YMMV / Sherlock S2 E3 "The Reichenbach Fall"

• Draco in Leather Pants: Averted with fanfics about Kitty Reilly getting a new chance, as most writers enjoy letting her feel colossal amounts of guilt in the beginning.
• Genius Bonus: The Standard Snippet to which Moriarty commits the heist of the century? The Overture to Rossini's La Gazza Ladra, or The Thieving Magpie. Doubles as a Shout-Out to A Clockwork Orange.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • John's quote "The press will turn, Sherlock. They always turn, and they'll turn on you" echoed eerily in the minds of some fans when they read some articles written about Benedict Cumberbatch, which used quotes that were no doubt taken completely out of context and twisted around. The media is definitely taking advantage of this self-proclaimed "PR disaster".
  • One of John's last lines to Sherlock becomes this when you puzzle out who, exactly, is protecting whom.
    Sherlock: Alone protects me.
    John: No. Friends protect people.
• He Really Can Act: Martin Freeman deserved that BAFTA for series one and there's no doubt about it, and we've always known he could act, but this is a whole different ballgame. Whatever remaining critics of his are out there, they've been silenced.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The whole "Moriarty is an actor" scheme, since the release of Iron Man 3 and the backlash over Ben Kingsley's Mandarin being an actor.
  • Moriarty's scheme involves stealing the crown jewels of England and posing with them for the police, and he later mockingly calls himself a King in a conversation with Sherlock ("In a world of locked rooms, a man with a key is King. And honey, you should see me in a crown…"). Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch both played historical Kings in Season 2 of The Hollow Crown: Louis XI of France and Richard III of England, respectively.
  • Sherlock is being investigated by a reporter from The Sun and finds a recording device planted in 221B at a point in the show's timeline (June 2012) that is four months after five Sun reporters and editors were arrested on hacking and bribery charges. Considering that particular episode was written and filmed several months before the News of the World scandal broke, it becomes either Harsher in Hindsight and/or doubly hilarious.
  • Sherlock's line "Oh I may be on the side of angels, but don't think for one second that I'm one of them." Benedict Cumberbatch went on to play the Angel Islington on The BBC radio drama of Neverwhere.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Sherlock is quickly revealed at the end of this episode to not have died, but to have somehow faked his suicide.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • There is a short scene in which Donovan rushes into Lestrade's office to tell him that there's been a break-in. Lestrade, who has his feet up on the desk and is eating a doughnut, simply replies "Not our division." The fandom went nuts with the line.
  • "I believe in Sherlock Holmes" and "Moriarty was real".
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Kitty Riley of all people is getting this, as more fans are slowly becoming sympathetic to her after they learned how Moriarty had used her.
• Shocking Moments: The ending. Even when you know it's coming. Especially when you know it's coming. John saw Sherlock fall. He touched his body. How on earth do they come back from that? It helps attempting to fake a death when you have a forensic pathologist who does nearly anything for you.
• Signature Scene: Sherlock's "death", naturally, becomes a well known scene in deed.
• Special Effect Failure: In a scene while Sherlock is in the foreground in the police station, the room around him goes dark to increase the contrast of the graphic effects playing out showing Sherlock's thought processes while dissecting a clue. When he's finished (twice!), the graphics go away and the room lights up again. But rather than having darkened the scene in post-production, they had literally turned the lights off in the room, so when they come on again, a dozen ceiling florescent bulbs flicker madly to life.

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