Plot Hole - TV Tropes

Plot Holes are those gaps in a story where things happen without a logical reason. When a Plot Hole involves something essential to a story's outcome, it can hurt the believability, for those who are bothered by such things. Hitting a Plot Hole at high speed can damage your Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Plot holes can come in many forms:

• Characters suddenly having knowledge that was never passed to them or, vice versa, characters not knowing something they knew last week, or something that anyone in their position must know.
• An event does not logically follow from what has gone before.
• An event occurring that other events in the work simply do not allow.
• A dilemma occurring that one or more characters could reasonably know how to solve in minutes, but such a solution never occurs to the character(s).

Plot holes occur for several reasons:

• The author really wants to add a certain scene, even if the scene makes no sense. Rather than toss the scene out, or add a transition scene that will resolve the problem, the author goes right ahead and adds the scene 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, ignores, or rejects what another wrote.
• The scene that would have filled the plot hole was cut due to time constraints, the editors not realizing it was needed to fill the Plot Hole, or other reasons.
• While adapting a story to a new medium, the adaptation 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). Another one is removal of the explanation for a plot element without which the plot element doesn't make sense.
• A change is made during the localization of a work without also changing other elements that rely on it.
• In comedies, the plot hole may be deliberately induced as the basis for a joke, usually consisting of Lampshade Hanging.^note 
• As a product of One-Shot Revisionism. The creator fixing an inconsistency—real or perceived—once makes it very blatant the many times it occurred in other installments of the same franchise.

Plot holes are thus contradictions or glitches in the fictional universe of a story. Even intentionally unrealistic, fantastical stories can suffer when plot holes arise, as audiences are willing to suspend disbelief regarding magic and other supernatural powers as long as the story makes sense within its own rules and is consistent.

It is also important to point out that plot holes aren't plot contrivances, as the two terms are sometimes conflated. The difference between a plot hole and a plot contrivance is one of the impossible verses the improbable. A plot hole is something that happens in the narrative that's impossible due to the internal logic of the story's universe, or at least, the story have never established or even hinted at it as being possible. A plot contrivance is when something happens in the narrative that's certainly possible within the story's universe, but the chances of it happening are extremely, sometimes even infinitesimally slim, and only happens because the author needed it to happen. For such cases, the trope you would be looking for is Contrived Coincidence.

Also of note, is the fact that it is important to distinguish between plot holes and continuity errors. A continuity error is merely a minor oversight or mistake that doesn't change anything about the course of the story. In order to truly qualify as a plot hole, the gap in the story most also have at least some sort of tangible effect on the plot.

Plot holes are sometimes plugged up or ignored with a casual 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.

Remember that Tropes Are Tools. Some stories contain plot holes as part of their basic nature. This includes many ludicrously comical works, and everything involving a Timey-Wimey Ball. Even when it isn't being deliberately played for laughs, the storytelling and explanations necessary to close a plot hole might serve as a distraction from the main plot; especially for more minor or obscure plot holes, it often makes more sense for a writer or director to invoke the MST3K Mantra and focus on their main story rather than getting bogged down in explaining minutiae.

Can overlap with Retcon and Continuity Snarl. A Cliffhanger Copout can create a Plot Hole if a Hand Wave is handled poorly. An attempt to resolve or remove a Plot Hole that introduces another Plot Hole is a Voodoo Shark. Contrast What Happened to the Mouse? for potential plots that get dropped, then picked up. See also Writers Cannot Do Math.

Also see Fridge Logic for cases where a Plot Hole isn't immediately obvious and only becomes visible in hindsight.

No examples, please. This only defines the term.

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