Fridge pages are Spoilers Off. All spoilers are unmarked. Read at your own risk.
Also, when editing, remember that writing in first-person is not permitted on trope pages.
Fridge Brilliance
- Why didn't Watson come to Holmes' aid atop Tower Bridge, and where did Blackwood get a sword for his final fight? Look closely: Blackwood is wielding Watson's sword cane, which Holmes of course makes sure to take with him at the end. Watson loses his sword cane when he gets thumped by Dredger, and he doesn't regain it during the ensuing fight scene. Blackwood might have found it on the sewer floor.
- During Blackwood's execution and death, listen to how his Leitmotif slowly peters out. This should hint that Blackwood's not really dead, but merely sleeping under the influence of the Mad Honey Disease drug. Because later, when he dies by hanging (in chains) listen to how his Leitmotif abruptly stops at the climax: it signifies that his life was cut short.
- The dinner scene with Holmes, Watson and Mary. Holmes incorrectly make assumptions which ends up offending Mary and he gets a faceful of wine for his troubles. Holmes still gets to eat, but they serve only him. It's very likely that Holmes knew exactly what would happen and ordered only food for himself. One could even think he used his deduction skills like that out of spite since he was very much against having to meet Mary.
- Watson chastises Holmes for drinking eye surgery medicine. It's cocaine, which (even today) has a medical use as a local anesthetic for eye surgery. In the books, Holmes uses cocaine.
- You know that mysterious wind during the opening sequence? The cops show up a few seconds later. It wasn't a wind, it was a draft from them opening the door.
- Makes perfect sense why Watson and Holmes's sailor friend get on like water and oil. Army men and Navy men love to give each other a hard time, no matter the time period.
- At the end of the film, look closer at the ring Holmes gave to Mary and Watson... "Is that the Maharajah's missing diamond?" The last thing we see Holmes do before this scene is grab Irene's necklace which held the diamond.
- Robert Downey Jr. does not resemble the in-text description of Sherlock Holmes from the original stories very closely - he's shorter, a bit more rugged and unkempt, doesn't have the distinctive high forehead and beaky nose, and so forth. Notice at the beginning of the first movie, however, that Holmes makes a point of concealing his face from the photographer, and these movies tend to play up Holmes's Master of Disguise tendencies. The visually striking depiction of Holmes in the original stories is a feint so as to conceal Holmes's real appearance and so make it easier for him to go undercover when necessary.
- Blackwood kills the ginger dwarf by having Dredger strangle him (which deprives the body of air), and buries him in the earth. He kills his father in a bathtub filled with fire-heated water. He kills the ambassador by setting him on fire with what said member thought to be rain. And finally, his machine, beneath the earth, would poison the very air Parliament breathed. It's elementary.
- Lord Blackwood's death ended up being an unintentional replacement for the parliament. How, you ask? Lord Blackwood died by hanging, in the air, from a bridge, which connects two pieces of earth.
- The scene where Holmes is confronted by Lord Coward. Holmes shuts the fireplace to fill the room with smoke and prevent Coward from shooting him. How Holmes doesn't cough in the middle of all that smoke? Well, he is a heavy smoker.
- Watson's near-death at the hands of Lord Blackwood's nigh-invisible piece of glass isn't just an establishing moment for Holmes's deduction skills; it was also the first piece of foreshadowing that any claims of Lord Blackwood's "magic" would be bogus and that Holmes would be the one to expose him on those lies. All Blackwood had to do was stab Watson through the brain with the glass in an angle that would make the wound undetectable (and it certainly seems like it would've had to be through the corner of the eye for that to be possible), get rid of the glass by breaking it, and claim he killed the doctor with magic, and none would be the wiser. But Holmes was there to see the glass before the fatal blow could be made, thus stopping Blackwood from making such bogus claims in the first place, and he later became the one to expose Blackwood for the fraud that he was.Watson: How did you see that?Sherlock: I was looking for it.
- Why did Lestrade take Holmes' despite being under orders from the Lord Coward, his superior both in the police and in their fraternal order, to arrest him? Both because he knows and trusts Holmes despite their mutual dislike, but also because suddenly being ordered to arrest Sherlock Holmes by the Home Secretary was incredibly suspicious. Sure, there was the abattoir explosion, but why would the destruction of what by all appearances just a slaughterhouse prompt the highest ranking law enforcement official in the land to suddenly declare Sherlock Holmes — the brilliant detective chasing after the biggest threat to public order and even the government / empire at that moment — public enemy number one? And this after having previously bailed Holmes out of another similar scrape? Coward got overconfident in his authority and overplayed his hand to a point where even Lestrade would have to wonder what was really going on.
