Most obvious plot hole.

[Ridgemo]

So, I've been meaning to ask all the Escapists about this one for ages. It's Halo Reach.

Spoiler: Massive Halo: Reach Spoilers

Okay, so in the second last mission of the game it's revealed that that Doctor Lady has discovered something underground in an alien temple, a "latchkey discovery" she calls it. Turns out it's Cortana, the AI you spend the rest of the entire Halo series hanging out with. So the final mission is to deliver this AI to Captain Keyes, on the Pillar of Autumn. As everyone knows, this is the ship you (the Master Chief) is on at the beginning of the first Halo game. It's explained at the beginning of that game that the Pillar of Autumn did a pretty much random slip space drive jump to avoid leading the Covenant fleet to Earth. Your job is then to escort Cortana off the ship and avoid the enemy capturing her.
SO the problem is: HOW THE HELL DOES CORTANA KNOW ALL THIS STUFF? We just dug her out of the ground a few hours ago, tops! Yet she acts like she's known the Captain, the crew and the Covenant for years! She apparently even knows Master Chief, who's been in cryo genic sleep the whole time!

Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure the manual for Combat Evolved straight up tells you Cortana is one of the most advanced AI's ever constructed by the human race. But we just dug her up! And how on earth did she "choose" the Master Chief as the Spartan she wanted to "work with"?! And what did she mean by "work with"?! She just got dug up, she has no idea where she's going, she has no idea they'll accidently end up at the first Halo ring, she has no idea what it does!

I'm sorry, I loved Reach, but the discovery that the pay load was Cortana was totally bogus. It was a pointless "Aha!" moment directed at fan boys at the complete expense of the continuity of the storyline.

[/rant]

Spoiler: Massive Halo: Reach Spoilers

The latchkey discovery that they make is about the actual Halo devicecs that the fore-runners had built. It's only when they get to them and land on them that they find out that it wipes out all organic life in the galaxy/Universe. Cortana was always with Dr Halsey except for when she accompanied Master Chief.

As for the big thing that she was transported in, if you look inside the canister you can see the chip that Master Chief inserts into the back of his helmet. Noble 6 just attaches the canister to his back, hence why Cortana never speaks to you.

 

[starwarsgeek]

STARWARS KOTOR2 the old chick is not a sith at all lol why do u think she always tells you to do the wrong things fails

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but I'll try to explain anyway.

KOTOR2 is a complete deconstruction of the Star Wars universe. The whole point of Kreia is to challenge the story of Jedi and Sith, since both have a mutually exclusive philosophy about the Force...both of which work. Kreia has mastered both and is now neither Jedi nor Sith. It's actually a great game if you can get past the damage LA caused by not letting Obsidian actually finish it.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I reckon the GTA series has quite a large 'plot' hole that's been haunting it since GTA 3. Whenever you kill someone, they die. But whenever someone kills you, you awaken at the nearest hospital six hours later. I know it's just a game mechanic, but if I can survive my plane being blown up by a heat-seeking missile and my body falling a thousand feet to the ground only to be run over by a tank when I land, how come I can whack someone with a few shots from a 9mm? How come the paramedics in their ambulances can revive random pedestrians who I've just incinerated with a flame-thrower, but are quite content to let other characters get murderised without helping them just because they were in a cut-scene once?

 

[Angeryterrano]

STARWARS KOTOR2 the old chick is not a sith at all lol why do u think she always tells you to do the wrong things fails

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but I'll try to explain anyway.

KOTOR2 is a complete deconstruction of the Star Wars universe. The whole point of Kreia is to challenge the story of Jedi and Sith, since both have a mutually exclusive philosophy about the Force...both of which work. Kreia has mastered both and is now neither Jedi nor Sith. It's actually a great game if you can get past the damage LA caused by not letting Obsidian actually finish it.

Yes it is an awesome game iv completed it five times but LA differently should of let Obsidian finish the game... hope the MMO is going to be good

 

[crudus]

Just showing butterflies doesn't do anything for someone who doesn't know what they symbolize. Personally, I assumed they were symbolizing Gandolf going to his happy place to think or something like that.

Turn the volume up next time, you can actually hear him speaking to them in another language.

Much of what you see as a plot hole in that film needs a bit of volume or a slow down.

Biggest plot hole(s) for me would have to be (obvious): 300: How did the story of the death-sphere at the end get told if the persians didn't tell it (Poetic License)

It is a type of phalanx. It is a formation that an "army" would take if they are surrounded (especially by archers).

The Butterflies aren't the plot hole. The plot hole is the fact that the eagles are never explained. It is never explained, therefore plot hole. I can explain the butterflies and language as him stroking out or something since the movie doesn't explain it regardless if the books explain it.

From IMDB:

Plot holes: The DVD commentary admits that there was no way in which all the flyers that were carried out of the casino and driven to the airport could have been in the vault.

I have listened to the commentary. It is why I chose to point it out here.

Actually the creator didn't like Gohan, not so much the audience. He felt that Gohan didn't "fit" the role well enough, you can thank Chichi for that.

I would say I had a good guess then. I guessed audience since DBZ started the transition but didn't finish it. It did make the transition from the Cell saga to the Buu saga weird and bumpy though.

Spoiler: Ocean's 11

How did the hooker pamphlets get into the vault?

...

They put them in there at the same time as they stole the money.

No they didn't. SWAT arrived after the pamphlets left for the airport. DVD commentators admit there is no way the pamphlets got into the vaults(well...not all of them).

What? How could anyone WANT Goku to be the center of the series?

I got one about almost every military-based shooter out there.
Why is it that your character completes 100's of vital missions without a hitch, drags tons of people to safety, and just basically performs heroic bad-assery and STILL doesn't get promoted from private?

I am sorry I was wrong in my guess. As explained by Gather above, the creator didn't like Gohan as Earth's protector.

As far as your other thing, that is quite simple. Read up on General George Patton Jr. (The WWII General). Then look at his ranks. You will see he gets demoted and promoted like he is playing Shoots & Ladders. He continually pissed off his superiors to know end. If he wasn't buddies with Eisenhower he would have been court-martialed so many times you would think it was going out of style. Something similar could have happened. Is there something in your specific instance the military would frown upon? Also if you can't handle a leadership position, you aren't getting promoted.

 

[Minischoles]

Avatar
1. Why didn't you orbital bomb those tree huggers
2. Just drop two tank on top of their main base
3. How they are able to sharpen the spears but they can go through bullet proof gas. I mean if you can sharpen them, so they can't be too hard... (my logic may be flawed, don't be ass holes when proving it)
4. Maybe I am just being a baby because the bad guys won.

My issue with that movie is that they spend all this time saying they are after a mineral then blow up the only thing stopping them from getting it yet they completely ignore it to try to wipe out the aliens for no better reason than assholeism.

Just posting because I'm addicted to TVTropes, but:

1: The Corp wasn't a military group, it was simply private contractors made mostly of ex-soldiers. I doubt that they had the ability to attempt orbital bombardment. After all, they seem fairly arrogant, and I doubt the Stockholders would be happy with them packing orbital bombardment weaponry against an enemy armed with bows and arrows.

You don't need weaponry to bombard someone from orbit. They came there on a starship, all they have to do is chuck asteroids at them, with absolute impunity.
It's not even hard, anyone with any decent level of maths ability could do the math, so people that can build and pilot FTL starships could certainly do it.

Jupiter stops asteroids from hitting us. Pandora is a moon of a gas giant, likly no asteroids and good luck trying to pluck one from an asteroid belt (if there is one). they trying to get stuff worth 20 Million per Kilogram, causing massive damage to the place is, well, counter-productive.

spend 5 million in starship fuel and logistics to cause a Billion Trillion dollars worth of damage so you can save 120 million dollars worth of military gear and personel? (numbers pulled out of the air)

A moon in a gas giant likely means tons of rocks, since around most gas giants, you get a planetary ring (although in some cases it is rather small). And you don't need a huge rock to really mess up someone's day, especially after they all gathered in one spot. You don't even need massive amounts of energy to pluck a rock out and put it into an injection orbit, for any people advanced enough to have starships and FTL, they should know all about orbital dynamics.

Hell even now, people have done the maths that would get asteroids from the asteroid belt injected into stable earth orbits for mining purposes. To say they can't do it is just stupid. You don't need an asteroid big enough to cause an extinction event, you can pretty much rain down small rocks with absolute and utter impunity, wiping out any centre of resistance - broadcast a message telling them 'play nice or daddy wipes out you and your entire species'.

you're either incredibly intelligent or you have no idea what you're talking about.

*scratches head*
I mean, I'm no mathematical whiz but I don't see how our current technology and understandings can allow us to get an asteroid from a swirling ring of rock and metal using something made by us that likely has less mass than the asteroid in question and have it sent over to us. what IS the energy or method used for that kind of act anyway?

Admittedly most current theories are just that - theories, and are entirely thought experiments, since we really have no way to reach asteroids or rocks.
Well there are many ways to manage it, it all depends on the level of technology, and how fast you want the asteroid to arrive. The cheapest (but slowest method) is the method used in most space probes these days, which is a very low energy, low fuel consuming engine, that constantly accelerates. Strap a few of those onto the surface of a rock, and a few months/years later, you've got an asteroid arriving.

The fastest method, has been used in hard sci-fi (most notably in the Night's Dawn Trilogy by Hamilton) and that's controlled nuclear explosions, similar to the Orion Engine concept, you simply knock the asteroid into an insertion orbit.

In these terms, it's simply a matter of the energy inputted, once you put that energy in, the asteroid will move - whether it be slowly or somewhat faster. Mass matters very little with a massive injection of energy, or with constant low acceleration.

plus why are you behaving with such a simplified approach to this? you're acting like you enemies will do exactly what you want them to do so you can cause maximum damage, instead of say, attacking you're ground base? and that's just the simplest approach. c'mon though, even if you calculate, object mass, planetary rotation, level of gravity and all that I don't see how you can acuratly direct a big lumpy (incredibly lumpy) rock thousands of miles down. I like pointless debates, can you tell?

need I repeat $20,000,000 per Kilogram? a chunk as heavy as a car gone will cost you $20 Billion!

to quote a much enjoyed fictional report on a similar, though not quite the same, subject:

Rocks are NOT 'free', citizen.

and you can't use the word "impunity" if you're striking your source of income when you're attacking.

Except they did do exactly what I would want. Most natives on the planet, congregated in exactly the same place. Hell you don't even need to use a giant rock. Sacrifice the shuttle, set it on an orbital trajectory similar to the kind ships like Virgin Galactic and the Vomit Comet use. Instant kinetic kill object. This kind of thing has long been theorised by most militaries with access to space, simply because it is very cost effective. You wipe out all those pesky natives, you instantly clear out any vegetation.
Any species that has control of space, can strike with absolute impunity, and there would be nothing the natives could do about it. Hell even hurling a few tons of metal at select points would cause massive damage if they were accelerated sufficiently.

 

[HT_Black]

Why the Hell did Link turn into a wolf in Twilight Princess? It still baffles me, to this very goddang day.

Link had the Triforce of Courage, this somehow turns him into his animal form rather than a ghost somehow.

Am I to understand that you don't know either?

 

[Crispee]

Why the Hell did Link turn into a wolf in Twilight Princess? It still baffles me, to this very goddang day.

Link had the Triforce of Courage, this somehow turns him into his animal form rather than a ghost somehow.

Am I to understand that you don't know either?

Quite right, that's about as far as I could grasp it.

Still, I liked playing as Wolf Link, I'll swallow whatever story they give for an excuse to turn into a wolf.

 

[Woodsey]

Star Wars Episode 2:

If the jedi aren't allowed to love, why were two obviously consenting 19-to-20-something-year-olds sent on an all expenses paid vacation to the planet-o-love?

I think Plinkett had far more material there than he actually used.

Because the expectation would be that Anakin could keep the beast in it's cage. The idea's that they control the feelings, not that they're hidden from them.

 

[Krantos]

The Sword of Truth series, but Terry Goodkind. Just the whole series. Nothing stays consistent.

But the biggest one, *Spoiler Alert* is when Nicci finds out that Richard did not actually cause Darken Rahl's death, because the Book of Counted Shadows wasn't really what it seemed. But killing Rahl is what made Richard's gift "activate," which was why he had to go to the Old World. And if he hadn't gone to the Old World, he never would have destroyed the barrier. And if he didn't destroy the barrier, there was no way Jagang could have invaded, and that invasion was the entire point of the series. So by saying that Richard did not kill Rahl, you essentially are saying that the entire series should not have happened.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Why the Hell did Link turn into a wolf in Twilight Princess? It still baffles me, to this very goddang day.

In Universe:
There was the prophecy of the Sacred Beast that will free the Twili. The prophecy was fufilled by TP-Link when the Triforce of Courage gave him that form instead of letting him turn into a spirit like everyone else. (so, "Because destiny says so").

Out of Universe:
The wolf is a symbol of Courage, which is Link's piece of the Triforce. Also, in A Link to the Past, humans will change shape when they enter the Dark World (for the record, it is not the same as the Twilight Realm), so it may also be a refernce to another game in the series.

 

[Ampersand]

I think the story takes places over about a year. No? It's been a while I'll admit. So I agree with that in mind your point makes a loooooot of sense. Tolkien had an explanation of Eagles not meddling in human affairs too much but it was pretty.... lame.

Jesus dying on top of a tower? Yeah, lets meddle there. Billions of other people's suffering and lives on the line? No, lets pass. That Jesus guy can handle it.

gandalf was friends with the woodsmen who lived with the eagles, you see that little butterfly throughout the movies. That was him sending messages.

Actually i'm pretty sure the eagles were sent by Radagast, the brown wizard from Gandalfs order. Talking to animals was kind of his thing and he used moths to send messages over long distance.
I have no clue where he was for the rest of the book or the film though.

 

[Bebus]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 2

Jacob's loyalty mission. The ship had been crashed for ten years, devoid of any contact with the outside world, and yet they are using the very recently developed mechs and thermal clip based weapons.

There were a couple of others in the game, but this one really stuck out!

Yeah and what about when

Spoiler

when jack can amazingly destroy 2 giant YMCA mechs like nothing then can barely do anything when in actual combat

This is a very common game occurrence: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutscenePowerToTheMax

Annoying!

 

[Last Valiance]

Pikachu's big city adventure: How were the two pichu brothers able to use their thunderbolt attack repeatedly WHEN EVERBODY KNOWS A PICHU CAN ONLY USE THAT ATTACK ONCE BEFORE FAINTING??!

gawd...

 

[FolkLikePanda]

I don't get how Jesus dying helped people be forgiven for their sins, I thought he died because a bunch of Romans and Jews didn't like him.

 

[Koroviev]

Spoiler: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Lisbet has an opportunity to kill this guy responsible for murdering several young women, but instead simply gives him a knock on the head before letting him get away the first time.

In the same movie, the undercover journalist is speaking with a man he knows to be part of the family he is investigating for the string of murders, and reveals all that he knows to the man who just so happens to be the murderer! Even if he wasn't "the guy," who in their right mind spills the beans to a member of an influential family threatened by your investigation?

 

[Koroviev]

I don't get how Jesus dying helped people be forgiven for their sins, I thought he died because a bunch of Romans and Jews didn't like him.

The Romans were heathens incapable of basking in the glory of Gawd, dontcha know?

 

[eggy32]

Modern Warfare 2

The No Russian mission.

Why do the members of the airport security/government/ANYONE not check security recordings to check and make sure it wasn't only an American slaughtering people... but instead just invaded the US.

Now that you bring it up, how the hell did 4 people get that far into an airport with 4 machine guns?
It's not like they just blast the door open or something, the mission starts in a lift so they're already inside. How do they get in?

 

[TurtleBay]

Oh my god, in before FF7 Areis' dieing. =o

This has to be the biggest plot hole in the major event of a video game story of all time. Surprised nobody else mentions it.

For those of you who don't play Final Fantasy games, there is this very useful inventory item called Phoenix Down that you can use to revive fallen allies. Players are careful to save their Phoenix Downs for when they characters are killed as it helps you progress through the game. In Final Fantasy VII part of the story is that this character needs to die. No matter how many Phoenix Down you have you cannot revive her (as it would spoil the story) even if you have been able to previously revive other dead characters with this item.

 

[Sephychu]

Modern Warfare 2: Several.

How did price fire the nuke from the sub alone? Two keys at opposite ends of the craft.
America gets nuked. What do they do? Nothing.
They can read the location of an arms dealer off an exploded bullet casing, yet they can't fucking tell that Shepard perpetrated the whole thing by sending Allen on that mission.