History Headscratchers / Hannibal

** I see what you're saying about Hannibal's animalism and the mask starting to slip. However I call "Objection!" on Jack's actions. There's a whole world of difference between murder and justified self defence. We can only logically infer that when Jack starts to draw his gun on Hannibal, it's not to summarily execute him (or even to attempt a wounding/disabling shot), but rather to hold it on him and aid the arrest. Hannibal is intelligent enough to know that Jack, as an upstanding man of the law, will not shoot him. And how does he respond? By throwing a knife into his hand, leaping the kitchen counter and rushing at him with further deadly attacks. And yeah, Jack responds first to that by pulling the blade out and knife fighting, but at that point all gloves are off. The man who threw the knife turned it into a life-or-death confrontation, and that was not the action of an innocent man. He only threw it because he knew the jig was up, and letting Jack hold the gun on him would lead to incarceration, so instead he decides to kill Jack. At that point, Jack is fighting for his life, which would be a more pressing concern than regular police procedure to arrest the suspect. And again, that ''does not'' make him a murderer. Even putting aside everything he can guess about Hannibal's cunning and danger from all the previous crimes, he can see how vicously and relentlessly this guy is trying to murder him. That alone would be an easy thing to justify to anyone questioning him about the encounter. He could argue that by garroting him to death, he stopped Hannibal from stabbing him in the neck... which does indeed happen. Or then that he stopped Hannibal from putting several other people's lies in mortal danger, which again, happens. Even a suspended Fed like he should be legally and morally vindicated for that course of action, in a way that would make sense within the realms of fiction or otherwise.

** I see what you're saying about Hannibal's animalism and the mask starting to slip. However I call "Objection!" on Jack's actions. There's a whole world of difference between murder and justified self defence. We can only logically infer that when Jack starts to draw his gun on Hannibal, it's not to summarily execute him (or even to attempt a wounding/disabling shot), but rather to hold it on him and aid the arrest. Hannibal is intelligent enough to know that Jack, as an upstanding man of the law, will not shoot him. And how does he respond? By throwing a knife into his hand, leaping the kitchen counter and rushing at him with further deadly attacks.

* To start with Jack; The show is about murderers, and Jack isn't one. We never actually see Jack or the Feds fatally shoot anyone, only Will and confirmed killers. Even Bev only wounds Molly Shannon. When Jack arrives at Lecter he's only suspended, and he knows there's no hard evidence to convict Lecter. He knows Lecter is preparing to leave, and has already framed Chilton, has destroyed his old notes and presumably any other evidence connecting him to the crimes. If Jack had just strangled him to death, Jack would definitely go to prison, Bella would die along and he'd never even prove who Lecter was. By subduing him, he was being a very good Fed, doing the right thing legally and morally and ensuring he'd remain at Bella's side as she died. The only time we see anyone on the team fatally shoot a bad guy is Will's entirely justified shooting of Hobbs, and it's his personal moral event horizon. Jack can't just strangle a man he only thinks and can not prove is the Ripper.
As to Hannibal and the door...you could argue that by that point he might have gone a bit beyond logic? Like it's the only really scary slip of his mask where we see the animal, who is so intent on murder it isn't thinking with Hannibal's usual ruthless ration and logic.

** Is it possible he could charter the plane, perhaps with an amoral friend in the aviation industry, rapidly enough to beat the alert? And have it land in an airstrip not under the auspices of the international airport community? Yeah that's a big stretch, but Hannibal as a character in general is known to stretch plausibility in several ways. Then, him hiding in Italy is open to debate, but not so hard to justify either. Not everyone follows America-based serial killers, and dopplegangers do exist.

* Since the show is updated to the modern day, it is a bit of a stretch that Lecter was able to fly out of the country by a commercial plane, enter Europe and remain hidden for months, completely above suspicion, while making ZERO effort whatsoever to conceal he or Bedelia's identity, especially given not just the scale of his crimes, but the incredibly violent scene he left behind, with a dead body and three mortally wounded people in his house. Will had called EMT before he went indoors, so help was moments behind. The alarm about Lecter would have been raised incredibly quickly. His passports frozen, is identity plastered across the news, his image sent to airports, docks, the borders, anywhere he could leave the country. International airports, especially European ones would be alerted he may be travelling to them, Interpol would be made aware. Once Hannibal was named as a suspect and the chance he returned to Europe raised, background checks would have been done that revealed he was suspected for the Il Monstro cases and contact would have been made between the US and European authorities. Even if Hannibal could escape the US and into Europe, perhaps by roundabout means (but not so roundabout he avoided business class), Florence isn't detached from the modern world. People would have heard about the Hannibal Lecter case. He still moves in the same circles of academic and socialites, surely some of them heard the story of a European Socialite in the US who murdered dozens? The first half of season 3 really only make sense if you believe Florence to be completely shielded from any form of modern technology, from computers, cell phones, even just televisions.

* In "Dolce," Will and Hannibal have their long-awaited reunion and then stroll outside into a public street. Will attempts to pull a knife on Hannibal and is stopped (via sniper rifle) by Chiyoh. But what exactly was his plan? They were in public. Was he going to gut Hannibal right there in front of everyone?

* Is it true that humans run the risk of turning insane through engaging in cannibalism (or is that just specifically for eating human brains?). If so, does ''being aware'' that you're doing it have an effect on the sanity-loss? Would the risk to sanity only come when/if the various characters found out that Hannibal/Garrett/whoever else tricked them into eating human meat disguised as animal?

* While the confrontation between Hannibal and Tobias is undeniably an AwesomeMoment, [[FridgeLogic when you think about the subsequent investigation]] it would seem to be as [[PlotHole holey]] as the episode's namesake. This kicks in from the moment Lecter breaks Tobias' right arm on the ladder. His full statement to the police/FBI would be something like: "I was providing my weekly therapy session to Franklin. During the break I excused myself to get a glass of water. On my return I was horrified to find Tobias standing over Franklin's corpse, proudly proclaiming that he snapped his neck. He then attacked me with a set of steel strings as a whip, then a glass stool and subsequently stabbed me in the thigh with my pen opener. I did everything in my power to defend myself but he started to overpower me with punches, kicks and knee strikes. Fearing for my life I was forced to break his arm, at which point he yelled in agony, stumbling back against the table and knocking the statue onto his head. He died instantly, and I proceeded to contact the authorities.". Fair enough. But it doesn't really stand up.

** Well, if memory serves, by the time Will admits this to Jack, Jack has come round to the idea that Lecter is the Ripper he's been hunting all along and the guy who killed / abducted and mutilated his agent Miriam Lass, and otherwise has been screwing with him, his friends and his family. In other words, Jack ''truly'' doesn't care, or at least he's willing to overlook it given what Will personally was going through at the time and the particular situation he was in. As to the rest...yes, what Will did was conspiracy murder and could get him a prison sentence, but to be fair, the series runs on HollywoodLaw throughout so it isn't that much of an issue.

* Why doesn't Will suffer any legal repercussions for sending Matthew Brown to kill Hannibal? The only person who seems to have any kind of problem with it is Alana. Shouldn't he have at least be charged with attempted murder even if Hannibal himself didn't want to press any charges? Will admits that he did it right in front of Jack a few episodes later and Jack doesn't seem to care!

* How does Chilton suddenly regain the ability to walk without the cane? He still ran with a noticeable limp when running from arrest in season 2, but season 3 he's suddenly recovered?

* How can the FBI misidentify [[spoiler: Dr Frederick Chilton]] as the Chesapeake Ripper when it's abundantly established that [[spoiler: he cannot digest meat due to a ''missing kidney'']]?

* A question about the film of ''Literature/{{Hannibal}}''. Maybe it was just RuleOfDrama, but Hannibal had already proven himself quite handy at picking a handcuff lock. Why in the hell did he need to [[spoiler: cut off his hand?]]

* Also in "Fromage", how does Tobias overcome two armed police officers in the space of about 30 seconds (while Will is outside) and murder them both? Yes he's a BadAss and a SmugSnake, but regardless. Of course Hannibal managed it in TSOTL but we actually '''saw''' how he pulled that off. To be fair, given Will's mental state it's possible he spent longer outside than the scene suggests investigating the audio hallucination, but still. The nature of their deaths is fairly elaborate.

** If you nearly die in the line of duty (multiple times), and you know EVERYTHING they screwed up while investigating murderers, I'm pretty sure the FBI has a retirement package for you, and it would be a fairly hefty one, even after they cover your screwups. Graham lives a simple life and canon (Literature/RedDragon) tells us that he ''fixes'' boats for a living after he retires. That's not addressed in the series, but at the end of the film version of Red Dragon, he's on a boat. It's not outside the realm of possibility that he took an old rustbucket boat and fixed it up.

* How does Will pay for anything? He kept blacking out or having Jack interrupt his classes to have him consult on cases when he was teaching, and then he was in a mental institution. When he got out he wasn't consulting on cases in an official capacity, so he wasn't getting paid. Come season 3 he has the money to get on a boat (that he seems to own) and go to Italy after an extended hospital stay and months of implied unemployed recuperation. Even if he was living off his savings, you'd think it would have come up at some point.

* In Naka-Choko, Will brings Hannibal meat which he claims is from a terrified Freddie Lounds. Hannibal has very finely attuned senses and he believes this. Will's later shown using a corpse in murder tableaus, and the meat seems to have come from it, but did the fbi sign off on him using a corpse this way? How did he know if it died in a suitably frightened state to convince Hannibal? The person would have had to have died recently and received no medication as they were dying, and also have the same body type as Freddie.

** Hannibal

* In Dolce, Hannibal was absolutely ready to kill Will. In Digestivo, he is visibly hurt when Will rejects him and even turns himself in because of it. Why did he go from having to eat Will to wanting to be his friend?

*** I agree. Since it's well-established that Hannibal can actually smell disease on people, he won't have any problems avoiding 'spoiled meat', thus avoiding any illness. As for gout, he was a doctor: he could be already taking the proper medication or treat to avoid the whole 'swelling of extremities' and other symptoms.

** Kuru is a prion disease, and as such Hannibal either needs to generate his own prions or ingest them in some way. In fact, unless he's very unlucky and chooses one of the few people in the United States (or, presumably, all the places in Europe he's been nomming people), his chances of catching a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of any sort is pretty low, especially since he tends to avoid most of the other possible vectors, ie. animal meats. As for gout, I'm not sure. Maybe he eats his vegetables off screen?

* How come Hannibal (or any of his guests) isn't sick with gout and kuru from eating all those human organs?

** You'd also think that any bystanders who saw her may have called emergency services due to how messed up she looks. BystanderEffect?