Sherlock Holmes (film)/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Sherlock Holmes (2009)

  • Okay. So Lord Blackwood fakes his own death. He rigs the tomb ahead of time to make it look like he burst out of it from the inside. He used all kinds of Victorian tech to pull off his "spooky magical powers", most of the tech invented or perfected by the "ginger midget," who Blackwood offs afterwards, probably to cover his tracks. All so far, so good. So. Why in the hell did Blackwood put the body of the ginger midget in his coffin? If you're going to fake your own resurrection, have an empty coffin. If you're going to kill a subordinate, chuck him in the Thames. Why put someone unusual in the coffin that would a.> attract attention, b.> not add to the spooky vibe and c.> beg to be followed up? Especially as he must know Holmes would follow up in the first place, as Holmes was the one who arrested him. So why throw such a huge bone to Holmes?
    • It did add to the spooky vibe--recall the gravekeeper, who took it as a sign--he said something about 'The dead will rise, and the living will fill these coffins.' And it was part of the ritual Holmes outlines, as well.
    • If you recall, the only reason the midget stood out to Holmes and Watson was because Irene was looking for him, otherwise he would have just been an anonymous victim.
  • If everything that was supposed to be magical in the movie was really phony "industrial revoloution tech" (radios phooey!) then what was the point of showing Holmes going into a trance and contacting Blackwood when he does so? Was that sequence all in his head?
    • I suspect it was all part of getting into Blackwood's mindset; for all his cynical 'conjuring tricks', Blackwood clearly believes in his own bullshit, so Holmes is endeavouring to see the world through Blackwood's eyes as part of 'widening his gaze'.
      • Plus he's "self-medicating."
    • He also needed to consider how the other members of Blackwood's secret society would view his "magic". If they weren't caught up in their own mythology, they too could have deduced that it was all trickery and derailed the guy's agenda. Holmes couldn't be sure what sort of Batman Gambit Blackwood was pulling on his own brethren unless he explored their mystical mode of thought, confirming they would be that gulible.
    • Finally, is a common trick for misguiding the audience into thinking that something supernatural is happening at last, and Holmes need to explore it.
  • Similarly, why hatch a plan in which at least two things depend on it raining on the correct night? Even with the jokes we've all heard about English weather, all it would take would be one dry night at the wrong time and he'd be in real trouble.
    • Blackwood's plan hinges on him getting arrested and cheating the gallows, and Holmes notes that the crime he was arrested for was 'a fingerpainting' in comparison to his earlier efforts. Presumably Blackwood made a point of getting arrested during a season where it was likely to be raining frequently. Note how pretty much every shot of sky in the movie is gloomy and overcast.
      • on a side note: We learn that Blackwood already killed 5 girls, in the pattern of a pentagram. Holmes catches him before he can kill the sixth. but killing six girls would have broken his carefully planned pattern, so Blackwood was obviously very sure that Holmes would catch him and set his scheme in motion.
    • Of course every shot of the sky is gloomy and overcast. It takes place in England. I spent a semester there, and we saw the sun maybe four times; even when it wasn't raining, it was nearly always overcast and slightly damp. There's a reason for all the jokes: England really does have weather like that.
    • "Is it November?" Holmes asks at one point. Even given the above point about Britain's usual rainy weather, October / November -- when Blackwood was arrested, tried and executed -- is a season in which it is particularly likely to rain.
    • Worst case scenario: He bribes someone to pour water on his grave if it fails to rain.
      • Ooh, Fridge Brilliance -- with this back-up in place, a dry night would make it even more difficult to figure out how the trick was done, because there'd be no apparent reason for the glue binding the rock together to dissolve. Thus strengthening Blackwood's apparent Dark Messiah mystique.
  • How did Watson - an experienced medical doctor - certify as dead a 'corpse' that, after supposedly being hanged, displayed no rope-marks or burns on the neck, whose neck was not broken and who would still have had a pulse? I can accept the rest of the setup of the 'fake' hanging as described, just not an independant and unbribed doctor certifying as dead a body which plainly had not suffered death by hanging...
    • I believe the drug he took explicitly slowed the heartbeat such that it wouldn't register as a pulse. Watson's examination, if I remember correctly, amounted to checking his heartbeat and breathing and as far as he was concerned, someone whose heart wasn't beating (noticeably) and who didn't seem to be breathing was dead.
    • Blackwood was wearing an outfit that had a high collar which covered his neck. Since he couldn't find a pulse, and never really took Blackwood's declaration that he would come back from the dead seriously, Watson didn't bother to roll Blackwood's collar down all the way to do a further investigation. He didn't think it was possible for someone to survive being hanged, so in his mind there was no reason to look for further evidence of someone's death once he had confirmed that there was no pulse.
    • Never mind how Watson could've missed the signs. Why didn't his apparent corpse get dissected rather than buried? Handing convicts over to the medical schools after hanging was standard practice for executions at the time, and his body would've been especially prized because he'd been healthier than your average street thug.
    • Blackwood still had contacts in the government who were in on the plot, like Coward- presumably, one of them pulled strings to make sure he was buried.
    • Plus, he's Lord Blackwood. Britain is at this point still a society dominated by hereditary aristocrats and the like; it probably wouldn't be too hard to make sure that he got buried instead of cut up by impressing his aristocratic origins, despite his crimes. The respect for aristocracy was enough to grant him a honorable burial in the family crypt, unlike ordinary convicts of the Victorian Age which were buried in lime on the prison grounds.
      • Actually, Blackwood's title is a Just Bugs Me in itself, as he's an illegitimate son and shouldn't have had any actual claim to a title.
      • You could earn peerage by your own merits even in the 19th century - or in Blackwood's case, probably by having a few friendly people in the House of Lords telling Queen Vicky what a nice chap he is, and how he should have a title despite of the misfortune of his illegitimate birth.
      • I assumed that, though he was actually the illegitimate son of, er, whatever his name was, his mother was the wife of - and, to the world at large, his father actually was - the late elder Lord Blackwood. (There is a British aristocratic clan of Scottish origin with the surname Blackwood, but in the 19th century they were part of the Irish Peerage.)
      • In any case, he couldn't have shared the title with his biological father; he would only have become Lord after the previous holder of the title died or passed it forward. Under normal circumstances there's only one Peer in a family at a time.
      • It's implied that the previous Lord Blackwood is no longer with us and that Blackwood had something to do with it ("If the rest of his family's dead, how long do you expect to survive? Food for thought!"), which probably explains why he got his title.
    • In any event, Lord Blackwood's burial at consecrated grounds is incredibly suspect. The details as to when and how he broke out and switched bodies aside, Blackwood would have never been given a proper burial. He was a convicted murderer and warlock, after all.
      • As noted above, though, he was also a wealthy aristocrat who was more than willing to throw around a lot of cash to ensure what he wanted to happen happened. Money's gotten worse people better deals.
  • Holmes, being who he is, is able to uncover the mystery surrounding Blackwood's mysterious power. Okay. But how does he even know the circumstances of Ambassador Standish's (the American guy's) death? Who would have informed him that Standish had pulled the trigger on Blackwood and then burst into flames? (His finding out would have to take place before he was arrested, as during Holmes' manufactured ritual he ponders the death of Standish.)
    • Wasn't there a newspaper with the headline "Ambassador Standish Killed by Hellfire"?
      • Even if we didn't see it (I can't remember), the death of the American Ambassador would probably make the papers, and Blackwood would certainly see to it that people were made aware that he did it with his funky awesome supernatural powers.
    • It's likely Lestrade handled that case and told Holmes about it. Holmes being Holmes, he would have asked for all the details. That the man's gun was missing one bullet would have jumped out to him.
  • Did we ever find out how Lord Blackwood seemingly mind-controlled the girl at the beginning of the movie into nearly stabbing herself?
    • Drugs, presumably.
      • Opium derivates were widespread in Victorian Britain and used for most real or imaginary illnesses. At some point, even Bram Stoker used (rather ironically) the appetite of patients and doctors for Laudanum as a plot device that left the victims sleeping and vulnerable.
    • Possibly some form of suggestion or hypnosis while we're at it.
    • Or she was being payed off too. Make a few quid, become a media darling for a few days, not bad for a nights work.
      • Although Watson does note that she 'needs a hospital' when they're rescuing her; presumably even if she was a stooge she was in for more than she bargained for.
    • Maybe Blackwood put out an ad. "Need five young, capable women for religious rite. Must not be averse to tasteful nudity or death by cardiac trauma. Consumption voids applicancy. Applications will be accepted at 223A Baker Street, guest password is 'Swordfish'. Fifteen pounds sterling to be paid to the family of all fully-completed roles."
      • Figures Sherlock Holmes would have a hand in creating Craigs List.
  • Just how does one traverse through the sewers of Parliament and reach the top of Tower Bridge in just a few minutes? Don't answer that. It wasn't really a question.
  • If the Home Secretary is a high ranking member of Blackwood's order, and head of the British police, wouldn't that Lestrade isn't actually part of his organisation? I suppose it's fair enough for a secret society, though.
    • I assume that it's a Masonic thing; I seem to recall that being a Freemason was all but essential for career advancement in the British police during the Victorian era.
    • Alternatively; Lestrade's faking it as part of the con they're running on the Home Secretary.
      • Or maybe on the whole group, just in case.
      • I thought that was the question. If Lestrade's faking, shouldn't the Home Secretary know about it? He was in charge of the Police and would presumably have met Lestrade in person on official business at least once. He should know that he either was or was not a member of the secret society at night.
      • The Home Secretary wouldn't meet every single police inspector face-to-face, and for all we know there's an extensive hierarchy to the order which would prevent Lestrade and the Home Secretary encountering each other in person. Like the Freemasons in real life, the society here is probably quite extensive.
      • Good ole' human nature - Lestrade had known Holmes for years and always got his help (it's revealed in A Study In Scarlet, set in 1886), so he owed him enough favor and also trusted him blindly. If your old friend Holmes said your boss is part of a murderous plot, you'd rather believe him and help him bring things to a reasonable end.
  • If it's November 1891, shouldn't Sherlock be in hiding? Clearly the new films use some canon from the stories, since he knows Irene Adler, so is there any way to know what's canon for the films and what isn't, or where the timeline breaks off?
    • Since Holmes is only just introduced to the existence of Moriarty at the end of the movie, it's fair to assume that the timeline in this movie is a little behind the original canon.
    • Or maybe it's actually November 1890?
    • It says 1890 on the back cover of the DVD ... However, I have no explanation other than laziness as to why the papers in the movie itself say 1891.]
    • Or the movie is just in an Alternate Continuity. There's no reason why the movie should fit in with the books. Just as an example, no one demands to know how the Batman films fit in with the comics, do they? Same here.
      • It is an Alternate Continuity, as in this Holmes meets Mary as Watson's fiancée, as opposed to her coming to him as a client in The Sign of Four.
  • The Case of the Disappeared Watson. Condensed: Irene flees the scene, Holmes runs after her, Watson stays behind and knocks out Dredger, Lord Blackwood hurries down (to the sewers?) under Parliament, spots Holmes chasing Irene, and goes after them. When Blackwood catches up with Irene and Holmes on the Tower Bridge, he has Watson's cane. How the heck did he get Watson's cane? Also, when Moriarty nabbed the wireless device from the machine, where was Watson? You could perhaps say he was still stuck under Dredger, but somehow I doubt either of the aforementioned gentlemen would have a problem killing him while he was down. Heck, I can see Blackwood doing it to (unwisely) screw with Holmes.
    • I've heard there's a deleted scene or something where Blackwood nicks Watson's cane, but I don't know the details. As for where he was when Moriarty grabbed the device, well, Blackwood, Holmes, and Adler are both able bodied people who can run and climb stairs quickly. Watson, seeing as he gets around with a cane, isn't.
      Let's presume he got up and tried to stop Blackwood from pursuing Holmes. Blackwood knocks him over, but doesn't have time to finish him so he just grabs the sword cane and runs after Holmes and Adler. While Holmes, Adler, and Blackwood are running through the sewers and up to that scaffolding, Watson has to get up and hobble after them without the help of his cane. Moriarty would've had plenty of opportunity to to grab the device while Adler, Holmes, and Blackwood were occupied on the scaffolding and Watson was busy trying to climb the stairs.
      • Actually, Watson mainly carries his cane as a memento of his army days in Afghanistan, and, aside from a seasonal ache, is pretty able-bodied in both books and film. Also it was a fairly common practice for British gentlemen in of that era to carry a walking stick.
  • So, Blackwood killed Standish by soaking him in a flammable liquid, disguised as rain...by spraying it all over the courtyard of the Order's headquarters. They better hope nobody lights up for a smoke around there before it's washed off by actual rain.
    • The place just happened to get a washing the next day. Alternately, the stuff isn't volatile while dry.
    • It's raining pretty heavily all around when Standish enters the building, and there's only a comparatively small amount coming from that hose above the door. Presumably the rain washed it all away.
  • So, Watson...kinda got an explosion to the face. Why is he still alive? I like Watson, but he was pretty much at ground zero (so to speak). It should have done more than cause him to need a sling on his arm. I mean we all saw his British ass tossed about like a rag doll, flames everywhere, and if not for the noise probably would have heard him scream like a bitch too (very ungentlemanly I'll say that much) and yet he lived. How is that possible?
    • They're right at the edge of the riverfront when the bomb goes off; it's possible that the explosion by chance hurled him into the water, and he managed to remain conscious long enough to get himself out of it.
    • Alternatively, when we last see him before the explosion obscures him he seems to be leaping for some cover between what appear to be some kind of stones or barrels or such; perhaps they shielded him from the worst of the explosion?
    • That, unfortunately, doesn't explain the multiple shrapnel wounds that Watson (and for that matter,ALL of them) would have being that close to multiple powerful explosions. And let's not forget the hearing loss and traumatic brain injuries that would result from being less than five feet from several explosions. And why wasn't anybody burned?
      • It's explicitly stated that Watson, at least, had to have a lot of shrapnel dug out of him. The hearing loss is presumably represented by the muffling of the sound of the explosion. As for why it's not permanent or why Watson, Holmes and Irene aren't suffering from permanent brain damage, I think we're probably going to have to chalk that up to Acceptable Breaks From Reality and Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
  • A very minor example here. When Holmes, Irene and Watson are all in the small building near the end, Holmes has his shirt on. Then, in a scene taking place a short while later, still in that same building, he has taken the shirt off and is running around in a t-shirt with his suspenders showing. WHERE DID HIS SHIRT GO? WHY DID IT LEAVE? IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL.... I mean, if it was because it was hot out you'd expect a removal of a jacket from someone else or something, and Holmes doesn't seem the type to just randomly decide to get shirtless--I mean, less shirted...
  • Okay, Lord Blackwood guessed in advance that Ambassador Standish would try to shoot him once he'd told Standish his plan, so he sprinkled him with flammable liquid. That's fair enough; predicting Standish's reaction in advance wasn't that difficult, and even if Standish had decided not to shoot rather than join the conspiracy, that would've served Blackwood's plan as well. And if Standish would not have shot Blackwood rather than fled the scene, I guess Blackwood had some backup plan how to make him burst into flames anyway. But my question is: how did Blackwood know Standish's bullet wasn't gonna kill him? Even if Standish bursted into flames the second he pulled the trigger, the bullet should've left the gun anyway. So why didn't the bullet hit Blackwood, and how did Blackwood know it wouldn't?
    • It wasn't a real bullet. It was effectively a blank, just a black powder charge designed to set off a spark. There was no solid bullet to come out of the gun. Holmes explains this during the summation.
      • I want to know what Blackwood would have done if Standish had pulled a knife?
      • Impossible. Knives were and are thug weapons. A 19th century man born and educated in the upper class had very slim chances to even know how to use a knife - it was either firearm or sword, no middle ground. Given Blackwood had known Standish for some time and also knew his temper and habits, he could safely predict what would happen.
      • Fair enough, although I admit, I wasn't expecting a serious answer. That still makes a lot sense. So what if Standish had pulled a sword on him?
      • ... A worthy enigma, Pinky. Although a sword would presumably be a lot more conspicuous than a concealed firearm, and I'm pretty sure that even in the nineteenth century the British police didn't exactly look kindly on people walking around with bloody great swords; plus, swords seem a bit more... European than guns. I dunno what the likelihood of the American ambassador owning a sword over a gun would be, but presumably Blackwood worked on that assumption.
      • If Standish had brandished a sword, Blackwood would have unsheathed his own sword and engaged in a spectacular duel, and caused sparks to fly from the clashing blades, instantly setting Standish alight.
      • Blackwood doesn't need to work on assumptions. He controls people that know Standish personally, so he would know that Standish does not, in fact, have a sword.
      • Furthermore, you would expect an American to carry a pistol instead of a sword.
  • A small thing, I guess, but why do Holmes and Watson have a dog? It's not in any way canon, nor in any real sense practical. For those who will argue about Watson mentioning a dog in "A Study in Scarlet", I'm afraid you're incorrect. Watson says he "keep[s] a bull pup." This is period slang for the fact that he has kept his army revolver - a somewhat unusual characteristic in that day and age. So, either a language failure or just threw it in to try to create wider audience appeal.
    • It's hardly as cut and dried as you make it, Watson first mentions the 'bull pup' as the top of his list of faults that would make him a bad room-mate...and whereas keeping a dog might be seen as undesirable, why would anyone in Victorian England complain about a former army doctor keeping a gun? And also there's no real evidence that the term 'bull-pup' was used for revolvers before 1900. [1] [dead link]. The other non-canine explanation given for the 'bull-pup' was that it was slang for a quick temper, but there is no sign of Watson ever showing this, he is more noted for his calmness in the face of Holmes' many eccentricities. So it's likely that 'bull-pup' is literally a dog..and Doyle simply forgot about it like he forgot about a lot of things including Watson's first name and the location of his wound. And there is a dog mentioned in Study In Scarlet which Holmes' used to test a poison on.
    • Plus, a literary analysis of Conan Doyle's works shows that everytime Doyle used the word 'Bull-pup' in other contexts, he literally meant a dog.
    • In any case, regardless of whether a pet dog at 221b Baker Street is canonical - would it really constitute a head-scratcher that the writer of the film decide to include one? Why wouldn't Holmes (or Watson, or Mrs. Hudson or whoever it belongs to) own a dog? Anyway, the dog gag is presumably inspired by the terrier-poisoning incident in A Study In Scarlet.
  • Blackwood intends for the gas to be released at Big Ben's twelfth chime. So why does he need the first-of-its-kind radio transmitter and receiver to trigger the machine when a simple clock would have done the trick?
    • Because he wanted to be in direct control of it.
      • But why does he want to be in direct control of it? The only thing he does, or indeed ever intends to do, with that direct control is to do something that a much cheaper, easier and more reliable solution would have done just as well.
      • The man wants to control the whole country and the world. Control is his whole thing. His whole plot is his attempt to guide and control everything around him. Him wanting to be the one to push the button on the final stroke is just an extension of his control freak tendencies.
  • Blackwood's plan to take over Britain can't work. Even if he wipes out all of Parliament except the men loyal to him, it can't work. Queen Victoria (I'm pretty sure the movie takes place during her reign, otherwise it's Edward VII) would hold the power to appoint the new Prime Minister, and while it would be traditional to pick whoever the majority of Parliament picks for the job, it's not a legal requirement and I doubt very much if she would do so if he only had a majority because he killed everyone who opposed him. Furthermore, if she wanted, she could simply issue a royal writ calling a new election, which would automatically cause Parliament to dissolve (that law wasn't changed until 2011). The police and military forces, meanwhile, are loyal to the monarch as Head of State, and wouldn't answer to the Home Secretary if his orders contradicted theirs. Any way you slice it, killing Parliament wouldn't actually accomplish anything, beyond publicly identifying the survivors as Blackwood's co-conspirators.
    • When you start wholesale murdering half of parliament, you're not really concerned about every bit of legal minutiae involved in actually taking power. Also, did you miss the part where he's trying to make it look like he's an all-powerful sorcerer? The whole plan hinges on people not acting rationally, but on them going, "HOLY SHIT HE JUST KILLED PARLIAMENT WITH MAGIC! DO WHAT HE SAYS OR HE'LL KILL US ALL!"
  • What was the goal of Blackwood's initial wave of murders? (The ones he was hanged for?). His plan hardly hinged on him faking his own death, so getting "killed" isn't much of a motive.
    • Yes, it did hinge on him coming back from the dead. That's the first public thing he does to start freaking people out, and "freaking people out" is the whole backbone of his plan. The initial wave of murders was to paint himself as a powerful sorcerer.
  • If the movie is set in 1891, why is the Civil War still going on? Alternate history?
    • It isn't; the ambassador says America is weakened after its recent Civil War. Calling 25 years "recent" is still pushing it, though.
      • Perhaps, but only in the fact that 25 years is a fair amount of time. The Civil War's shadow loomed long and far for almost a century after it happened and certainly it dominated North-South relations until the early 20th century. "Recent" in this case isn't so much a matter of time rather than a matter of MINDSET, and considering that as late as 1917 (with the revelation of the Zimmerman telegram blowing that plan to hell) Berlin still thought it had a reasonable chance of using the North-South divide to pull apart American unity in a clash against the German Empire in the near future, it's safe to say that in 1891 the Civil War was still very much a weakening influence on the uS.
      • The US (and England for that matter) went through the worst depression prior to the Great Depression following the Civil War. It took quite a while to dig out of the hole of the Civil War.
      • Given that its been over a hundred years since the Civil War and some people, both in the North and South still can't seem to get over it, I can see how this is plausible. (Confederate History Month anyone...)
      • Conan Doyle was writing for a British readership. By British-historian standards, every event in American history is "recent".
      • Even so the United States was hardly 'weakened' at that point. By 1891 the U.S was well on it's way to becoming a fairly powerful state.
      • Presumably by 'weakened' he means 'still affected by internal divisions' rather than 'militarily or economically weak'; while the Civil War was over and the United States was becoming a powerhouse, the Reconstruction era (which ended in 1877, just over ten years before the events of the movie -- which is fairly 'recent') did leave lingering tensions and bitterness between North and South, which may have been what Blackwood was referring to. As for why he referenced the Civil War, Blackwood probably isn't interested in the distinction, while in the meta-sense the filmmakers may have been simplifying.
      • Perhaps most importantly, it should be remembered that Lord Blackwood is arrogant and myopic. A lot of Old World aristocratic types did not take the US seriously until well after they should have.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

  • In "The Game of Shadows", where is Moriarty's sleeve-gun? You'd think he'd pull it at least once...
    • Because he considers Holmes a Worthy Opponent, and wouldn't use such an underhanded method to defeat him. Plus, he has Moran to do all his dirty work now.
  • The assassination in the Hotel de Triomphe makes no sense. Moriarty hires the best marksman in Europe to shoot a man from an almost impossible distance... and then decides to blow up the hotel to hide evidence of the shooting? The bomb was plenty strong enough to be lethal - as we saw, it killed everyone in the room easily. Combining a shooting and a bombing doesn't reduce the amount of evidence, it increases it. Was there any logic to that scene beyond "Give Sherlock more to deduce?"
    • Because the entire reason why Moriarity is such a threatening villain is due to his attention to detail and his need to be absolutely thorough. Moran was essentially a backup plan to guarantee that the target was eliminated. Plus, he probably didn't trust just using explosives, since he would have known that Lord Blackwood tried the same thing on Holmes and failed.
    • There is a possibility that the bombing might fail to kill the target. Moriarty was simply doubling up on his killing to make sure that his target went down.
    • Also keep in mind that for Moriarty, its not just about his criminal empire or starting World War I. For Moriarty, its the game of shadows he and Holmes are playing. He could have easily - very easily - had Moran set up outside the university and just shot Holmes in the face when he showed up to the university to chat. But Moriarty wanted to play his game with Holmes and match wits with him. He deliberately left little clues to draw Holmes on.
    • It's just one more example of Moriarty's Magnificent Bastard tendencies. Not only did he outmaneuver Holmes (by tricking him into going to the opera instead of the hotel), he had a backup plan in case Holmes caught on. Think about it. If Holmes had immediately deduced the truth and gone to the hotel to stop the bomb, Moran would still be on the roof to assassinate Meinhard. Holmes can't be in two places at once, so either way, Moriarty wins.
    • While all the previous are possible motives, the reason is already explained in the movie: he is pinning down the murders as the work of anarchists, and their weapon of choice used to be explosives (if fact, Franz Ferdinand was gunned just after a previous bombing failed to kill him); also, the bomb will dissimulate that the intended target was only one, and thus, that the motives were not political. At last, the "additional evidence" will be all but lost for the nonexistant forensic methods of the era.
  • As an aside, if Moriarty wants to secretly take over the world's companies, it's probably not a smart idea to give the people he kills rings with his monogram engraved on them surely?
    • I thought it was just a family ring that Holmes used to identify the victim, and then simply deduced his relationship to Moriarty.
    • It says clearly in the film, the ring had the victim's (Meinhard's) monogram (rather expected for a Victorian Age industrialist of possible aristocratic background).
  • In the flashback of Colonel Moran shooting Meinhard, his rifle is a steampunkish modification of a Martini-Henry .450/577 rifle. The specific shape of the falling-block breech is shown when he chambers the round, and also the tall and complex rear sight, specific for guns firing black powder, whose bullet trajectory is very arched, rainbow-like. The British Army had already adopted the modern smokeless powder .303 ammo in 1889, and modern shooters can attest the superior accuracy of the round. Why would the best marksman in Britain strive himself with an older and less accurate gun?
    • The war he fought in was about 11 years done by the time of the film, so he likely had used the Martini-Henry during his service and was used to the ballistics of the round and the feel of the weapon. He still required a high-quality sight, a tripod, and a wind gauge to make the shot.
  • How did Dr. Watson load the cannon before firing it at the searchlight tower? 11-12 inch caliber shells weigh many hundreds of pounds. If the writers had intended to make it already loaded, this would make Moriarty more stupid than Forrest Gump himself. Guns are not kept loaded, even if the ammo is stored in the same place as the gun, for safety reasons - people may smoke around, a spark from a chimney or some machinery may land on it...
    • For all we know, there might've been some sort of mechanism specifically to make it easier to load the cannon. In fact, that might've been why it was there in the first place. They also had the earmuffs nearby, along with the bags of what seems to be gunpowder, so clearly it was actively being used. Moriarty is a guy who considers everyone disposable, including having Moran shoot his own guard that very scene. He presumably doesn't care much about workplace safety.
  • Also, the plan to assassinate Holmes and Watson in the train to Brighton was a waste of resources - dress the Mooks in Army uniforms, smuggle hundreds of pounds of weapons and ammo on board, fire a Maxim machine gun like Rambo while not aiming. A bomb under the carriage would be cheaper and safer.
    • The attempt on Watson's life is largely intended as a diversion for Holmes; it thus needs to be something Holmes can actually fight. That its also loud, noisy, and hilariously over-engineered only plays further into its actual role as a diversion.
    • fire a Maxim machine gun like Rambo while not aiming. He was aiming. However, there's this thing about machine guns: suppressing fire only needs to go in the general area of the target to keep it pinned down, and the other mook had grenades which he was prepping to throw into the train car.
    • Moriarty, having planned so well, likely wanted total assurance that the assassination would work. It started with a simple stabbing in the dark, moved up to gunfire (Holmes was the first to attack the "soldiers", which would make it look like they were defending the car from an assailant and the Watsons were caught in the crossfire), then finally to a machine gun and grenades. Had any of the other passengers become concerned over the ridiculous amount of gunfire going on, all evidence would point to Holmes and Watson having started a gunfight aboard the train.
  • Hunting men running between trees in the morning fog with siege howitzers and mortars will never work. Nobody has invented yet a tack-driver scoped cannon, even less in the early 1890s. You may hit something, but not your intended target.
    • Radios were invented about thirty years early, and Moriarty made it a priority to get one of them for himself. Who's to say they haven't invented scoped cannons early in this setting?
      • Irony, dear Watson. To put it more clearly, a large howitzer firing indirectly is not a tack-driver sniper rifle and can't be accurately aimed to a target so small and so mobile as a running man. Even the huge Gatling machine gun firing in the factory yard (based on a Real Life British Gatling model from the late 1870s) was a volley weapon, unable to hit a man-sized target and made to be fired only at large troop formations.
    • The most important factor in any firefight is rate of fire. The more metal you get downrange, the better your chances of hitting your target.
      • This. It wasn't about efficiency, merely ensuring that they could be killed. Moran had them pull out all the stops and use literally every weapon they had, including an obscenely large cannon, under the impression that eventually something would hit them.
  • Holmes was told that Irene was killed by a rare--and apparently extremely aggressive--form of tuberculosis. Did he forget that when he sentimentally sniffed the handkerchief stained with the fluid that she had coughed up?
    • And the man who told him how she died was Moriarty (who is pretty much walking around with a giant "DON'T TRUST ANYTHING THIS JACKASS SAYS" sign on his head), and there is literally no form of tuberculosis that kills that quickly. Even the worst XDR TB strain in history, detected in South Africa in HIV-positive patients, still took more than 2 weeks from diagnosis to death. It is quite obvious that she was poisoned with a toxin that simulates tuberculosis effects, and Holmes would know this.
    • Moriarty wasn't telling Holmes how she died. He was telling him how it would look to the authorities that she died. He knows that she was poisoned, and Holmes knows that she was poisoned, but as far as the authorities will ever know, she caught TB and died. It's basically an example of Cut Himself Shaving.
  • At the end of the movie, the fake red book that Sherlock used to replace Moriarty's said something along the lines of 'Be careful what you fish for.' written in it, along with a little flip-book animation of a fish eating a fisherman. However, Moriarty made the fish metaphor while Sherlock was being tortured, meaning it would of been impossible for Sherlock to make the animation while tortured and then slip it into Moriarty's pocket that quickly.
    • But the same song was playing earlier when Holmes visited Moriarty in his office, and the two of them briefly discussed it. While it was less overt, the fish metaphor was already implied during that scene.
  • Paul Anderson gives a fine performance as Sebastian Moran but shouldn't a 19th century British Army (ex-)colonel come across as a bit posher? His version of Moran seems like more an ex-NCO. For that matter he also seems a little on the young side - Dr. Watson and he fought in the same war (the Second Anglo-Afghan War) which had already been over for eleven years by the year the movie is set and Watson implies he was a colonel then.
    • Moran is from an aristocratic background, but he was always a bit of a rough and tumble gent.
    • In The Adventure Of The Empty House, Colonel Moran's birth year is given as 1840, thus making him 51 years old by the time of the film and older than Holmes and Watson (Holmes had been born in 1854). His appearance (as described in the short story) does not fully match the film: he should have looked older, bulkier, devoid of beard, with large, Nietzsche-like, mustache.
  • Holmes and Watson waltzing. Was such a thing acceptable back then? I found it rather odd that no one in the room seemed to bat an eye at the sight of two men dancing together.
    • Well, it is Switzerland, after all. I am not quite sure on the actual protocols governing dancing, but as far as I recall, no one would have given a damn, because they assumed that either, it was some sort of joke, or just that it was none of their business. Also, I would assume that at an event like this, there was no overabundance of women willing (and able) to dance, and since they seem to have some sort of formation, I seems at least somewhat reasonable to fill in the gaps in the formation with whoever's willing to do so.
    • It's often illogical what passed for acceptable public display of affection, especially throughout history. I don't know about dancing, specifically, but consider this example: in Victorian England, two men walking hand in hand in the streets was a perfectly normal sight - in fact, you can see Holmes and Watson doing it in the Granada series - despite the fact that there were still some serious laws against homosexuality.
      • That's assuming handholding equals romantic relationship. We associate handholding with romantic relationships nowadays unless it is obviously not the case. Apparently they didn't see that as homosexual. Not everything is related to sex.
  • Holmes explicitly says he deduced Moriarty would take the train to Berlin via Heilbronn from Gare du Nord after feeding the pigeons in the Jardin de Tuileries, since it should have been the closest of the seven mainline stations in Paris, 10 minutes away. However, the station is much farther from Jardin de Tuileries, a few good miles to the northeast, and it would take a lot more time to reach it even by modern automobile, while trains to Alsace and further beyond German border would be taken from Gare de l'Est (which is and has been since 1849 the terminus of the Paris-Strasbourg railway and it's near Gare du Nord). The only station which was directly in front of Jardin de Tuileries and reachable by a bridge over the Seine was Gare d'Orsay (nowadays hosting the Musée d'Orsay), which did not open until 1900 and hosted only southbound trains via Orléans.
  • What's the explanation for Holmes' survival at the end? It's not like in the The Adventure Of The Empty House, where it's revealed that only Moriarty went over the waterfall; we explicitly see both of them fall.
    • Sherlock had Mycroft's rebreather with him -- they make a point of lampshading that in the end scene. So, two men went cliff-diving, one of them had an oxygen breathing apparatus with him and the other one didn't, and only one of them drowned.
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