How on earth did you know that, then?

[Patrick Thistle]

This happens quite a bit in films and on TV. Suddenly a character reveals incredible knowledge of a plot point or how to defeat an opponent... but how did they know it?

Case in point, Shazam!, which I saw on Sunday night, has one of the supporting characters, Mary, telling Billy / Shazam! how to defeat his nemesis by accurately identifying the creatures that possessed Mr Nemesis and they they needed to be removed from Mr Nemesis to render Mr Nemesis mortal again. (He wasn't called Mr Nemesis, I can't remember his name. Played by Mark Strong though. Proper scenery chewing like you need from a movie nemesis.)

Thing is that at no point in the film was Billy /Shazam! told what the demon style monsters were (incarnations of the 7 Deadly Sins apparently), and he was the only one who met the original Shazam! character when he gained his powers. So if he didn't know, how on earth did Mary know,, and how could she have worked out what exactly needed to happen to remove Mr Nemesis's invincibility?

I did still really enjoy the film, but things like that do annoy me.

[Giggler]

Perversely, I was thinking of the opposite of this this morning. I've no idea why, but I was thinking of Max and Paddy's Road To Nowhere, written solely by Peter Kay and Paddy McGuinness with neither Neil Fitzmaurice nor Dave Spikey playing a writing part in it.

It's about the two best mates from the Phoenix club who have been through so many scrapes together. The ups, the downs, yet when they're in court Paddy only learns that Max's surname is... hold my sides... BYGRAVES! How on earth did you not know that, then, Paddy? Dink dank do!

Really, really lazy writing by the Boltonians, there.

[Gangster Octopus]

If you're talking about not knowing, it's Terry finding out Bob's middle name when Bob'n'Thelma's wedding banns are being read out.

[Jah Womble]

I think that these things can usually be 'let go' in sitcoms and the like. (After all, it gave Terry a further reason to mock Bob - which was always funny.)

It's when they occur in suspension-of-disbelief dramas that I get a wee bit irked.

[treibeis]

"Not knowing" is a staple of German crime thrillers.

The police haul in a bloke on suspicion of battering somebody to death with a shovel or whatever, then have to let him go due to lack of evidence.

Five days and twenty suspects later, when you've forgotten all about the first suspect, one of the assistants goes up to the detectives waving a printout and says, "Carsten Schmidt, remember? We've just found out he's served two fifteen-year sentences for battering people to death with a shovel."

[Benjm]

In a related vein, keeping it vague to avoid spoilers, I've started watching a series in which the main character, for personal reasons, is searching for someone last heard of thirty years previously. A hostile foreign government is taking a close interest in the search. Bollocks, if they were remotely interested they'd have nabbed the fella years ago.