History Headscratchers / TwentyFour

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AbortedArc info moved from main article.

* (Some fans are still hoping [[spoiler: Max and/or Trepkos]] from Day 2 shows up again.)
** An more egregious example shows up if you think about it; the past 7 seasons (some more subtly than others) have been slowly building towards an inevitable confrontation between the good guys and a [[OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness shadowy organization pulling the strings behind most of the evil plots in the series]]. Fast forward to production of the last 6 episodes or so, and writers suddenly learn there isn't going to be a season 9. This forced massive storyline changes, and most likely [[LeftHanging we will never see a resolution in canon]].
*** They haven't actually been building up to anything like that [[spoiler:Max was killed in the Game while the rest of his group were said to have been captured prior to Day 3. The second group was a company ran by Jack's father and brother that was resolved in Day 6 with their deaths, with it being completely separate from the previous group. The third group in Day 7 ATTEMPTED to be this, but it was so thrown together at the last minute that no one bought it and it just lead to people mocking the David Palmer assassination conspiracy, so it was dropped. This "ultimate showdown with a bland cabal of vagueness behind everything" was mainly the viewpoint of some fans who wanted to have a link between all the seasons even though none really existed. Basically all of them are aborted arcs that some fans tried to link together but in the show nothing actually came of them]]
*** Nina Myers had a client in Day 3 who remains unidentified, and in Day 1 she said she was working for an unknown third party too. Graem and Philip Bauer were members of Day 7's OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness because Graem admitted to ordering the hit on David Palmer, something Tony said they were ultimately responsible for. Graeme also claimed to have been behind previous attempts on Jack's life in events prior to Day 5, suggesting a link to previous days. Logan only attained power because he was a Vice-President whose boss was nearly killed in Day 4, which might also have been these machinations. Day 6 also has the group who tried to kill Wayne Palmer who remain unidentified, but bare a lot of the hallmarks of Day 7's group. Yeah, they are linked. Not necessarily a case of AbortedArc though since the head man was caught in Day 7, making it more like a case of AntiClimax.
*** You left out the fact that none of them were officially confirmed to be linked. It's still Fanon since the fans made up the connections. Nina was working for a German individual in Day 1, and it just so happens that the person behind Day 2 was a German businessman named Max, who was killed in the Game and the rest of his group was captured before Day 3. Nina was working for an unknown employer, but it was barely mentioned and I don't think most fans, or even the writers, remember or even focused on that, and it was just used as a device to bring Nina back so Jack can kill her and resolve her storyline for good (to add, it was probably supposed to be Max, but of course they chose to kill him off in the game instead, which took place before Day 3) and then they just moved on to Stephen Saunders. While Logan did rise to the presidency as a result of UsefulNotes/AirForceOne, it was a result of just one of Habib Marwan's plans that season, with no mention of an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness at all. The infamous "never-ending" conspiracy was originally masterminded by President Charles Logan and the Bauer family, with the latter ordering Palmer's assassination from behind Logan's back (making it ironic that Logan, Day 5's BigBad, was the one person who wasn't involved in Palmer's death), however after the poorly received Day 6, Logan was solely blamed as the mastermind behind Palmer's assassination (until the end of Day 7) while Jack's long lost father and brother were never mentioned again. They finally attempted to do something like this with Wilson's group (which was the first and only attempt at using an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness to be behind much of the series), however, it flopped instantly since Wilson's plan (to cause a terrorist attack on the US) was completely different from Logan's, as Logan nor anyone in that conspiracy wanted the US to be attacked, and sometimes helped Jack thwart the terrorists, so there's a plothole, which isn't even including the fact that Wilson allowed Tony into his organization, despite the fact Tony was once a target for assassination by Wilson, and Wilson supposedly had Tony's wife Michelle killed in the same attempt, and yet he just takes his Dragon's word that Tony can be trusted and even agrees to meet with him with predictable results. And how did Tony find out anyway when even high-ranking people in his conspiracies didn't even know of his existence? In the end, it was a poorly written storyline despised by the majority of the fanbase. So they just didn't touch it again in a mixture of AbortedArc, Discontinuity and in some cases CanonDiscontinuity and instead brought back Charles Logan for Day 8's final arc.
*** The above information neglects to mention that, in season two's deleted scenes for the finale, Nina is revealed to be with Max on his boat, and it is mentioned that the German contact she was in touch with in the first season was a direct associate of Max. What "Plan B" Max and Trepkos were building towards was never explained, so it is a classic example of AbortedArc.
*** The "never ending conspiracy" isn't just various terrorist attacks thwarted by Jack; it's also the stuff happening within the United States government, the big one being whoever was behind the attempt on the life of Wayne Palmer. Presumably whats meant to have happened is the Wilson group included Philip and Graem Bauer, and they were involved stuff before Day 5 (given Graem's confession that he had tried to kill Jack before that day, implied to be several times and in previous seasons). It's possible they were at least involved with Marwan enough to help him get Air Force One shot down, thus maneouvering their [[TheMole mole]] Charles Logan into power, though this is speculative. The group's objective seems to be setting up a hardline far-right government favoring tough action against America's enemies and policies favoring the big business interest conspirators (who mostly seem to be arms manufacturers and the like, so the goals coincide), and setting up foreign strong men like Juma (Drazen?) whose policies they like. They were only directly behind the attacks in Day 7 (Hodge's seem to hijack only the chemical weapons part), but such attacks served to drum up support for their ruthless policies, such as Logan's original plot to kill a bunch of terrorists with nerve gas, and the policies Hodges was trying to terrorise Taylor into implementing.
*** Regardless of whether these various conspiracies were intertwined or not, the ''real'' AbortedArc was that so few of them were followed up on by the government. Powers Boothe, for instance, seems content on pinning the blame for Wayne Palmer's attack on an innocent man, which seems a temporary measure, but there is no mention of any sort of investigation into who was ''really'' behind it, which means he's not too bothered about the rampant infiltration of the White House by assassins and traitors. Graem's co-conspirators at the end of Day 5 are not mentioned again; neither are the other members of Wilson's group. Alexander Trepkos dropped off the face of the Earth Jack never looked into which evil bastard kept on hiring Nina, or who in the government leaked info about Drazen and his whereabouts (Nina doesn't seem likely to have had that clearance). The amount of [[KarmaHoudini karma houdini's]] in this show is quite staggering, and its seemingly because nobody in this world seems to be terribly interested in tracking these scumbags down.
** ''24: The Game'' revolves around Nina and Max working together, and brings in Chase following a lead to LA and Kim joining CTU. [[NoProblemWithLicensedGames If you're interested in season 2.5 pick it up.]]

*** It's also quite possible Marilyn Bauer made good on her threat to unleash her lawyers on CTU. Think about it. On top of multiple failures to stop terrorist attacks, here's a wealthy white woman who was forcibly separated from her son, a minor, by CTU, who planned to turn him over to a traitor who aided terrorists and foreign agents. In all likelihood, the government would have settled with her, but just imagine how that looks on an internal review, let alone played out in the media. And the fact that CTU staff ended up under public investigation for human rights violations (you apparently can't say "war crimes" in the War on Terror) shows that a lot of their darker doings quite clearly did get out in the media.

*** Given the Day 7 RetCon that Milliken was the man behind Logan's conspiracy, and that he operates as part of a cabal of oligarchs who keep their identities secret from each other and from their operatives, it's likely that Graem acted as the cut-out between Logan and Milliken (possibly via Philip Bauer.) There's no reason for Logan to know anything about Graem (more of the opposite, in fact) and definitely no reason for Graem to volunteer any personal information whatsoever.

***** The clerk probably just figured he was a drug dealer.

*** You left out the fact that none of them were officially confirmed to be linked. It's still Fanon since the fans made up the connections. Nina was working for a German individual in Day 1, and it just so happens that the person behind Day 2 was a German businessman named Max, who was killed in the Game and the rest of his group was captured before Day 3. Nina was working for an unknown employer, but it was barely mentioned and I don't think most fans, or even the writers, remember or even focused on that, and it was just used as a device to bring Nina back so Jack can kill her and resolve her storyline for good (to add, it was probably supposed to be Max, but of course they chose to kill him off in the game instead, which took place before Day 3) and then they just moved on to Stephen Saunders. While Logan did rise to the presidency as a result of AirForceOne, it was a result of just one of Habib Marwan's plans that season, with no mention of an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness at all. The infamous "never-ending" conspiracy was originally masterminded by President Charles Logan and the Bauer family, with the latter ordering Palmer's assassination from behind Logan's back (making it ironic that Logan, Day 5's BigBad, was the one person who wasn't involved in Palmer's death), however after the poorly received Day 6, Logan was solely blamed as the mastermind behind Palmer's assassination (until the end of Day 7) while Jack's long lost father and brother were never mentioned again. They finally attempted to do something like this with Wilson's group (which was the first and only attempt at using an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness to be behind much of the series), however, it flopped instantly since Wilson's plan (to cause a terrorist attack on the US) was completely different from Logan's, as Logan nor anyone in that conspiracy wanted the US to be attacked, and sometimes helped Jack thwart the terrorists, so there's a plothole, which isn't even including the fact that Wilson allowed Tony into his organization, despite the fact Tony was once a target for assassination by Wilson, and Wilson supposedly had Tony's wife Michelle killed in the same attempt, and yet he just takes his Dragon's word that Tony can be trusted and even agrees to meet with him with predictable results. And how did Tony find out anyway when even high-ranking people in his conspiracies didn't even know of his existence? In the end, it was a poorly written storyline despised by the majority of the fanbase. So they just didn't touch it again in a mixture of AbortedArc, Discontinuity and in some cases CanonDiscontinuity and instead brought back Charles Logan for Day 8's final arc.

** Hijacking a plane and assassinating a senator are very difficult tasks that require a lot of skill, which would require a hefty fee. In contrast, kidnapping a couple teens shouldn't be too difficult. It just turned out that it did.

*** While Senator Meyer ''was'' set up as a StrawmanPolitical at first, I think we can forgive the writers for doing that because it was the ChekhovsGun to his CharacterDevelopment (which was, in this troper's opinion, some of the best moments in the whole seasons). True, they didn't have to be ''quite'' that Anvilicious, but nobody's perfect.

* How does Bazhaev's son get radiation poisoning from the fuel rods, yet Farhad and his mooks have them out in the open without being affected by the radiation? [[hottip:*:Uranium radiation actually isn't that dangerous in real life, but what JustBugsMe is that the rods are dangerous at first when Bazhaev has them, then suddenly not dangerous when Farhad has them.]]

* Season One, Episode One: Gaines pays one million dollars to hire Mandy, a hyper-competent mercenary, to perform a mid-flight seduction/assassination of a photographer to secure his press credentials in order to get a surgically altered assassin within range of Senator Palmer. She tops off this feat by skydiving from an exploding jet airliner and landing safely in the California desert in the middle of the night. Then Gaines hires a couple of stoners with a molester van to kidnap Kim, the other crucial part of his plan. Did he run out of budget or something?