid-transport, as they've done in other episodes (such as The Most Toys)? And why would the walkway be 'glass' instead of transparent aluminum? There are tons of plot holes scattered throughout the Star Trek franchise when you consider the technology they have, but this is the only one that sticks out in my mind.
Video game
- If Akiba had been following Meryl since Shadow Moses, then why was he at the Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2?
- A very famous Plot Hole exists in Metroid Prime. The titular creature is sealed inside of the impact crater by a Chozo spell, which was placed to prevent the phazon from further infecting the planet. However, a scan in the game indicated that the Space Pirates had captured the creature for study and imprisoned it inside of their lab, where it proceeded to steal a bunch of their weaponry and escape back to the crater. This begs the question: how did the pirates and/or Metroid Prime both bypass the Chozo seal, when you yourself couldn't get through it until you completed the late-game Mac Guffin Fetch Quest to remove the seal?
- This was actually fixed in a re-release of the game, but it introduced another plot hole. The scan was re-written to indicate that the pirates sensed the presence of Metroid Prime in the crater, but never made contact with it. How, then, did Metroid Prime get the Space Pirate weapons it uses against you in the final battle?
- Banjo-Tooie: Early in the game, Gruntilda kills Bottles and later zombifies King Jingaling with the life force sucking B.O.B., planning to use the life force drained from him and the area around his throne to restore her body. Banjo and Kazooie latter find the machine and use it to restore Jingaling and bring Bottles back to life, despite that it should've only had the life force stored up from when Grunty tried to zap Jingaling the first time around.
Comic Books
- Joss Whedon's second Astonishing X-Men story arc, "Danger," is based on the idea that the X-Men's Danger Room is sentient and incredibly frustrated because it was designed to kill the X-Men, but would never actually be able to do so due to its safety protocols. Apparently neither Whedon or his editors have read the dozen-plus comics in which the Danger Room's safety protocols have been disabled, with character explicitly noting that they are in real danger of being killed.
- Actually, I believe the Danger Room was mad (and insane, too) because even though it was sentient ever since Xavier upgraded it with Shi'ar technology, Xavier had immediately made it so it obeyed his and the other X-Men's commands (effectively enslaving it). It didn't care about killing the X-Men, it cared about being free (killing the X-Men was a bonus, apparently).
- Which is a plothole itself because the original Danger Room was ripped out by Operation Zero Tolerance
Examples of Lampshade Hangings:
Western Animation
- In the Tiny Toons OVA How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Buster and Babs return to Acme Acres via a literal "plot hole". Lampshaded again in a travel episode, where a set of luggage is devoured by Dizzy Devil, but reappears later. Babs pronounces it to be "A plot hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through!"
Web Comics
- Bob And George gleefully lampshades its plot holes, at one point doing a literal Hand Wave. On at least one case it went back and filled a plot hole years after it was made.
- In the webcomic "Real Life", a Plot Hole appears as a sort of space-time anomaly which functions as a portal into a blank dimension in which the protagonist has to resolve the current hole in the plot of the Story Arc before they can escape back into "reality". Thus far, the mechanism has only been used once.
- This strip of Badly Drawn Kitties explains a plot hole rather succinctly. In fact, you could say it explains all plot holes rather succinctly.
Video Games
- In Kingdom Of Loathing, a plot hole is an item that damages enemies by making them fall into it, and is neede to defeat the best-selling novelist.
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