Sherlock: The Fall – How did he do it?

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Sherlock: The Fall – How did he do it?

Published January 15, 2012

WARNING – FULL SERIES 2 FINALE SPOILERS

Just how did Sherlock Holmes survive? That’s the question on everyone’s lips following the third and final episode of Sherlock’s second series, The Reichenbach Fall. Unfortunately, it’s something we’re unlikely to see answered for a while. Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch both have a busy time ahead of them on other projects. A third series is unlikely to air until 2013 at the earliest. Until then all we can do is speculate.

The biggest scene that offers a clue is before Sherlock’s (supposedly) fateful meeting with Moriarty when he goes to see Molly and asks for her help.

Sherlock: “Molly, I think I’m going to die.”
Molly: “What do you need?”
Sherlock: “If I wasn’t everything that you think I am, everything that I think I am, would you still want to help me?”
Molly: “What do you need?”
Sherlock: “You.”

This seems to be a key moment and is never touched on again. So who better than a morgue attendant to make sure that the world thinks that Sherlock is dead? Somehow he survived and Molly was the one that helped him to pull it off.

Another possible clue is when John gets knocked down. Sure, it could be a coincidence, but something doesn’t sit quite right there. Did something else vital happen whilst our attention is on John? Was he knocked out for longer than we thought? Did he only think he saw Sherlock’s body?

Of course, one other scenario is that it wasn’t Sherlock that fell. We only saw the back of someone that looked a lot like Sherlock, so could a switcheroo have occurred? Someone willing to die? Seems a bit far fetched though.

How do you think Sherlock survived? Let us know your ideas in the comments.

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Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall Review

Posted in Sherlock, TV | Tagged Sherlock Series 2, Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall

Anonymous

I think that the gas from the hound of baskerville was aplieed to john, making him see his worst fears which was Sherlock dieing.
Molly however was in a bin truck which Sherlock jumped into and then fakes his death.
Maybe…..

Stefan Kendall

I think John’s position was key to him getting gassed. He saw “Sherlock” fall because that’s what he expected, and he saw Sherlock on the ground for the same reason. The bike trauma was probably necessary to make John believe his grogginess and shock, or he may have recognized the gas from the outing at Baskerville.

JimMoriarty

I dont think that theory would work, but if it did, here’s a few little steps that make more sense of that theory.

1: John see’s Sherlock fall. Sherlock lands in truck without John seeing
2: Biker injects some liquidized Baskerville liquid into John, John is knocked down and down for a while due to the drug entering his system
3: John rushes to the pavement where ‘Sherlock’ fell, thinks Sherlock is there, actors around John and the acting paramedics make it all seem like theres an actual body there.
4: John is left heartbroken, we’re all left in a permanent stance shouting “MOFFFFFFAAAAAATTTTTTT!!!!!!!!” until series 3 airs

http://www.doctorwhowebsite.moonfruit.com/ Daines

Also the lady from the first episode of the second season faked her own death with a very convincing body look alike. maybe Sherlock did the same…

TARDISkey123

Sherlock himself helped her fake it though.

http://www.doctorwhowebsite.moonfruit.com/ Daines

And this time Sherlock had help from Molly….
Anonymous

Not the first time he didn’t.

TARDISkey123

I doubt it was a double. They saw his body at the ground and it was him. And they must of done an autopsy on his body. But knowing Sherlock’s intelligence he probably judged the distance from the top of the building to the ground and the position of his body whilst falling he could of made an immunity to the impact. And with Molly’s help he could of been comfirmed dead. The blood I can’t understand. Oh why do we have to wait till 2013. 2012 has only just began.
http://www.youtube.com/user/thedoctorwhomaniac?feature=mhee Hezza

Sherlock said to Molly that he needs “YOU” so did he also mean that he needed her to fake his death? And remember the bit after sherlock leaves Kitty’s house and he didn’t say what motiartys last part of the plan was, did he relalise he had to be a step ahead of the game and to get Molly to fake his death?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HKQEKZWYCPPQBZOBZ3GSQTJVMM Stephen

watching it on sky+ I had the advantage of rewinding it a couple of times and this is what I think happens. It was Sherlock who jumped off the roof – it wasn’t a dummy or dead body because his arms were failing about. Cut to John getting hit by the cyclist, then you see a body hit the ground. John gets to the body, but his vision is blurry from the fall and he never really gets a good look at the face Just as John arrives you see a garbage van drive off. So I think that Sherlock jumped into the garbage van (packed with extra soft rubbish) and just as he landed - some helper (maybe Molly) threw out a dead body (which looked a lot like sherlock and was dressed in some of his clothes) then quickly add some fresh blood to make it look realistic and then hop back into the van and drive off.

Molly was wrong – there has been something that Sherlock has always needed Molly for – and that’s access to dead bodies – and this time i think she provided him with a recent dead body that he could pass off as his own.

Anonymous

Think the clues include the use of Molly and the hanging dummy. In the time spent waiting for JM, Molly could have picked up the dummy, and made it up to look like Holmes (the eyes wher the biggest feature). Watson was definitely nobbled by rent-a-crowd, I suspect a gang of homeless network were called in to provide cover – notice no police were involved, and nothing mentioned about Moriaty’s body. Suspect he went into Holmes’ coffin – after all “you are me” he said (ish). So, fitting he goes to Holmes’ grave. Just a theory!
Anonymous

Oh – and he wanted John to stand exactly where he was as it would obscure he view of the landing site. Well, maybe!
Pdurston

How the hell he survived the impact of the fall is completely and utterly beyond me, I mean yes this is Sherlock we are talking about here, but still an impact of that level would kill anyone.

Its funny you should raise these points, I’ve just finished watching it (I mean literally right now) and me and my family have identified the same sort of points here. What exactly did Sherlock need Molly for? And why was it so important when Watson got hit by the cyclist (there was definitely an effect made there)? There is a lot more to the end scene than meets the eye, literally a lot more. This in itself is one major puzzle, and there is so much to speculate with just the ending.

The whole episode I can honestly say was a twisting, intense, thrilling, beatifully crafted masterpiece. I was on the edge of my seat throughout all of it, it was that brilliant in grabbing you, and the story and plot was just amazing. The tension between Sherlock and Moriarty could be cut with a knife; it was that confrontational and magnetic (so much force between the two that couldn’t be repelled).

There were so many memorable scenes in this there really were. The scene in the beginning when Moriarty intends to get caught, breaks down the whole system just with a touch from his iPhone, and him breaking the case with the Crown Jewel’s in was just masterful. And the brilliant music, which captured the whole scale of madness and chaos Moriarty had made brilliantly.

And then of course, my favourite other scene as well which was the end. Like I say, a masterpiece in itself. Sherlock’s final confrontation with Moriarty was unbelievable. I didn’t know what to expect, and it was great in how it brought two heavyweights together for one last time. I so didn’t expect Moriarty to go like that, but he certainly went with a bang (excuse the pun). Fantastic, absolutely fantastic. What was great with it was it constantly challenged you pschologically. You were wondering about how Sherlock would get out of this dilemna , and who would win the day. OMG, it was just epic!!!! As I’m typing this now, my mind is being blown up by epicness!!!!! BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT WAS!!!! EPIC!!!!

Ahem, anyway. Yes, it was a brilliant, challenging end to such an intriguing, challenging series. So many elements in this that made it superb. The final battle/struggle between Moriarty and Sherlock, Watson was even greater in this (he was brilliant), and the rich, twisting plot. All of these elements mentioned is what made both this series and this finale fantastic!

As with the ending, well I was absolutely gobsmacked by it. Surprised and shocked in a nutshell. The ending I now think will definitely get us thinking, and a lot of theories which now emerge, and I really can’t wiat to hear them. I’ll definitely be making my own, and coming up with some. I’m unsure right now as to how the hell he survived that, or what he needed Molly for, and why did Watson getting hit by the cyclist have so much impact??? I’m not sure right now, but I’ll see what I can come up with

Brilliant, solid series. And such a force of an episode to end it.

5/5 for both series and this episode.

JimMoriarty

Ok, so I’m gonna copy and paste what I said on another post about Sherlock, these are the three main things in my eyes, and I do believe that one of these (I think number two is the most likely) is the vital clue Moffat told us about:

1: The bouncy rubber (Or is it rubber?) ball he seemed to have in his pocket all of a sudden, watch it in slow motion and you clearly see he puts it in his pocket when he’s leaving the lab to face Moriarty. Maybe it had fake blood concealed inside it? Maybe it had a drug that thickened his blood cells, giving the impression of no pulse, and is injected when Sherlock lands, by a man pretending to be a doctor? Or maybe its something else?2: The garbage truck that was VERY coincidentally placed next to where Sherlock would land, and how he drives off as soon as Sherlock jumps. I mean, if you saw a man jump of a building, you wouldn’t just drive off would you? Maybe Sherlock lands on the garbage (Or is it garbage, it could be something fluffy like pillows, or maybe even fake blood that explodes when he lands on it) and rolls out onto the floor? I have a feeling the truck is more likely to have something to do with it than these other two.3: His phone that he throws to the ground, after saying “Thats what people do, isn’t it? Leave a note?”, so who knows, there may be a message on that phone that everyone missed. Maybe he sends a message to the truck driver telling him/her to do something, or maybe he sent a message to someone else, who knows?Only time will tell, and I wish it went faster…..

Anonymous

Support all Pdurston says!

Pdurston

*Blushes slightly*

I O U all, mwahhhhhh!!!!!!

Anonymous

Bless. Try my theory out for size!

Pdurston

You said about the viewpoint/positioning in which Sherlock wanted Watson to stand at. That was interesting in the repsect of how picky he was of where he stood. It was like as if he was calculating a vantage point, but there again, Watson saw him jump? Hmmm, I’m still trying to picture it again because the scene was so intense and edge of your seat that its a ll a bit of blur, but there’s definitely a lot to analyse just within that scene.

The two things I’m interested is what exactly did Sherlock request Molly for? She is a mortician, a body perhaps that would be used as a dummy? Speaking of dummies, there was brief scene with a mannequin doll hung from a rope in Sherlock’s place, wearing a similar suit Sherlock would perhaps wear?

Then we have Watson being hit by the cyclist. That seemed very strange, and it definitely disorientated him (the falling over). Someone suggested down the bottom that perhaps the cyclist gave Watson a solution of the hallucinogenic from The Hound’s of Baskerville. That would actually seem plausible, considering the hallucinogenic manifests on an idea or thought system, and during the time, Watson saw Sherlock jump to his death, so he might have been seeing what he was expecting to see? Perhaps he was injected, and the fall to the ground gave the solution to kick in in his system?

God, I really cannot fathom it right now. There is so much to that scene, so many little things being orchestrated that its unbelievable. I really need to watch it again to pick up any small references or hints. But that’s all I’ve got so far.

Richard Halfpenny

Obviously Holmes places Watson in the right spot so he can’t see beyond the single storey building out front of the hospital. Surely he jumped into the lorry full of linen (he’s facing forward in air). Rolls out ( he’s now facing parallel to the building) in the delay of Watson being down – truck drives off- rent a crowd whisks Holmes away. no body buried cos of switch after etc with help from Molly and maybe Mycroft?!

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

Def mycroft involvement, he can always ‘arrange things’ besides his role was well played down in the episode. Sherlock will need cover and financial help during his time going awol.

Pdurston

For all the people who would love a Doctor Who and Sherlock crossover, I bet you were expecting the TARDIS to appear in the cemetery where Holmes’ grave was, right behind Watson, and Sherlock comes out of it (I was slightly LOL!!!) :D

Now that would have been a proper example of ‘Wholock’ lol.

Anonymous

Imagine sherlock just regenerating after faling of the building :S

Pdurston

And Moriarty on top of the building regenerates as well. Huh, Moriarty could well be the Master!!! :O

Anonymous

Or a Sherlock in a Sherlock suit – hooray for the Tesalecta!

Pdurston

Yes, that’s it! Sherlock was in a Tesselecta! Barely got broken with he impact. :D

Anonymous

I was hoping for the Tardis to appear alongside the building when he jumped – “Open all the doors to the swimming pool!”

Pdurston

Yeah lol :D

Watson controlling the TARDIS and opening the doors to the swimming pool, with Lestrade (equivalent to Canton) forcing him off the roof lol.

http://www.youtube.com/mapthestars Mapthestars

Now what was really confusing for me was I recognized two locations in this episode that were used in Doctor Who episodes. And the dr who episodes those locations happened to appear in were directed by Toby Haynes, who directed this episode.
http://twitter.com/javajoe12 Lachlan

This episode actually reminded me of the Dr Who episode The Sound of Drums because they go on the run and the enemy is sort of posing as someone else.
jimmy

People are saying they saw a TARDIS in the background in the hounds of baskerville. It’s not faked, it was on iplayer as well!

Jim Saunders

My theory.

1. Little girl screams when she sees Holmes. Therefore there is a double, which is possible due to the first episode of season two with the Dominatrix having a double to fake her own death.
2. Holmes needed Molly, a pathologist. What for? To check all the John Doe’s for Holmes’s double (Moriarty would not leave a loose stone like that). Also she was needed for the autopsy to tell everyone it was indeed Holmes.
3. Holmes hires the cyclist to knock down Watson and distract him.
4. IF a person fell next to your rubbish truck you would not drive off. Therefore…

Holmes dives into the back of the truck full of bags (cushioning fall) and then dumps body of double out of the back of the truck. Truck drives off and everything is tied up neatly.

I agree with previous comment that Watson had to stay where he was to obscure the landing site from his view so as to allow this to happen, thus allowing Holmes to get away from “fame” which was a nice secondary accomplishment for him alongside saving his friends from assasination.

Richard Halfpenny

I agree completely, although the double may or may not be needed for the fall, it would however neatly stop Watson getting a hint of Holmes’ racing pulse!

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_Q6HMEOW6HZIRIU3ZKRXCUOFWKU Ed

Molly makes cast of Holmes face, Moriaty shoots self. Holmes puts cast on Moriaty. Holmes waits for Watson to panic and start running, he’s distracted, Body lobbed over edge. That’s all I can think of anyway!

Anonymous

But….they’re different sizes! Moriarty is definitely shorter than Sherlock Holmes, so I don’t think THAT would work, although the emphasis on the “I am you” comments suggests that Moriarty’s body may have acted as a substitute in the coffin.

Sure I’m dying (pun unintended) to know how SH escaped his demise, but I’m more looking forward to the looks on the others’ faces when he comes back to life…

http://twitter.com/custard_n_cream Jodie-Ellis Eardley

Nobody has contemplated whether Moriaty is ACTUALLY dead. If Sherlock can do it….

And how will be the new baddy? “Ever fairy tale has a villan….”

Pdurston

Yes, I was thinking that. Moriarty has alway’s been Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, and he can never be fully defeated. The same as the Daleks to the Doctor, or even the Master, they’re his rightful, long lasting enemies, and the can never be got rid of.

Although, I did believe he pulled the trigger, but he is so manipulative that he could have yet had another trick up his sleeve. He could have manipulated it, we know what he’s like. Or the case could be that he is pretty much confirmed as DEAD…..

http://twitter.com/SirJonnyP Jonathan Longley

If you read the books Moriarty was hardly ‘always Sherlock’s nemesis’; he only appears properly in The Final Solution and is merely hinted at in a few others. Sure, he controls a huge web of crime, but his role has been greatly exaggerated by pretty much every adaptation of the books so far. I would say that he is going to remain dead as he does in the stories, with Sherlock hiding away for a while for the safety of his friends.

Anonymous

I entertained that notion as well…
But if he really is dead, the moment Sherlock comes back, he’s going to start complaining about how boring life is now without another genius in the picture :)

Pdurston

You all seem to be forgetting one major thing. One thing that answers all the theories as to how he survived the fall, one simple thing that is:

Sherlock was a Tesselecta!
The Idle Idol

Wonderful end to another wonderful series. Truth be told, even though I’m familiar with the books, I honestly thought Sherlock had been killed off for good in this episode – and was half expecting it to be the end of the show, and for Benedict and Martin to move onto other projects. Especially since Moriarty died too, and I struggle to imagine future series of Sherlock without his most infamous nemesis lurking somewhere. But then again, do we even know Moriarty is dead? It looked wholly convincing – but then again, if Sherlock can survive what seems certain, inescapable death, maybe Moriarty’s death wasn’t quite as real as it seemed either. I’m probably more intrigued as to whether Moriarty is still out there than I am as to exactly how Sherlock staged the fall. Glad to know it’s most certainly not the last we’ll see of the show though. I was delighted when Mark Gatiss announced the third series had been commissioned back when the second one had via Twitter.

Overall, I think it was my favourite episode of the series. The intricate game Moriarty played in breaching three facilities simply so people knew he could – and then plotting the downfall of Sherlock with such deadly precision. Marvellous.

Oh, and I don’t know if anyone has said this yet, but a friend of mine realised something devilishly clever – if, indeed, it was Moriarty’s body that plunged at the end of the episode (it seems about as likely as anything), then the title is quite a nice pun. “The Reichenbach Fall” – Richard Brook, Moriarty’s pseudonym, becomes ‘Reichenbach’ in German (or at least, Sherlock says as much on the rooftop) – so “The Richard Brook Fall” in essence. Maybe the answer has been staring at us since the opening titles. Who knows?

http://www.youtube.com/mapthestars Mapthestars

Somehow this posted on this comment. meant it to be by itself. please delete.
The Idle Idol

Just thought I’d add to this after a little more thinking time.

I still don’t have any concrete ideas regarding how Sherlock staged his death, but I’ve had a few potential musings. And I certainly don’t think it’s as simple as ‘Oh, it was someone who looked exactly like Sherlock, but wasn’t really him’. Not only do I think that’s too big of a cop-out (on a par with “it was all a dream” to be honest), but it still leaves some big questions – primarily, how the hell did he end up falling from a rooftop that only had Sherlock and Moriarty on it?

The only explanation I’ve seen anyone offer for how this could possibly be true is that the child screamed when she saw Sherlock. That doesn’t mean he’s got a doppleganger working for Moriarty. I’d find it much more likely (and in fitting with how Moriarty likes to operate) that he’s simply conditioned the children to fear Sherlock Holmes. Would be simple enough to do given their youth and extremely fragile state. And it seems like less of a cop-out than this ‘double’ malarky IMO. I’m not saying it COULDN’T have been a doppleganger… But I’ll be more than a little bit disappointed if it was.

I’m also wondering if the themes of Baskerville were being played upon. John’s dazed state, the whole way Sherlock ‘staged’ it specifically, even as far as to have people standing where he needed them to stand – “you saw what you expected to see”. Maybe it could even stretch as far as using the actual chemical from that episode? I doubt it, but it keeps playing on my mind. Somehow, someway, I can’t help feel that somehow or another, he’s simply convinced people it was him who jumped – rather than, as some have suggested, jumping into the garbage truck, climbing out, planting fake blood on himself and finding a way to stop his pulse for a while. The way everyone ran over to him suggests people saw him hit the ground (or at least, they saw someone hit the ground after a huge fall. Somebody definitely died. Moriarty’s body perhaps? Still a possibility, as much as anything.

And as per Moriarty… I’m not entirely convinced he’s dead either. It’s probably my most outlandish idea, but I keep considering that – perhaps – the Moriarty we saw and knew was never the real Moriarty. He was simply an agent of the real Moriarty. Following Moriarty’s instructions, assuming his identity in interactions with Sherlock, essentially being a Moriarty without being THE Moriarty, so to speak. But again, all just musings and speculation. Please don’t take anything I’ve said here too seriously; I’m not saying any of this is certain, nor likely, nor necessarily possible. Just some thoughts.
JimMoriarty

>>>ATTENTION, PLEASE TAKE NOTICE OF THIS, AND READ EVERYTHING!!!<<< Ok, I'm only putting this as a reply to your post because I want some attention from someone, instead of putting it in the general comments where no one will take any notice. I would like to show off my superior brain power to my 'twin' :3 Here is what I think happened, in story order :D Oh, and by the way, prepare yourself, there is a lot of reading here, and I mean a LOT.

1: The Lab and Molly:
Sherlock asks Molly for help because he needs a certain chemical to make it look like he is dead, lowering his temperature, pulse, and actually knocking out his body temporally. I believe this 'drug' was administrated via the bouncy ball he was playing with a lot in the lab, if he rolled it a LOT, it could make its way into his hand (Into the skin on his hand). I have done some research and theres a drug that fits every criteria. Its called 'Tetrodotoxin", it lowers your temperature, pulse, and puts you into an artificial coma. The words the person used on the website I found it on are :"Unless its screened for, it can be mistaken for death", ring a bell? Also, if taken in large quantity's, it can suffocate you, therefore he couldn't administer it directly, he most likely worked it into his hands in the lab, then injected the rest when he was falling. The only thing I dont know is whether the drug is illegal, I'm pretty positive it isn't, but I dont know for certain.

2: On The Roof with Moriarty
As we know, Sherlock was one step ahead of Moriarty in the plan, so who's to say that Sherlock didnt know that Moriarty would have no choice to shoot himself, Sherlock probably needed Moriarty dead so his plan would succeed. Now, the business with the phone, I think that Sherlock could have left an actual note on the phone that explains to John that he's not dead, and that he's not actually a fake, perhaps he was hinting towards it when he said "This phone call is my note". Maybe Sherlock also laced his phone with explosives, like Irene, and he put a password on it, so then, even if was stored away in some file or whatever, John would be able to get into it. Maybe Sherlock will make the code "1085", the hit counter on Johns blog…..

3: The Actual Fall
Ok, so, from what we can see, Sherlock falls, but the way he falls, and the way he lands, he somehow manages to turn 90 degree's in the second we dont see him fall, which leads us to another possible conclusion. He likely fell into the rubbish truck (Filled with pillows of something like that :P) that was parked next to the spot Sherlock was meant to land, and rolled out of the side. If you rewatch the scene, look at how he falls, and look at how he lands on the floor, by looking at this, you can clearly how he turned as he rolled out of the truck (There was probably a sliding hatch on the side that opened, so he could roll out).

4: The Crime Scene
Ok, so, as we see, Sherlock has blood all by his head, so what is likely to have happened is that the truck also served another purpose, and was there to make sure no one saw Sherlock place the blood by his head (Probably real blood from a recently dead body, another reason Sherlock needed Molly's help?), and when the truck moved away, it was clear to everyone that he had in fact jumped. Before you ask about the people on the sides of the truck, the blood was likely placed there while he was inside the truck, therefore invisible to the people at the side and in front.

5: What Happened in The Adventure of the Empty House (The story that episode 1, series 3 will be based on) that might Influence the next Series?
Ok, so, for starters, the only people that knew Sherlock was alive were Moriartys henchmen, and surprisingly, Mycroft. Mycroft knew because Sherlock had asked him for money, to help him travel, so could Mycroft be behind the funding of this scheme?
Also, a villain known as Sebastian Moran (You may have heard of him :3) is the main villain in The Adventure of the Empty House, so who knows….. However, this story was set 2-3 YEARS after the incident, so John could be a completely different person, he is likely to be married, and living somewhere OTHER than 221B Baker Street.

*Bows, thank you, thank you very very much :)

Anonymous

My theory:

Sherlock told Mary that he was going to fake his death. She had to find a body from the morgue that was at least slightly similar to Sherlock, and plant it at the bottom of the building whilst Sherlock was talking to John. He keeps John in the same position, telling him to not move or stop looking at Sherlock, whilst his view is obscured by the adjacent building, Mary plants the body and blood. Sherlock jumps from the roof into the garbage truck, or whatever kind of truck it was, which drives away straight away, thus the driver must be working for Sherlock. John was hit by the biker (who was also working for Sherlock) and was either dazed by the fall, he appeared to hit his head, or something else was at play, the hallucinogen perhaps from the previous episode? The body at the bottom does look like Sherlock, but it could be hard for Watson to determine due to his disorientation. I could be looking into it too much, but the body was extremely pale, it looked like it had been dead for a while. He would have had Mary identify the body or falsify the records to prove that it was indeed Sherlock who was dead.

http://www.youtube.com/mapthestars Mapthestars

I was just about to type that up. my theory exactly. perhaps it was Adler who was driving. I mean he did get her out of a tight spot and should repay the favor.

http://www.facebook.com/numbrer.1.shakster Shakey Jake

My theory:
When the paramedics place Sherlock on the bed you see them take him off but then the camera goes to johns reaction and confusion but then you see the paramedics again taking sherlock down an alley evnthough the ambulance is parked in the road

what happened down the alley

http://twitter.com/Constantavenger Jake Willis

That alley leads into St Barts hospital.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=548334218 Rachel Goldberg

But it’s an old hospital, and looks kind of abandoned, don’t you think? And if really was hospital staff, why would they even bring the ambulance? And yes, there is one, clearly visible behind John. Also, that alleyway does not lead into the hospital. Why would they take him through a side door? I find it fishy. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

http://twitter.com/RBrighty21 Rhys Bright

He Jumped Off A HOSPITAL?! No need for an ambulance

Stefan Kendall

Whether the thing that fell was a dummy or Moriarty, I don’t know.
Anonymous

We know that Sherlock isn’t dead. The more pertinent question is whether Moriarty is alive. I think yes for the simplest of reasons: Richard Brook wasn’t a fake identity. Richard Brook was an actor who Moriarty had some how coerced into playing the role of Moriarty. We’ve never seen Moriarty. Quite elegant really: have Richard kill himself, convincing Sherlock that as his seeming nemesis was dead there was only one way to save his friends.
http://www.facebook.com/montyisaacs Jack Isaacs

I think Moriarty is definately dead, @Jimble:disqus . firstly, he dies in Sir Conan-Doyle’s book The Reichenback falls, secondly they couldn’t create another Sherlock Vs Moriarty storyline in this series to surpass the one they’ve just shown and would rather let him die and move on, and thirdly “Richard Brook” is a parody of “Reichenback” so i think your theory about Richard being real is unlikely at best. Nice Ideas though!
Stephen Ro

Maybe he took a pill or poison that slowed his heart down and minimalized his impact somehow… he was waving his arms and you could see his face when falling. Seems weird to do a switch-a-roo into the waste truck.

Anonymous

You can’t just diminish the amount of damage done by falling off a roof with some sort of drug! His body will still be damaged beyond repair.

http://www.youtube.com/mapthestars Mapthestars

However he survived I’m sure Molly is enjoying, and taking advantage of, all the time she has alone with Sherlock in her flat ;)
Alexander Shui

For those of you with theories that make sense, but no proof, i’ve found the proof. or at least what i know is real.

Falling into truck theory :In the scene where Sherlock is seen falling from the angle of the street, he is moving his arms as if he was bracing for impact. Now, if i were committing suicide, i wouldn’t brace for anything. he obviously planned for something and was bracing for it: the truck. To add to that, he didn’t fall straight down. Like, if you re-watch that scene, he is not only moving his arms to brace for impact, but also to direct his descent. Descent into what? the truck.

Biker theory:Also, the biker had to be someone who know Sherlock well. I don’t think you can go out side, get a man on a bicycle, show him a picture of Watson and then pay that man to knock Watson out with a bicycle. That just doesn’t seem real. I think that the man on the bicycle was a person Sherlock knew well. like the kid who was spray painting from the Blind Banker.

Planted body theory:The planting of the body theory is half right. The scene where “Sherlock” ends his descent is ended with a loud thump of “him” landing. It’s obvious that something fell so it was more than likely there was a second body in the truck.

Molly helping theory: Very likely to be real. Sherlock did ask for her help. She is the one who does the autopsy so all Sherlock needed to do is tell her what to do.

Notes: Sherlock tells Watson to leave a note. A note is usually left for the person who wrote it to see it again.

Sherlock says something about a magic trick. A magician uses pretty girls to distract the crowd. His distraction: himself.

http://twitter.com/NateGaines19 Nathan Gaines

the biker was the kid from the blind banker I think, he looked familiar

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QREN3WIYHLKSLUHTOYGEZ332WA Yiu

Some thought on how Sherlock planned his “death.”

In order for him to fake his own death Sherlock needed to know that he is wanted death.
He had already pieces the puzzle together before he sought Molly out for help.

He probably had some sort of plan figured out when John mentioned the problem of being famous; that is, to fake his own death as the only way to be free.

That was why he researched the case of Henry Fishcork(?) faked his suicide in the beginning of the episode.

The flaw in Henry’s plan that gave Sherlock the insight that he faked it was that he DID NOT leave a suicide note. He fixed that in his own plan.

He knew he needed Molly’s help to pronounce him dead and John as a living witness to convince the world.

With Molly, she said Sherlock couldn’t hide from her; she became Sherlock’s confidant.

John needs to be convinced that he best friend DID die, this will convince the world.

Sherlock chose the rooftop of Bart. Hospital because he would be speedily rushed to Molly.

He probably planned the rubbish truck and the biker to be there to assist in some way.

He played the role of the fool to the tee to played Moriarty to either back down or suicide.

He also realizes it is impossible to save his friends unless he would be “dead.”

Moriarty can very well play the same game by shooting a blank and have some sort of blood ready to be spilled, and etc. the time of his planned death would leave Sherlock no time to check.

Watson was needed to be positioned correctly for the “magic” trick to work probably.

Watson was needed to be disoriented so that he would not follow the “dead” body into the hospital.

The blood came from the lab.

It is strongly suggested that he hit the ground and not the truck.

Interesting that a person fell from the building and the rubbish truck drove off.

The driver of the truck and the workers might of planted some sort of cushion and helped with the blood.

It is his body that Watson saw. We also saw his FACE with blood.

Used the Henry Fishcork “trick” to faked his pulse.

Once inside the hospital, when the coast is clear, with Molly’s help, Sherlock escaped.

Notice the last scene shows Sherlock’s face without even a trace of an injury.

Calebxy

Actually, I did notice there seemed to be some sort of cut on Sherlock neck as he was watching John at the very end.

TARDISkey123

Although that could just be a cut that Benedict already had. :)

Anonymous

NO! NO! NO! YOU ARE WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL :D

Calebxy

We didn’t just see the back of him. We saw his face as he was falling.

Anonymous

yeh dude.

Calebxy

That was marvelous special effects, I thought. Why don’t all movies and TV shows do that, instead of using a green screen? I mean, that was *actually* Benedict falling through the air. He was attached to ropes, of course, but he really was *there*, and it looked so good. All movies should do that from now on. I’m surprised Chris Nolan didn’t do that for The Dark Knight, when the Joker was thrown off the building.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZDMGLXZMJRO5HPAGTXS46LKS3I royalblo0d

well after i watched the episode i started thinking how he might has survived.. all the ideas above came into my mind.. but something else hit the back side of my head aswell.. that little 7 year old girl who saw sherlock and started screaming as if she has seen him before in a bad way but it was moriarty not holmes at all.. so maybe the guy who fell off wasnt him at all ? could be a look alike ?
Anonymous

My theory. There is a shot of Watson just after the fall where you see a lorry in front of where Sherlock fell. His view of the actual impact on the pavement was therefore blocked. Sherlock, the real Sherlock, did fall from the building but had a soft landing through the roof of a specially pre-prepared lorry roof. Once safely through the roof a corpse from the morgue dressed up in Sherlock’s clothes to look like him is pushed out onto the pavement. Others, probably the paramedics, are in on this Sherlock device too. Watson is knocked off by a bike deliberately to confuse him. Notice how he isn’t allowed to get too close to the corpse. He wants to as he is a doctor, but he is prevented. We never get to see the face of the corpse. The real Sherlock has been driven away in the “safe” lorry. It is very well shot to convince you otherwise. But the evidence I think is there for an explanation when the series returns !
http://twitter.com/Constantavenger Jake Willis

Observation is the name of the game, look closely at the last minutes before and after Sherlock falls. ;)

Calebxy

What do you mean?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HKQEKZWYCPPQBZOBZ3GSQTJVMM Stephen

I think he jumped into the garbage truck (packed with extra soft rubbish) and then some helper (maybe Molly) threw out a body which looked an awful lot like him and was dressed in his clothes. In the meantime another helper is knocking John over to stall him from getting to ‘sherlock’s’ body and now here’s where I’m reaching a bit because I don’t think John’s blurry vision was from his fall – how could the cyclist probably know exactly how John would land? I think the cyclist hit him with a toxic dart as they collided! ok maybe not, but still the blurry vision was necessary as it meant John never got a good look at ’sherlock’s’ face. maybe he was drugged with the same gas from baskervilles! ok i’m reaching again.

The lookalike body could have been the kidnapper.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3KOPKWWETRBDTFS5Q77C7TJW3Q ed

Why does everyone keep saying Sherlock is driven off in the back of the truck and a body double left in his place, when you clearly see his face when Watson checks his pulse ?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HKQEKZWYCPPQBZOBZ3GSQTJVMM Stephen

I went back and paused it; studied him for a few moments – it wasn’t sherlock on the ground. the nose was larger and the hair wasn’t quite right.

Jumping into the back of the van is the only plausible explanation, as it was sherlock who jumped off the roof. and it also answers why Sherlock wanted John to stay exactly where he was, so he wouldn’t see the body hit the ground. And it answers what Sherlock wanted from Molly – the things only she can give him – access to dead bodies and a falsified PM.

Anonymous

Right, i believe youre all wrong. idiots. Sherlock has obviously swung from a harness he got given from his mate Moriarty. And you think that was blood?! It wasnt. It was clearly red dye, ive seen blood before ive had plenty of nose bleeds, it wasnt blood. idiots. Pdurston youre the biggest ignoramus of them all, a Doctor Who Sherlock crossover would be terrible as they are both so awesome! The awesomeness would cancel each other out!

Ahem, now my big theory, we all know of the master yes? Well i believe this whole series has actually been doctor who, but his next regeneration. Watson obviously being his male companion. If you have a problem you can go away because are many gays in the world and he is one okay?!

Pdurston

No.

Calebxy

Thank you. ;)

Pdurston

It had to be done. “No” was probably the most simplest way to respond to that utter dribble above. Sorry I used your iconic catchphrase though, but I can’t be bothered to argue against that rubbish, so I had to use something quick and easy in a nutshell ;)

Calebxy

Don’t worry, I’m glad you used it. ;) I would have done the same if you hadn’t already replied.

Anonymous

No? Right you, do you have anything constructive to say? Im fine that you dont agree with my comment but dont be rude to me young man. I also have evidence, i turned up to the filming, knowing it was going on, and i saw for myself sherlock (bendikt) put on a harness. Argue with that friend. Also, is there something going on between you and calebxy? lol :D ;D

Calebxy

*facepalm*

Yes, they used a harness for the filming!!!!! You don’t think they would actually throw Benedict off a roof do you?! How did you expect them to film it if not with a harness?

Pdurston

“Oh yes, Benedict is so expendable that we’ll just freely force him to jump of the roof against his own will. The stuntman is off sick, and not one of us can be bothered to put a harness on him, so we’ll just let him jump. Heck, we won’t even put a safety mat on the ground for him to land on…..”
Calebxy

Well, this series is aiming for realism. :P

Pdurston

No, I just take objection of your comment and how you blatantly call everyone idiots (as well as me for which I’m not) for their own opinions and theories, of which there is a wide diversity of. I don’t see how you call can people idiots just because they have premature theories of something only shown last night, so I am afraid you are the idiot for saying such ridiculous things. Is there anything constructive YOU have to say?

No one on here is an idiot, far from it, and neither am I. You call me the rude one, where your comment effectively spits on everyone’s faces, including mine and that is rude. Your stance is what is making you the idiot I’m afraid. Now I would happily like to hear what you say, but I certainly won’t tolerate your attitude that you are imposing.

And no, me and Calebxy are regular poster’s who interact a lot. Anything else you want to crudely interpret here?

P.S Why should I need to argue with your ‘evidence’? If I actually saw any, then perhaps I could debate and analyse over it, so I could then get a view of it.

Anonymous

Completey agree with everything youve put here. Who is this moriartyfanclub guy?! Btw on this site i find i can really talk to people, so i now confirm you as my cyberfriend! (not to be confused with cyberman!)
Caroline Cbvbvc

@MoriartyFanClub:disqus Please specify what my conversation is as you seem to be knowledgeable on the subject.
Anonymous

Completely agree with everything youve put here. Who is this moriartyfanclub guy?! Btw i find on this site i can really talk to people, so im proud to confirm you are now my cyberfriend (not to be confused with cyberman)!
Anonymous

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? this isn’t ur conversation and to be honest ur wrong, pdurston and i are now best of friends
#
Anonymous

My sherlosians i have just had an epiphany. I actually think wholock is a brilliant idea. As long as they keep the same writers please sherlock. I apologise if i sounded rude and mean. but im jjust upset sherlocks finished, and i have just had another serious nosebleed. So dont be mean to me to, can we please be good best friends? please my friend. :D
Pdurston

No, I won’t be your ‘friend’, so I will ultimately leave it at that.

God, this place is so distorted right now, its actually quite worrying……

Shall we move on?

Anonymous

wrong

The Second Mark

Have you been drugged?!! Step away slowly from the building…
Anonymous

And you think that was blood?
Yes sweety it WAS blood!!! Allow me to know the colour of blood since i am to be a heart suregeon ( I kind of see quite a lot of blood daily…)! Oh and just for the record on the sidewalk (where sherlocks blood was spilled) there was water…
So you idiotic caw try to think (I understand it will be hard for you, but please try) what hapens when you mix blood and water …… um haven’t you geused it yet ??? THE RED COLOUR OF THE BLOOD GOES ONE (OR MAYBE MORE) TONE LIGHTER !!! The same thing happens when blood is on light surfaces like our skin , the red we see on our faces when our noses are bleeding or when we get a cut ( the serious cuts are included) is one tone LIGHTER than the one we see in vials(where we put our blood to run some tests).
Of couse (or at least I hope) you stupid did not expect the production of this series to have used REAL blood for this scene!!! Did you ?
It is certain they used dye but I can asssure you my poxy ”friend” the colour of the dye was extremly acurate !!!!
Puls what a disturbed mind would ever imagine that the writers would mix Doctor who and Serlock ? The fact that mr Moffat writes both does not imply anything so stupid!!! I know it is fun doing funfiction crossovers but please head down to earth and face reality !!!
I don’t know if we, the people who are just having some fun trying to figure out what happened, are stupid/idiots ; but you deffenatelly should get a life and ”mute” the smartass side of you cause it really makes you seem like an IDIOT and pointless!

bubblegumbabe_

anyone notice that the background was wrong when Sherlock was on the phone. He wasn’t standing on the edge of the building and therefore didn’t jump.

Calebxy

Yes he did. You could clearly see it was him as he was falling.

http://twitter.com/christianjg CJ

I’ll have to watch it back again later but I wouldn’t say it was definitely him from my viewing. The zoomed out camera angle wasn’t exactly the best for confirming a face. I’d say there’s some leeway there if they need to use it.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=588951321 Nick Lawrance

From Watson’s point of view, the first glimpse of Sherlock’s body on the pavement also revealed a cage containing bags of rubbish. Sherlock arranged to meet on the roof of St Barts, knew he was going to have to fake his death to save his friends, and arranged for a suitably soft landing. A vial of his own blood, or a sharp edge, provided the ketchup and I’m sure a suitable tincture concocted with Molly was taken to simulate death. Molly provided the coroner’s report and revived and released Sherlock.

Possibly!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Duncan-Sutcliffe/785453481 Duncan Sutcliffe

What about the bloke with the rifle ~ how did he miss seeing any body swapping trickery.?

Calebxy

Presumably there was no body swapping trickery.

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

I agree think the body swapping is too fanciful, not enought time

http://twitter.com/NateGaines19 Nathan Gaines

maybe sherlock was never on that roof, he did not seem as smart when facing moriarty, Moriarty even called him a doofus (which made me laugh) Sherlock may have found the kidnapper (lookalike of sherlock) and got him to go to the roof in his place

tom chamberlain

there is no look alike! There are lot of other ways of getting the children to associate sherlocks faces with scariness. why use a double?

http://twitter.com/NateGaines19 Nathan Gaines

I honestly didn’t see moriarty committing suicide, what’s the point in victory if you are dead.But then again he is a psychopath so who knows what he’s thinking. Maybe a blank and some blood at the ready or maybe a body double. Hope he is alive andrew scott played the role perfectly
Liz Falconer

I don’t think Moriarty is dead. Fired a blank and set off a blood capsule at the back of his neck. Sherlock knows which is why he can’t tell Watson that he’s alive.

Anonymous

absolutley! ;) i agree we are on the same wavelength or should i say sherlength LOL
anyway to the point do you want to play swingballl (Sherlock ball) in madrid sometime? ive always wanted to go there with a good sherlockian pal (or maybe potentially girlfriend)…?xxxxx you can be molly, ill be sherlock

Calebxy

Are you trying to seem as stalker-ish as possible?

Anonymous

i thought his message was rather sweet and would have loved to recive one of this love and passion for a fellow sherlockian :P

Anonymous

u are a bit weird trying to join in on something
Anonymous

maybe u wanna join ;)????? xxhehe

Anonymous

Hi mate my friend
Anonymous

sorry about the weird message you see my mate is trying to be funny which isn’t so i apologise for any rudeness or short of breth this may have caused sozoles

Anonymous

hi sherlockians <3

Anonymous

Hi friend, have you noticed sherlocks in my name. Weird huh?!

Anonymous

yer it is really weird, noy like you got to choose it ;) wanna meet up in madrid?

http://twitter.com/timnutman Tim Nutman

Here we go…..my 2 pennies worth – nothing out of the ordinary or left field from what has been said already, just joining a few dots together and asking a few more questions….

Firstly, I think it was Sherlock that jumped and it was Sherlock’s body on the pavement. He jumped from the roof, controlling his fall and landing in the truck – the truck appears to be a laundry truck of some kind as the bags (blue, green and white), look more like canvas bags than rubbish.

Sherlock then leaps from the truck onto the pavement with a good dose of blood and a manner by which to stop his pulse and heart – someone posted about a mention of the Henry Fishcork case and his “trick” concerning stopping his pulse (note, very rarely is something mentioned in an episode that isn’t made use of or surfaces later as I’m sure we will see with his conversation with Molly).

The “random” cyclist knocked John over as he was in danger of seeing Sherlock leap from the truck and therefore scupper the whole plan – John believing Sherlock was dead was a necessity to give the “death” credibility.

Once declared dead and sent to the morgue, Molly would then provide assistance and even falsify post-mortem records etc. – the doctors at the scene, or in the Emergency department at Barts would have declared him dead.

I don’t think a second body was used for a couple of reasons…
A body from the morgue would have been stiff (rigor mortis), very pale in colour and very cold – the attending paramedics/doctors would have discovered this when trying to revive Sherlock.
Secondly, even though covered in blood and upside down, we saw the body’s face and to me, it looked like Sherlock.

However there are few niggles with this….

You have to think about level or preparation, just how much time did Sherlock have to plan this? The more people involved, the longer it takes to plan and co-ordinate even with the homeless network. The cyclist, though plausible, would have required a fair amount of planning and coordination.

Sherlock’s body position on the ground is not consistent with his fall. He ends up on his right side, facing he road, yet he fell in a prone position face-down, therefore you would expect him to have landed in a similar position – this suggests something happened between him landing and ending up on the pavement.

Also, when he jumped he simply jumped off. The pavement is good 12 to 18 feet deep. In order to land in a parked truck (assuming it wasn’t on the pavement itself) he would have had to have jumped out a considerable distance.

What about Mycroft – he was clearly remorseful and maybe even felt partly responsible, could he have had a hand in Sherlock’s escape? I mean, here is a man who can organise a plane full of corpses to be blown up over the Atlantic…. a faked death would be simple.

..and finally James Moriarty…. is he dead or isn’t he? Well, it depends how close and true to the original stories and plots the show will be. As someone else pointed out, Moriarty dies in the Reichenbach Falls (in fact both Moriarty and Holmes apparently fall to their deaths). So we don’t know whether he is dead or not. I am sure in series 3 we will find out. If it transpires that he didn’t die then I’m sure it will be just as fun find out how he escaped death as it is debating how Sherlock faked his own death.

Anonymous

i totally agree. i believe that molly and mycroft where in on the ‘death’, but is moriaty dead? i believe he is dead.
Calebxy

Actually, looking closely at the scene where you see the body hit the ground, it *is* in pretty much the same position as seen later.

http://twitter.com/timnutman Tim Nutman

@Calebxy, I’m not saying the body position changed once he landed, I’m saying I would have expected him to have landed face down perpendicular to the road with his head closest to the road….

Calebxy

Oh, ok.

Rab Simpson

I was surprised he didn’t inspect JM’s corpse.

Anonymous

well i think you all are very wierd and should all stop predicting what is going to happen because you are ruining the programme!!!

Rab Simpson

Why were you looking at a spoiler page before you watched the episode?

Anonymous

Hi guys! I have a few theories about how Sherlock survives:

Ahem, Sherlock jumps off the building into the handy garbage truck breaking his fall, he throws on some fake blood and lies down on the pavement. The guy on the bike hits Watson to delay him, giving them enough time for Sherlock to cover himslf in fake blood. Notice how they did not allow Watson to get too close to the body so he could not see him clearly. He stops his pulse with the rubber ball, like in Derren Brown.

This is my first post, I hope not everyone is as horrible as MoriartyFanClub!

Calebxy

Greetings. I hope you enjoy your stay here. :) And I must mention, I’ve never actually seen MoriartyFanClub before today. :P
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1704676182 Jake Shaw

i thought this, but how would molly have helped with that. im wondering if she supplied a dead body look alike of sherlock. i agree with the garbage truck though :)
Anonymous

Yep he was playing with the ball in the lab. But what bothers me is you see the bodys impact as it hits the pavement, this is puzzling me!

http://twitter.com/TanyaBeard Tanya Beard

The only thing I know, is that the person that jumped had hazel/brown eyes, Sherlocks are blue!

Calebxy

And you know that how? You managed to see the colour of his eyes as he was falling? Because I’ll tell you one interesting fact. Whether or not that was actually meant to be Sherlock, it WAS Benedict who filmed the scene.

http://twitter.com/timnutman Tim Nutman

… I thought about eye colour for a second, however ignoring the rather useful fact from Calebxy :-), whilst they look darker, you can’t reliably state their colour – the scene is shot on a roof top in bright lighting conditions, plus its looks like a filter has been used to wash out the colour a little – so I have to disagree on the eye colour.

Anyhoo…. how long do we have to wait until they tell us in the next series… another 12 months? :-)
Daniel Osborne

Two key scenes, as he is on top of the building you see his eye color, also when the paramedics are putting ‘Sherlocks’ body on the stretcher the camera shows you his eyes and they are open.

As for changing the eye color, contact lenses with color tints can change the eye color meaning yes it would have been Benedict but with contacts.
http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

You saw his eye colour whilst falling? You must have a massive telly! Think you’re barking up the wrong tree there I have to say.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YW66YR2LQHJACZJBHEDRZQ2JIY Tommy

Well heres my theory. When sherlock went into to interview that little girl, she screamed as if he had been there. So it may of been that Moriarty found a sherlock look alike to commit the kidnap and subsequent attempted murder of these children. That being the case it is likely Moriarty would have killed the look a like to make sure there are no loose ends. So when sherlock went to see Molly for help he was asking to use the body of the look a like. This body was then thrown off the building in sherlock’s stead. The reason that sherlock asked john to stand in a specific place near the hospital may have been to get him to stand in the light so he could not actually tell it wasn’t sherlock.
Anonymous

It was a lookalike who Moriarty used to kidnap the children. That is why the girl screamed when she saw him. Molly helped him fake the fall and chuck the dead body. Moriarty is still alive but needed to be convinced of Sherlock’s death. So Sherlock ultimately outwitted Moriarty.

Erin McDonough

a bit confused; are you saying the lookalike willingly did it? why would he: he was working for moriarty.
if not, are you saying that the lookalike was killed? when and who by?

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

I’m now wandering who sent the text to Watson re Mrs Hudson being shot?

http://www.youtube.com/user/TEHEmmie Emmie

i think moriaty did
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1272305717 Poppy Snuffles-Smith

It wasnt a text, it was a call; which just seems even more suspicious.
Anonymous

Molly
Anonymous

Sherlock organised it so John would leave the hospital and be out of harms way, and so he could fake his death.
Rab Simpson

Someone working for Mycroft.

Anonymous

IVE CRACKED IT. When sherlock is falling he falls in the shape of a cross yes? with his head facing towards the road. We dont see his impact with the ground because of the building in the way of watson (that is why sherlock said look at me keep your eyes focused on me). However we do see his body hit the ground howver this is not his body. It is another body from th emorgue OR moriartys body fwith a wig. Sherlock had asked molly to get her and the paramedics to drop the body from a lower story window while sherlock falls in the garbage truck. this would explain why a crowd of parademics formed almost immediately stopping watson from seeing the body and was wheeled off quickly.
Adam Marshall

I have a question: What is the significance of the camera Sherlock found in the flat? He is so intrigued by it when he hooks it up to the computer. And then it’s never mentioned again, I really think the camera came into play somehow. Or at least, sparked an idea. (Like in Hounds Of Baskerville, the “Morse Code” wasn’t actually anything, and yet it made Sherlock think differently, in terms of an acronym.)

Just a thought.
Daniel Osborne

While Sherlock was on the roof, he was making sure that Watson was and stayed in a very specific location, when the bike hit him; knocking him to the ground I think there was a switch of some kind, perhaps with a body from the morgue – which Molly helped him with.

The switch then occurred when Watson was hit by the cyclist (possibly setup by Sherlock) so that Watson didn’t see the switch guaranteeing that he did not witness the switch and thus forth preventing his assassination, hence why Sherlock had to keep him in one place.
Erin McDonough

How about: Sherlock asked Molly to : create a dummy of him or use an already dead body from the morgue-Molly is the attendant! Instead of him. BUT! We clearly see Sherlock falling, not a dummy, so my theory is that because there was a low builing to one side of Sherlock, and a rubbish truck to his other, he could have jumped onto the top of one of them: more likely the truck, where there could be a trampoline/mat easily concealed. In the time we see Watson knocked out cold -we do not know how long this is, by the way- Sherlock has put a dead body from the morgue, or a dummy of himself on the ground, where he should have gone splat! ‘but what about the onlookers, and the paramedics?’ i hear you cry! well, what if they were all in on it too? I’m sure you see the same people walking back and forth. Molly/Sherlock could have paid them to act; squeeze down some fake blood, look terrified, more importantly, only let John touch his wrist, not get a total view of him, and try to keep him away. Paramedics then bundle him onto a bed thingy -very quickly!- and bundle him off to hospital before we get to see any more.
samuel.corbin

The Answer:
Who noticed the dustbin truck that was below the building when he fell? Watson was stood behind a brick building without a direct view of the pavement. Sherlock jumped, landed in the dustbin truck, and a body supplied by Molly was waiting at the bottom.

Scott Davis

I think you’ve hit it. Add the fact that I think that Sherlock asked Molly to provide the spare body (likely the double Moriarty used to kidnap the children earlier in the episode, now deceased as jim M didn’t require him anymore), and you’ve got it. Watson was carefully positioned to give him no view of the landing, and gets clobbered by the cyclist, so he’s not 100% at the time of his view of Sherlock’s face.
samuel.corbin

Which is why he shouted at Watson to stay exactly where he was.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_524522233VX2E2BY5H5KHGK7QI Chloe

He changed clothes with Moriarty and pushed him off.

http://www.facebook.com/riseoftheteddybears Valeyard12andaHalf

But the hair was wrong, and you can actually see Sherlock’s face as he is falling, and whilst he is on the ground. Also, I’m pretty sure dead bodies can’t stand up, let alone jump off a building

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000053744624 Ryan Patrick Nolan

My theory is that;

1) Sherlock threw himself as far as he could off the building. By swinging his arms round in circles, he propelled himself further into landing in the truck.

2) Then, the helpful Molly had placed a body (with a crushed and beaten face so that it would be automatically ID’d as Sherlock because it was too obscured to be questioned as otherwise) in the truck so that when Sherlock landed there he could swiftly deposit the other body on the pavement and disappear into the truck and get away.

3) As for the biker and the paramedics, these two sets of people were hired by Mycroft Holmes to go through with the “death” and make it seem more real.

4) But the point of innocent bystanders was raised. As for them, the mind can be tricked, especially in times of trauma. The bystanders saw John get hit by the bike, which surprised people and refocused their attention to him, giving Sherlock the time he needed to throw his “dead body” into the street.

http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

“Innocent bystanders” can easily be manufactured with actors and a bit of money.

Sherlock is known to use that trick – for example in the original story about Irene Adler (A scandal in Bohemia)

Anonymous

OK, think back to the first episode of this series. Moriarty leaves the swimming pool saying words to the effect of “If you have what you say you have I’ll make you rich, if not I’ll make you into shoes” – I think the person on the phone has found a double of Sherlock, and Moriarty now realises that he can discredit Sherlock rather than just kill him.
Now, from here I guess that the person jumping from the roof is the double, now wracked with guilt for being a pawn in Moriarty’s game and nearly killing the children with mercury – he thought they were nothing more than chocolates. So the double comes forward offering to help Sherlock and the Police and is fed what to say by earpiece by the real Sherlock. So the person that jumps, is the same one that hits the ground but crucially Molly confirms that the body is Sherlock and NOT whoever the real identity of the double is.
Anonymous

OK, think back to the first episode of this series. Moriarty leaves the
swimming pool saying words to the effect of “If you have what you say
you have I’ll make you rich, if not I’ll make you into shoes” – I think
the person on the phone has found a double of Sherlock, and Moriarty now
realises that he can discredit Sherlock rather than just kill him.

Now, from here I guess that the person jumping from the roof is the
double, now wracked with guilt for being a pawn in Moriarty’s game and
nearly killing the children with mercury – he thought they were nothing
more than chocolates. So the double comes forward offering to help
Sherlock and the Police and is fed what to say by earpiece by the real
Sherlock. So the person that jumps, is the same one that hits the
ground but crucially Molly confirms that the body is Sherlock and NOT
whoever the real identity of the double is.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000407715635 Rachael Evans

some one gave the idea of the dummy in the kitchen if it helps
Anonymous

OK, think back to the first episode of this series. Moriarty leaves the
swimming pool saying words to the effect of “If you have what you say
you have I’ll make you rich, if not I’ll make you into shoes” – I think
the person on the phone has found a double of Sherlock, and Moriarty now
realises that he can discredit Sherlock rather than just kill him.

Now, from here I guess that the person jumping from the roof is the
double, now wracked with guilt for being a pawn in Moriarty’s game and
nearly killing the children with mercury – he thought they were nothing
more than chocolates. So the double comes forward offering to help
Sherlock and the Police and is fed what to say by earpiece by the real
Sherlock. So the person that jumps, is the same one that hits the
ground but crucially Molly confirms that the body is Sherlock and NOT
whoever the real identity of the double is.
Anonymous

OK, think back to the first episode of this series. Moriarty leaves the
swimming pool saying words to the effect of “If you have what you say
you have I’ll make you rich, if not I’ll make you into shoes” – I think
the person on the phone has found a double of Sherlock, and Moriarty now
realises that he can discredit Sherlock rather than just kill him.

Now, from here I guess that the person jumping from the roof is the
double, now wracked with guilt for being a pawn in Moriarty’s game and
nearly killing the children with mercury – he thought they were nothing
more than chocolates. So the double comes forward offering to help
Sherlock and the Police knowing his fate is either years in prison or being hounded by Moriarty to get retribution, accepts that his life is over and is fed what to say by earpiece by the real
Sherlock. So the person that jumps, is the same one that hits the
ground but crucially Molly confirms that the body is Sherlock and NOT
whoever the real identity of the double is.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1826501280 Susan Hutchison

the person on the phone is more than likely Irene Adler. I thought that was quite obvious.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1826501280 Susan Hutchison

I had a good think about how Sherlock committed his “suicide”. His chat to Molly proves that she is clearly involved and her job in the morgue helps to set this. What I found odd at first was when Sherlock is on the phone to John just before he is about to jump off the roof. He tells John exactly where to stand and tells him not too move. This made me think that John must have to stand there so that he can’t see something from that spot. Also the way Sherlock says you have to watch me the whole time was weird too. There is a truck on the road when Sherlock jumps so John would not be able to see the spot where Sherlock lands. If you think the only people who have to see Sherlock die are John and the assassin. What I think is that most of this had something to do with Mycroft. As Mycroft is supposed to be somewhere very powerful within the government I think it would be only too easy for him to shut off a street and fill it with actors in a matter of minutes. This explains the sudden crowd that Moriarty points out to Sherlock as well. This would also explain why none of the crowd around Sherlock’s body would let John near it. As John runs over to Sherlock’s body he is hit by a bike. I think this is way too much of a coincidence. I want to say that maybe the cyclist is one of the actors drugged John as he passed so it took him a while to get to Sherlock’s body. It could help explain the dizziness although we see him hit his head quite hard if the bicycle hitting John was planned there would be no guarantee that it would slow John down enough from getting to the body where he might see something. If we bare in mind John’s profession the first thing he would have wanted to do was check Sherlock’s pulse but if you notice no one surrounding is really trying to do anything to help. Maybe when Sherlock fell the actors at the bottom where waiting to catch him and add fake blood to him so it looked like he was dead. As Molly works in the morgue the body of Sherlock would go to her and she could write out a report to say that he was definitely dead. What I noticed was that in the quick newspaper articles they show at the end that there is no mention of Moriarty’s body that was on the roof. This piece of information would be all over the newspapers as it was Moriarty that the public thought Sherlock had paid to pretend to rob the crown jewels so he could look clever and now they are found dead within metres of each other. I thought maybe Mycroft could have cleared away this detail for Sherlock.

Emlyn Jones

i agree on all but one thin instead of a capsule that inflates with air Sherlock jumped to the truck full of plastic bags, another body is thrown off possibly made to look like Sherlock with the help of plastic surgery and added fake blood. before John gets there the truck moves revealing Sherlock body, the body isn’t facing the same way as Sherlock was when he fell. the mortician molly covers for the fake body and Mycroft identifys it as Sherlock

TARDISkey123

I really dont think they’d have a double. I think that would add a whole lot of pointless information and Sherlock doesnt do things that way.

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

Also the cyclist would stop I’m sure if it were an accident.

Anonymous

Right then, i feel that Sherlock is going down the more supernatural route. I mean cmon, he obviously didnt survive the fall he was covered in blood. Then we see a pale sherlock looking on at a GRAVEYARD obviously a ghost. Its obvious when you think about it. lol

ieuand16

This is a wild and crazy idea but hey-ho! Does anybody remember years ago the baby that fell out of a hotel/hospital window from several floors up? (In real life) The baby survived because the nappy had filled with air on the way down and thus broke it’s fall.

My theory is that Molly gave Sherlock a capsule that would fill with air and break his fall. Once he hit the ground the bag would burst and dispense blood………..

Anonymous

Thats a silly idea.

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

ther is a difference between a man and a baby tho!

Anonymous

*though

Anonymous

Um, seeing as Sherlock is your life surely you should know that there is a third series commissioned, also if you knew anything about the books you should know Sherlock fakes his death in the books too.
http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

That is the dumbest theory I’ve seen on here – and there’s been talk of doppelgangers!

Show some respect for the original stories – READ THEM! Without knowing them you can not enjoy this show to the fullest. And in your ignorance you make these stupid assumptions that are honestly insulting to both BBC and Sir Doyle.

Sahil Jatana

I think that Sherlock actually jumped off the building and landed in a truck below, jumped out and covered himself in blood and lay on the pavement. One critical reference was made to “rhododendron ponticum”. The reference to rhododendron ponticum was also made in the movie Sherlock Holmes (2009).

According to the movie, rhododendron ponticum was used by Lord Blackwood to slow down his pulse so much that Dr. Watson was fooled and pronounced him dead.

Considering Sherlock jumped off the hospital building where Molly worked, he made a deal with her that when he is wheeled in, she is supposed to pronounce him dead and also revive him.

Sonia Bharucha

Wow, that’s actually very clever. I haven’t seen a post regarding the rhododendron ponticum. Now that I think about it, the show hadn’t made it seem like a huge deal (we see Sherlock mentioning it enthusiastically and rather quickly)–but this could have definitely been misdirection.

At the end, we very clearly see John taking Sherlock’s pulse, and then Sherlock’s hand dangling off the gurney as though he is dead. What better substance to use than the RP?

Oh very, very clever Sahil! I totally agree with your deduction :D

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

When watson attempts to take his pulse in his dazed state his hand is clearly pushed away, prized off in fact by a female hand, one of the crowd.

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

That was exactly what I thought.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Amy-Christian/508818367 Amy Christian

There are a few other big clues you’ve missed. Sherlock telling john its a magic trick. which better magic trick is then then miss direction. He makes john stand in a certain spot. he even shouts at him when he moves forward from the spot. the girl screamed when she saw sherlock.. why becuase she’d seen him before. which tells you there that theres 2 sherlocks. or rather a sherlock and a look alike. the bin man sets off as the crowd gets to the body on the floor. why would you set off driving just having seen a man fall to his death.

sherlock is stood looking down at the street when something makes him laugh.. something like a piece of the plan coming together. Molly works in that college but doesn’t come out when he’s ound dead. nahh and who sent the phone call to john. so that he would be stood in the right place when sherlock falls. Bach at the beginning was a nice touch too. man jumpes out of his death bed to finish a melody.. or a mystery in this case.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Amy-Christian/508818367 Amy Christian

so in summery.. the burnt ginger bread man is the sherlock look alike. somehow found and brought to the college. sherlock jumps into the back of a pin lorry. molly smudgers the paperwork so it seems like sherlock…..

but did anyone else get the hints that sherlock left with john… he wants john to figure it out.. imagine that will take awhile.
Anonymous

I think the girl screaming when she saw Sherlock can be acheived 2 ways either with a mask or just being shown pics and manipulating her by telling her he would harm her or her family, that was Moriartys way.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=835620219 Neville Wright

It is possible John is having bad dreams, that’s why he’s talking to the Doc at the beginning and end. And on this occasion he is describing the dream, Sherlocks death to her.

samuel.corbin

But who has dreams that complicated?

Calebxy

Me

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

Me too.

Anonymous

Ruined it again
Anonymous

Well done. I hope you’re happy.

http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

If that is the story, I’ll be so disappointed! Remember that these are based on the original stories – where Sherlock actually does fake his own death while “killing” Moriarty (Moriarty really kills himself ofc)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=693868241 Darren Fox

Sherlock was clearly on a wire……… you can even see the harness in the photo above acroos his shoulder blades……. He did do the jump…………. but the wire slowed down the fall.

Calebxy

*facepalm*

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

*double facepalm*

http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Henry/758874503 James Henry

*triple facepalm*

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

*Quadriple facepalm*
Anonymous

you ruined it.
Anonymous

5 facepalm ;)
Anonymous

Stopped being funny at, oh I don’t know, 0 facepalms?

Pdurston

I actually give up on this place. Seriously, there seems to be a majority who just delight in causing confusion and chaos on here, not all though but some and its quite disturbing…..

Calebxy

I think I just assumed that everyone here is from Doctor Who TV, but it seems not.

Anonymous

No. The stunt man was on a wire. you can probably see it if you’re really sad enough to re and re-watch on slow mo. some of you poor things are you’re confusing a telly programme with reality.
http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

I noticed Mycrofts hair was alot darker in this episode. Why??????? It was so much darker!

Anonymous

hair dye
Anonymous

I know?! What can that mean???

Mr Gatiss colours his hair, perhaps Boots didn’t have his usual shade. C’mon.

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

My theory: Sherlock asked Molly to find a corpse that looks very similar to himself. He DOES jump off the building, but he jumps into the rubbish truck, therefore cushioning his fall. Molly drops a body similar to his at the same time so it looks, to John, as if Sherlock did fall off. When John is knocked, sherlock quickly switches with the body. All the people around him are Molly’s colleauges, who put blood on him so he looks like he fell. When in the Morgue, Molly pronounces him dead, before secretly swapping him with the body. Sherlock escapes with barely any scratches.

Trust me, my friend and I have been spending ALL DAY on this.

Her theory was: Sherlock takes the drug that makes you seem dead, right before leaping off. APPARENTLY his coat makes the fall less lethal (???) so when he lands, he is injured but not dead. Molly takes him into the Morgue, swaps him with someone else whilst she nurses him back to health. Or something like that.

BTW, when we tried to get on here at school, it wouldn’t work, yet the Reichenbach review would. ???

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1680915049 Brock Cowburn

You seem to forget that John felt for a pulse, when he ran to the body.

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

ah, but I have a theory for that as well *Does evil Moffat face* Before he jumped off, a few minutes before, he puts his head to his jacket whilst facing away from the camera. It would be a pefect time for him to administer the drug that stops his pulse temporarily.

YellowEternal

Could the Baskerville hallucegenic have something to do with it? I Doubt it but its possible.

Anonymous

no

Anonymous

*Facepalm*

http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

Well, it’s quite obvious. Sherlock was a TESSELECTA!!! OMG HOW CLEVER AM I?!?!?!?

Lol, jk

Anonymous

Not very.

Adam Williamson

i think that IOU had something to do with it…
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1569607504 Alex Cox

he asks molly to make him a ruber protective floor that would not kill him if he jumped. the cyclist knocks john out. so sherlocks body could be switched with a fake. john comes over sees the fake and thats how he did it. also if this is based on a book would the answer be in there?

Anonymous

“he asks Molly to make a protective rubber floor that would not kill him if he jumped” You are hilarious, thank you, I haven’t laughed this much in ages.
http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

The answer is not in the book because the series are only based on the books and not copied from them. In the original story Sherlock never falls, but Moriarty does fall in an attempt to kill Holmes. Sherlock then realises what a chance he has to take down the people loyal to Moriarty, and fakes his own death by making the footprints look like he fell too, and then hiding.

Obviously, this is not what happened in the series…

http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

This is my take on the fall.

Sherlock def wants John to stay in a specific place with his view obscured of the landing place. The bike hitting John is a delaying tactic, and as others point out we do not know how long he was knocked out for. If it were a genuine accident the cyclist would of stopped, apologised etc.

It is definately Sherlock that jumped, fell through the air, and it was him that was on the floor too. Thing is, he had a soft landing – the laundry truck which looks to me like it was an open topped caged vehicle with visible laundry bags in the back. I don’t think it was another corpse provided my Molly. I think she provided blood and the death certificate/autopsy. Mycroft was certainly involved with body identification (next of kin) and also some ‘arrangements’ (before and after). His character is too canny to just have such small part in that episode.

Sherlock could not of risked putting another corpse on the ground as Watson would of known even in his state. I noticed after a second viewing that his hand as he attempted to take a pulse was pushed away quite quickly. I also think that Sherlock had taken something to slow his pulse down so it would be hard to find in the commotion. He was pretty handy in the lab after all. Sherlock would know John would’ve wanted to take his pulse as it is doctors instincts.

It is interesting about Moriaty’s body though. But think he is probably dead but who knows…so many twists and turns.
http://twitter.com/greenliz1974 Liz Floyd

This is my take on the fall.

Sherlock def wants John to stay in a specific place with his view obscured of the landing place. The bike hitting John is a delaying tactic, and as others point out we do not know how long he was knocked out for. If it were a genuine accident the cyclist would of stopped, apologised etc.

It is definately Sherlock that jumped, fell through the air, and it was him that was on the floor too. Thing is, he had a soft landing – the laundry truck which looks to me like it was an open topped caged vehicle with visible laundry bags in the back. I don’t think it was another corpse provided my Molly. I think she provided blood and the death certificate/autopsy. Mycroft was certainly involved with body identification (next of kin) and also some ‘arrangements’ (before and after). His character is too canny to just have such small part in that episode.

Sherlock could not of risked putting another corpse on the ground as Watson would of known even in his state. I noticed after a second viewing that his hand as he attempted to take a pulse was pushed away quite quickly. I also think that Sherlock had taken something to slow his pulse down so it would be hard to find in the commotion. He was pretty handy in the lab after all. Sherlock would know John would’ve wanted to take his pulse as it is doctors instincts.

It is interesting about Moriaty’s body though. But think he is probably dead but who knows…so many twists and turns.
bob bobson

Sherlock’s a vampire from btvs
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000820825202 David Filer

Molly pushed off the body of Moriarty and Sherlock landed on the laundry truck. end of
Lois Heslop

i think that when Sherlock said to molly i need ur help it meant she was going to play a part in this. Also the joke is that Rich(ard) Brook translated into german is reichenbach- which is the name of the real story wher Sher dies. I think that-as we dont see the face of the dead body untilWatso sees it-he is really the only witness-andhe basically is shown to lose his memory/get concussion. AFTER he is hit by the bike he gets up and sees what can only be a decoy-but watson thinks its really sher because he isnt too well. I think sher chose his moment carefully so he could have lots of passers by so he could plant the decoy easily and run off into the crowd without anyone seeing his face. How he jumped off after the phone call i have no idea-maybe something to do with the laundry truck. also, that is deliberately fake blood(they could have made it realistic if they had wanted) on moriarty’s head. I expected him to blink or something at the end

http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

The name of the story this episode is based on is not Reichenbach – it’s His last bow (Look it up, I’ve read the books like 5 times). However, the Reichenbach fall is where it happens.

Moriarty really is dead, or at least if he’s alive it will be a great betrayal to the original stories, something that would be very unlikely considering how amazing BBC has been in their tributes to those so far. Honestly, they have done such an incredible job!

Lois Heslop

also, the bike accident was planned as watson was asked to stay in a certain place, and the cyclist would have stopped in a real situation
Lois Heslop

also, jumping off a hospital and MORGUE was planned(dead bodys kept there(decoy) etc)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000573734770 Daniel Peblson

Here’s my theory.

What everyone seems to have missed is a little scene, right before ‘sherlock’ exits to the roof to meet his enemy. It’s simple and easy to have gone unoticed. It’s a clip of John Watson waking up. Now, who’s to say a doppleganger/mask hasnt been found? Whilst John was dozing it’s possible the Sherlocks were switched, the real for the fake. Shortly after Watson wakes up he receives a phone call telling him of Hudsons shooting. Sherlock is blunt and unphased upon hearing of it and yet in the previous episode he threw a man out of a window, breaking ribs, skulls and causing punctured lungs all because Mrs Hudson got manhandled up a flight of stairs and sustained a cut. This further backs up the swap. So, what about the scenes where we see Sherlock, standing atop a roof, apologizing to Watson on the phone?
It’s easy, the doppleganger is standing on top of the hospital, the real Sherlock atop an adjacent building watching the events. The camera switches between close ups of a man preparing to jump off a roof and close ups of Sherlocks face. The doppleganger appears to be on the phone but is actually not.

He jumps, kills himself and gets pronounced dead by a morgue attendant close to Sherlock.
As was seen in the Irene Addler episode where even Sherlock is fooled by the body.

This theory arises some questions, Why is the doppleganger prepared to kill himself for Sherlock? How did Sherlock predict that he was going to die?

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the cyclist at the end was Holmes aswell. Duplicate bodies and fake blood? Pfft, ameteur. It’s the blatant, most simple conclusion. Think outside the box. Watch it again and tell me what you think.

Anonymous

Was def not Sherlock on bike, I looked at that on pause. It was not a recognisable character.

http://twitter.com/KateElBoundy Kate Boundy

How’s this:
Did anyone else notice that there’s a fire truck right in front of the hospital? And who better to provide a dead body than a morgue assistant? I think that when Sherlock asked John to watch him, it was because Molly was placing a dead body on the floor in front of the hospital. The fire truck was placing a trampoline on top of the body- or whatever it is that fire trucks use. Sherlock jumped off the building, and landed on it. While John was down, he packed everything up and left the dead body there. John was barely conscious, and we were seeing everything through his eyes; if he thought he saw Sherlock, then we saw Sherlock.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

there was no fire truck. There were 2 double decker busses because it was a bus stop. Then they moved away and a garbage/refuse van took their place.

Anonymous

Think it was a laundry truck, not that it matters!

Anonymous

Ok, think someone else mentioned this and I’m sorry to not credit you but I can’t be fagged to read back all those posts. But you mentioned the rubber ball. That is flippin’ it!!!!!!!!!
“A Magic Trick” Sherlock says to John when he is on the roof. Looked it up and bingo, he was playing with a ball in the lab. So subtle. So Clever. I’m kind of sad now as don’t want to spoil it for the next series for myself or for you which is why I won’t fully explain, you can look it up if you choose to. Def no fake corpse in my eyes now.

Anonymous

A magic trick is a euphomism for hes on the pill.

Anonymous

Ha

Anonymous

*facepalm*

http://twitter.com/l0u1se11 Claire Mackay

okay this is driving me insane, what do you mean? Have tried looking it up and no further enlightened. All the truck stuff just doesn’t fit and the full face shot shows they didn’t change the body it interested to know what you mean by magic tricks.

Anonymous

There is a magic trick where you put a ball in your armpit and squeeze your arm close to your side to slow/stop pulse. Could Sherlock have done this when he was on the ground thus fooling John?

Anonymous

Alright guys im new. My theory, sherlock AND watson were in on it. Bear with me please. The watson on the ground was a ganger (if youve watched doctor who youll know). Watson was on the roof, and shot moriarty on the back of the head (which is why he fell down dead) did everyone miss that or something??!! lol moriarty didnt just suddenly die. But listen, i loved the episode The Great Reinbach fall, a classic in my opionion but could of been better, too many plot holes. Didnt like it. End of.

Anonymous

Moriarty shot himself

Pdurston

An classic example here of someone paying attention!

Anonymous

Pdurston you can sometimes be quite aggressive it seems to me. It is just his opinion, so if you disagree just politely tell him you disagree. I used to respect you…

Anonymous

Thanks cybermate :P lol Although id like to thinkk of myself as a friend of pdurston i like him and his crazy impossible theorys!!
Pdurston

I’m not being aggressive at all (I’m hardly an aggresive poster actually, only when I come against trolls who annoy me), I’m just completely and utterly baffled by some of the posters here. The person above is not making an opinion, its not even a true identification of what happened and is . He/she is describing the episode’s main ending in one veered off direction that it isn’t Sherlock they’re talking about. How is that opinion, heck it doesn’t even correlate to what actually happened, so how can it be justified?

And what do you mean “I used to respect you”, I don’t ask anyone to respect what I say, they don’t even have to, but they can least have the ordacity ot respect who I am and not try to manipulate me. So sorry if I come across to you somewhat aggressive, I don’t mean to if I am but I get so angry when I see trolls and so called ‘Sherlockians’ throw their so called opinion about even though they don’t contain any substance whatsover.

I’m done!

Pdurston

“Did everyone miss that or something”

And did you miss the part when Moriarty actually inserted the barrel of the gun through his mouth and shot himself?!

Seriously, what show were you watching, because it definitely doesn’t correlate with what we’ve all seen?…….

Anonymous

Well I was watching the Great Reichanbach Fall. And..yes youre right.. :P just re watched it 12 times and he does insert the barrel by himself. darnn! However i still think that watson was in on it, and on the roof maybe somehow. Maybe he was watching on the roof somehow?..

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=531356408 Genesis Mendez

My theory: Sherlock got Molly to hire a whole set of people from Bart’s to help in the orchestration of his “death.” Then, he had a paramedic call John to tell him that Mrs. Hudson’s been shot, so John leaves in a rush and out of the way. Then, when Moriarty kills himself, John comes back and is about to walk into the hospital, WHEN Sherlock stops him abruptly before he can see anything. I think it’s at this time that the so-called “crowd” is already gathered and setting up some sort of mat thing. Yes, a mat, bear with me here. Then, he tells John that he’s a fraud basically so that John would think he’s actually depressed and committing actual suicide (he wouldn’t have been able to tell him that there were snipers or even the actual truth because then they’d shoot him). He falls, and when he lands he SO bounces. Repeat that clip HE BOUNCES!!! Therefore, he fell on a mat, and then, AND THEN, a “random” bicyclist runs over John, knocks him down, so that, in my opinion, the “crowd” (of presumably paramedics in street clothes from Bart’s) can inject that drug that slows down your heart-rate, splatters blood everywhere, and all this jazz, so that when finally John comes back to reality, he gets there and it LOOKS like he’s dead. He even checks his pulse and obviously it SEEMS like he’s dead, so tada! There was no funeral, I think, and John was talking to an empty grave (unless it was a dead body from Bart’s that Molly donated). It’s not like Sherlock could even tell him, because then everybody would know that he’s not dead and Moriarty’s comrades would be out to kill him. Poor, poor John. :(
Anonymous

There are several possible solutions. Let’s quote Sherlock, shall we? “Once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.”What’s impossible?1. Sherlock jumped from the roof, hit the ground, and lived. (It’s physically impossible for the human body to take that much damage and still function. No type of drug will be able to minimize the damage caused, especially to the more delicate organs such as the brain.)2. Sherlock replaced Moriarty’s body with his own (John clearly saw him standing on the roof, holding the pone, and then jumping. He can’t exactly magically animate Moriarty’s corpse to do all that can he? Besides, Moriarty is smaller in stature and Sherlock didn’t have nearly enough time to completely change the facial features anyway. And a mask definitely won’t cut it. Yes, we only see the back of SH’s head when he falls, but don’t forget that John is watching the entire time, and he’s completely convinced.)3. Sherlock found someone willing to commit suicide for him. (We witnessed that it was Sherlock who was speaking into the phone and standing on the ledge, as did John. It wasn’t a stunt double who was pantomiming, because that would mean the camera showed incorrect info and footage. The camera depicts events as they are, and although it can speed bump things to keep it hidden, it can’t completely change the obvious events that transpired. Trust the camera my friends, for it depicts the truth.)After eliminating the scenarios above, we are left with one easily believable conclusion. Since we’ve established that it was Sherlock who jumped, but it was not Sherlock who hit the ground, we can easily deduce that a switcheroo occurred sometime in the middle. What happened exactly? Well, that one’s a bit tougher, but the easiest and most believable (remember, the producers have to make it believable) option is the garbage truck theory and Molly’s excellent fake-Sherlock. No autopsy should be needed since it was an obvious suicide, so the exact time of death should remain hidden. By Sherlock’s own method of elimination and Occam’s Razor, we have found the solution.

Elementary, my dear fellows.

http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

All I have to complain about are the quotes.

It’s in fact “must be the truth” not “is the truth”.
And Sherlock actually never says “Elementary, my dear Watson”, not a single time!

But then again, I’m a very true Holmes fan… It’s very likely that I’m the only one here that cares about this :P

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KG3FXMR2F277A64BLZCHRKK25U Marion

Great comments, I like the trampoline theory!
I agree that John being knocked out is a significant clue, but
I would like to bring in two more clues though…
What about/where could they come in?
1. The dummy hanging in the appartment in the beginning of the episode…
2. The abducted girl clearly has seen Sherlock – is there somebody who looks like Sherlock or somebody with a mask/morph suit…
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

I saw this somewhere else but can’t recall where but it’s exactly what I think happened. i think other theories are far too contrived and convaluted. Clones, dopplegangers, switched bodies etc just don’t ring true. Sherlock only needs molly to fake his death certificate and perhaps maybe arrange for the truck to be in place and to give him the fake blood, nothing else…So, this is the theory…..” My Theory is that, Sherlock used the ball he was playing with to stop his pulse in his arm, when he jumped he jumped into the van fill of bin bags beside him. The cyclest who knocked John over was staged buying time for Sherlock to jump out of the van pour some blood on himself -or burst a blood pack on his head- and lay down. Also when John went over his vision was blurred and he was disorintated so he didn’t know what was happening.”

The only thing i would disagree with is the cyclist delaying john so sherlock could jump out the truck. we saw the body on the floor BEFORE john was hit by the bike but i think sherlock had already jumped out of the van and onto the floor as john was coming round from behind the building that obscured his view. I think he just needed that time for his pulse rate to slow rate to slow right down.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

…and the little girl recognising him must have made him realise that moriarty had fooled the girl into thinking she’d seen sherlock so could he (sherlock) fool moriarty into thinking he’d seen sherlock die and that made him think of irene adler having faked her death and then he realised he could fake his own death and at that point he went to molly for help in doing this.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

…initially sherlock asked moriarty to stand away from the roof top edge to give him some privacy but i think that was to prevent him from seeing sherlock jump and the subsequent actions in the garbage truck, but he didn’t need to bother after moriarty seemingly killed himself.

Anonymous

But he went back and carried on talking to Moriaty after that moment didn’t he?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

only because he’d had a moment of realisation, that moriarty could in fact calll the killlers off. i think, at that point, he was readying himself to jump.

Anonymous

Sec agree with rubber ball, am going to look at again to see if body has one ARM close to the body

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

isn’t the dialoghue above wrong???

it says..

” “I wasn’t everything that you think I am; everything that I think I am. But you still want to help me?”

But I thought he’d said…

“If I wasn’t everything that you think I am; everything that I think I am. Would you still want to help me?”

the ‘if’ and ‘would’ change the sentence totally!
Tim Mooij

Watched it 1 time, will watch it a second time, here’s some ideas, either from watching or reading some of the stuff below..

Okay… the falling bit, the help from Molly, John knocked unconscious or at least delayed, drugs that slow the pulse from a rhododendron that was shown earlier in a photography (side-effects: the sniffing and crying), or a point of reference storytelling thing (when we see John waking up before the rest of the scene)

But did anybody else see the significance of the handshake between
Moriarty and Sherlock on the roof? First there is the scene when the
first russian hitman saves Holmes from getting run over and is
subsequently shot immediately before he got to touch Sherlock, (upon
which Sherlock remarks just that, quite literally actually)

The first time his hands touch someone are Moriarty’s, camera’s
zooming in, music swelling, the scene is especially shot as a dramatic
moment. Could the “something they want from me while I’m alive
(Sherlock)” be something on his skin (poison) or fingerprints perhaps
(don’t say the code, even the code itself says there is no key….

And what about the light behind SH’s head during his big speech about the side of the angels but not being one of them, and Moriarty (again quite literally) seeing “the light” and just saying “bless you” before shooting himself? No thank you….. any thoughts on that?

http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

Moriarty doesn’t say “Bless you”, he says “Good luck with that”…

After talking about the fact that Sherlock could still save his friends as long as Moriarty is alive, you know? “Good luck with that” he says, and shoots himself.. It’s taunting. He is obsessed with winning, so much so that he is ready to die for it. He pulls that trigger convinced that by doing so he is either killing Sherlock or everyone he loves.

The crying is out of character, true, but he really does care deeply for Watson and my theory is that he hates having to cause him that pain. He knows that what he is about to do will leave Watson traumatized, grief stricken and heartbroken. It might seem that their relationship is cold and drawn back, but they really are incredibly close.

http://www.facebook.com/soldeed Michael Balin

I’m afraid you didn’t listen closely enough, he does indeed say “bless you”:

Sherlock: Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.

Moriarty: No. You’re not. You see. You’re not ordinary. No. You’re me. You’re me. Thankyou, Sherlock Holmes. Thank you. Bless you. As long as I’m alive you can save your friends. You’ve got a way out. Well good luck with that.

http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

Ah, you mean before that! I thought you meant those were his last words.

In that conversation you need to take into consideration that Moriarty is driven mad. He finally found a worthy opponent, spent all this time and effort on playing his games, and now he is starting to doubt that Sherlock is actually as god as he though he was. He is torn between the emptiness that will follow the death of Sherlock, and the doubt about whether beating Sherlock is really a great accomplishment for him.

When Sherlock shows that he really is a worthy opponent, Moriarty is happy and thankful, then he focuses on one thing – beating Sherlock. He pulls that trigger convinced that his death will either kill Sherlock or everyone that Sherlock loves.

Tim Mooij

Did anyone else see the significance in my weird text lay-out there? Sorry,
Anonymous

But Sherlock then came back from edge they then proceeded to have the “you are me” convo then moriarty shot himself. I think Moriarty was giving Sherlock the last clue, saying “you are me” he was used somehow, ma
ybe in coffin?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

I’ve been musing over moffatt’s comment that Sherlock “does something very out of character”.
Sherlock has worked out that the ‘key’ is a computer code. So, if you’d discovered that you had a computer code that could “unlock any door”. Why on earth did he not use it to go into the computer records and change Rich Brooke’s identity back to Moriarty, like he said he was going to do? He had time to at least test the code. It was Sherlock who asked Moriarty to meet him on the roof so why would he do that without testing his theory first?
Does Sherlock Holmes work on assumptions? I don’t think he does. He doesn’t want to be wrong so he doesn’t claim to know something unless he’s tested it first. If he didn’t test it then he’s a “dufus” as moriarty so eloqurntly put it. That’s “very out of character” surely???
So, my opinion is he tested it and found it be useless and then asked to meet moriarty on the roof and pretended to be ignorant about the computer code being useless.It’s WHY he did this that is niggling me.
Your thoughts please?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

sherlock holmes being wrong is very out of character isn’t it? LOL
http://twitter.com/TauraCasanova Tova Bergman

If your read the books, the series will make much more sense to you.

Sherlock does this to stop Moriarty, though of course in the series it has to have been a lot more planned out (in the original stories it’s actually an accident). Moriarty is, as has been shown, the biggest threat to British and international law there is – his mind is almost equal to Sherlock’s, which makes him very dangerous. He is, very fittingly, described as a spider in a web in both the series and the books. Therefore, he has to either die or be put behind lock and key.

However, the vast network of criminals in the service of Moriarty are capable to act on their own and are very dangerous and likely to want to revenge the death of their leader. This is why Sherlock decides to fake his own death and continue his investigation incognito. He does not tell Watson because he needs him to convince the public that he is really dead. In the original stories, when Sherlock reveals himself as alive to Watson, the poor man actually faints!

Though, of course, if you know the story behind the stories, the whole thing gets even more interesting. Arthur Conan Doyle actually intended for Sherlock Homes to die in that fall along with Moriarty, but three years after publishing that story he gave in to popular demand and brought Sherlock back to life. (The actual end for Mr. Holmes turns out being a retirement in the country studying bees.)

I believe that this is why BBC kept quite for so long and let the fans think there would be no third series. All in all, I am very impressed by their constant tributes to the originals.

But then again, I’m a die hard Holmes fan… Can you tell? :P

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

saw this comment on another site, totally agree!!! “Sherlock should know better than to think a tiny fragment of binary code can allow a person to break into a prison, the crown jewels and bank of england”
http://www.onetwothreedoctorandme.blogspot.com/ Jerry the Time Tomato

People, I have not been MUSING over this, I’ve been OBSESSIONG over it.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

same here!

Marianne Slattery

Well, obviously the Sherlock who jumped was a robot run by tiny, tiny people . . . Anyway, the garbage truck that was sitting in front of the hospital disrupted John’s view. He didn’t see Sherlock’s body until he started walking, which is why Sherlock wanted him to stay where he was. Sherlock landed in the garbage bags and rolled out. After the biker hit John, the crowd, who are all part of Sherlock’s homeless network, had time to arrange the blood that Sherlock got from Molly. There are drugs one could take to hide a heartbeat, which is why John didn’t feel one when he checked for a pulse. Molly faked the autopsy, and the Sherlock they buried was a corpse with a lifelike mask–possibly the same one Moriarty may have used to convince the kids that it was Sherlock who captured them, thus the girl screaming when she saw him.
As for how he was wearing the EXACT same trench coat even though they’re discontinued, he simply got it back from evidence. Or he has more than one.
http://profile.yahoo.com/XAPYJ3MCB333XBCBHT4DLIGECA Holly

It’s the hand. When Watson took the pulse after falling over, it’s not Sherlock’s hand. Moffat shows us his hand when he’s tapping out the ‘key’ to Moriarty on the rooftop, so he used someone else’s body (which he presumably got off Molly).

Though they never explained why the girl screamed at the start and who/how the kidnapper impersonated Sherlock.

Anonymous

Compare the fingernails when John take’s Sherlocks Pulse and when Shelock Shakes Moriarty’s hand on the rooftop – they look different? The pulse ones the nails look wider?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

i thoguht that too, sherlock/cumberbatch has quite long, slim fingers. i thought the coprse’s hand had quite thick fingers.

Anonymous

http:// www. youtube. com/watch?v=nrhWfuw9Pqs
try it without the spaces in between
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000673707106 David Gwyer

I have 2 theories that are quite far-fetched.1. Moriarty had 4 murderers giving their lives for Holmes. Only 2 were seen. A third have a face disfigurement to look like Holmes and go up in the first place (he DID get some things wrong like the binary code, which isn’t like Sherlock)? He could have given his life to save Sherlock’s, which still leaves one killer.
2. This is extremely unlikely, but what if Moriarty was actually working for someone else? He could have been the third killer, who killed himself because he touched Sherlock.
These are just guesses, but I hadn’t seen anyone else picking up about the 4 killers, and thought I would bring attention to them.
http://twitter.com/AntoniaNegima Evangeline McDowell

I think that either Molly gave Sherlock a corpse to use as a ‘dummy’ or some drugs and blood to make him appear dead but actually alive. Also as Sherlock is alive it means that they will have to do a Series 3 and I hope they put Colonel Sebastian Moran into it ^~^
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

we see sherlock fall but we don’t see him land. That’s obviously vital. I don’t think he landed on the pavement.

You do see a body wearing his coat hit the pavement but you don’t see where that body fell from.

Therefore, IMO, he landed somewhere else before hitting the floor.

I think he landed in the truck, somene poured blood on him and then he rolled out onto the pavement to take up position to be found by watson et al. Truck then drives off.

Ask yourself, if you had just seen someone jump to their death, would you calmly drive away? No, you’d be in shock and probably get out to help. Therefore the truck is involved but needs to drive away for that very reason.

It is sherlock the whole time!

Molly then fakes his death certificate and provides a body to be buried

Anonymous

Yeah, you should just hear the sound of “Sherlock” hitting the ground. It doesn’t sound like human who fell. I just doubt, whether it was Sherlock’s bones cracked (which obviously is not the case) or was it just a sound of dummy that fell

lee parks

it was Moriarty’s body on the pavement we were meant to see what watson thought he saw (because he was dazed and confused) could be possible that molly was the cyclist but i would lay money on it that it was Moriarty’s body

Anonymous

Def not Molly on the bike, it is a bloke I’ve been freeze framing like mad!
TARDISkey123

How much are you willing to place? ;D

Anonymous

What if Sherlock got a mold of his face from Molly and put it on Moriarty and switched clothes with Moriarty and threw his body off the roof. And like some people have commented it wasn’t Sherlock’s hand and the assassins were watching Sherlock’s friends and not him.
http://profile.yahoo.com/B2VJSCNHVH5NEV4A4V6HA4GCJE aimzizawesome

i think what happened was molly was driving the truck we know she works at a morgue place so what i think happened was sherlock really did jump but land on something else oh an john got run over aswell so i bet that was planned as our eyes were focused on john i think sherlock fell on something an ran to the pavement with a bit of fake blood his pulse was gone as he was probably given drugs by molly and since molly works at the morgue she decides if he is dead or not soo i think moriaty is in the coffin as moriaty says you are me, doesnt that mean something
please tell me what you think of my answer xoxox
Anonymous

What if Sherlock had a mold of his face from Molly and put it on Moriarty and switched clothes and threw Moriarty’s dead body off the roof. Plus as some people said the hand Watson checked wasn’t Sherlock’s. And the blood from the bodys head could be where Moriarty shot himself. And the assassins were only watching Sherlock’s closest friends and not him.
http://www.facebook.com/soldeed Michael Balin

Maybe not everyone knows how to rewind a TV programme and watch it again. It’s odd seeing people make comments like “We only see Sherlock from behind when he falls” or “We don’t see him land” – especially when others say “He bounces when he lands” which has spawned the trampoline theory. So here’s my rather obsessive analysis of the relevant shots gleaned from actually watching the programme.

From when Sherlock jumps, we then see him falling from the front, in three separate shots. In each his head is perfectly still, face visible but eyes apparently fixed on the ground coming toward him. His arms flail about (no rubber ball beneath the armpit at this point then) and his legs make a cycling movement. He seems to be trying very hard to keep his head and torso steady. It’s not definitely Sherlock’s face, but it’s certainly not Moriarty’s.

There is then a shot of part of a body apparently hitting the ground. (Very slight bounce perhaps.) There is an empty phone booth in the background on the left, and a smiliarly glass-walled bus stop in the right foreground. In the left foreground is a pair of wooden benches with their backs to the wall. A while van is the only vehicle in shot – parked in front of the building. As Watson begins to approach the building across the road, we see – apparently from his point of view – a truck with an open-topped cage containing a single layer of garbage bags (medical linen bags probably I agree) parked in front of the building apparently only 1-2m from Sherlock’s body (the face is visible, but again not distinguishable.) The body is lying in front of the right-most (when facing the building) of the two wooden benches we saw before.

However, in the brief shots as Watson is hit by the cyclist – apparently only seconds later after the previous hand-held camera shot – we see an old fashioned red phone booth on the left of the building’s facade, with two benches between it and the bus stop, but the benches appear much further apart and the body – obscured by a crowd of 4-7 people which has gathered surprisingly rapidle – appears between them now. Most strikingly, the truck that was parked adjacent to the body is gone – again within seconds of the impact apparently (the fact that we can see the cyclist approaching Watson in the same pan-shot that moves from the body to Watson seems to confirm this, despite the use of slow motion in playback.)

Just after Watson is taken out by the cyclist, there is a brief shot of the cyclist obscuring the body (with only a couple of people evident about it now) however just at the right edge of the screen we see the garbage truck (looking a bit higher perhaps?) about to move out of shot. The camera pans down and left, away from the truck, and yes, there are only two figures hunching over the body – perhaps some of the others are fetching help? Then we see nothing until after Watson is seen on the ground – an unknown amount of time.

After Watson is on the ground, recovering, we see an aerial top-down view of the building which shows three benches with the body lying half in front of the first one (the one closest to the red phone booth, and more or less between the two. The body is almost exacly centred between the kerbside and the building – in this shot the limbs are arranged awkwardly and one hand and forearm lies over the square paving bricks which form a rectangular pattern within the rest of the pavement, adjacent to the road. (This pattern might make for an pretty good target for someone jumping off the building.)

Strangely, the linen truck appears to have reversed, at least compared with the previous shot – its rear is now level with the far end of the second bench, not level with the far end of the bus stop. Consistent with the previous shot there are only two people next to the body, but what appear to be a blue-gowned pair from the previous shot move up quickly to try and prevent people getting too close. (They’re on the scene within seconds – suspiciously quickly.)

As Watson approaches, there’s no longer any sign of the linen truck at all. (And I think I spotted a fourth wooden bench..)

I note that in our earlier (pre-bloodshed) first top-down view from the building, there were two rather large red and white buses standing next to the “target” pattern. In our second (“You’ve got an audience now.”) the two double-decker buses are still there.

So what do I think happened? That he really jumped, that he landed somewhere near the “target pavers” – most likely in the linen truck which seems to be able to dart in an out of shot as required quite miraculously, unless the ground had been specially prepared in advance. Was that his body? Well, yes, by this time his face was quite recognisable – though slightly blood-streaked – and the hardest part of the whole endeavour would be actually surviving the fall not feigning death for a few minutes.

I suspect that all the necessary footage to show us what happened has already been shot. Now THAT would make a nice blu-ray disc special feature. :-)

Anonymous

An Interesting theory, I agree that Sherlock actually jumped, as John’s eyes were centered on him before he leapt, there wouldn’t have been an oppurtunity to switch the bodies.

I also think the lorry had a role as well, except that it delivered the body that Molly prepared in the lab. Initially, I thought he may have fell into the lorry, yet it was still a great distance to fall and land safely. Furthermore, it would have to be on the pavement for sherlock to fall into it, instead it was on the side of the road, which would have been too far. It may have been a deliberate red herring but what was unusual was that the vehicle didn’t remain stationary after the body was on the pavement but it immediately went.

Another event that stands out is the biker crashing into John. John stepped out quite a distance ahead of the bike and there seems to be no attempt of the biker to move out of the way even though he clearly had time to. Perhaps he intentionally knocked John over so that he would be unable to see the plant of the fake body. I also think that’s why Sherlock was urging John before he fell to stay where he was.

The once piece that is missing from the puzzle is where Sherlock was able to fall to safety,which I think we will see in extended footage next series.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

I agree that it would have been difficult for sherlock to aim and hit the back of the truck from that height. It’s not like he’s had any paratrooper training! LOL
Did you notice that when he falls he’s facing away from the building but when we see his body on the floor, it’s facing sideways on? This just gives more fuel to the fact that he didn’t land on the pavement, not initially anyway.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

if you read my last comment, I said that he landed in the truck. You see him fall but you do NOT see a continuous shot of him falling and hitting the ground. You see him fall then there’s a different camera shot of a body wearing his coat hitting the floor. He landed in the truck then rolled out onto the pavement.
The blood was either poured onto his head by someone on the truck or by the crowd that gathers. As the blood seems to be there BEFORE the crowd gather then I suspect someone in the truck did it.
Watson was delayed by the cyclist to give sherlock time to stop/slow his pulse with the rubber ball which he probably had in his pocket.

Anonymous

Did you all see that the “dead” body of Sherlock has a different hairstyle than the actual Sherlock? I am still really confused with Moffat’s statement about something that Sherlock did, that was very out of character. And the sound of Sherlock’s fall, i don’t know whether it was the sound of Sherlock’s bones cracked, or if it was the sound of a dummy. I know i didn’t give any idea of how Sherlock fell, but i’m just feeling there IS something , that we all saw but didn’t realize. I see ‘something’ is there, but i just can’t figure it out.

I think Moffat and Gatiss shall create an official website for Sherlock , and just give us some “quizzes” to help us out in this ‘case’ they gave us. Anyway, i’m a die-hard fans of Sherlock, and will certainly try to rewatch it until i get “something” . IF i get it though………… Moffat and Gatiss are just bloody smart.
Craig Moorhouse

I think people are being misdirected by certain clues that Moffat cleverly plants to confuse us. I don’t think Sherlock jumped into the garage truck full of trash bags – the truck is too far from the the hospital – Sherlock would of had to take a running jump to hit his mark. Jumping into a “trash’ truck would of be something that Sherlock would of had to concoct on the fly – not his style. The plan was carefully and meticulously crafted by Sherlock in advance – Mycroft and the Secret Intelligence Service would of carried out Sherlock’s plan – the brothers agreed to an alliance to take down Moriarty back during the Hounds of the Baskerville case ( Mycroft granted Sherlock access the secret Baskerville facility – and Mycroft isn’t that stupid to give Moriarty information that Mycroft didn’t want Moriarty to have – He is the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service after all.

When Sherlock knew the hows and wheres of Moriarty “show down” he had someone phone Watson with the fake news that Miss Hudson was shot which gave Sherlock the time to put the finally touches to his plans and to co-ordinate this plan with Mycroft . At the hospital you see a number of d.d. buses and the garbage truck parked along the curb – this vehicles all part of the S.I.S. operation – which carried the personal and the gear for the operation and provided ample “visual blocking” to what was going on on the sidewalk in front of the hospital. All the people in front of the hospital – in scrubs – man on the bicycle – all S.I.S. How did Sherlock survive the fall – S.I.S. personal where manning one of those fireman nets – quickly deploying it and then packing the net away on one of the buses. S.I.S. had be preparing the accident in advance ( after Moriarty “offed” himself) I don’t know if the body of the ground was Sherlock “doctored” to look this he fell to his death ( placing the rubber ball that he was bouncing in the lab at SY while he was devising his plan -under his arm pit to cut off his circulation – to give the impression that he had no pulse) or if a doppelganger corpse ( that Molly was involved in creating) was thrown from one of the buses. All this could of been carried out by S.I.S. with out John seeing what was going on because the operation was visibly blocked on the large vehicles parked out front. If S.I.S. can create the illusion of a “fake” jumbo jet crash, complete with real corpses than an operation like this would be a cake walk.
http://profile.yahoo.com/RSSPJDXBCIWNMKWBEAEJPLR5EI TravelerDude

It is Elementary, my dear blogger. The bicyclist was a Baker Street boy, as was the crowd surrounding the “dead body,” and we know how loyal they are to Sherlock. Did you notice how Sherlock insisted Watson stand in a specific location? Probably to block the area where he landed. He leapt onto an inflated cushion which was removed and replaced with a dead body from the morgue that “appeared” like Sherlock while Watson was distracted by the cyclist. Finally, the crowd around the body kept Watson away from close inspection, only giving him visual verification. And one oft sees what one expects. Finally, I would expect this Sherlock to keep Mycroft in the dark, because that’s what their relationship is like, similar to how he pulled off saving his “girlfriend”.
http://profile.yahoo.com/CY7SS23USHNWFD5PLKAIIIEZNI emma

How Sherlock killed himself - and lived (the final question “stayin alive!”)
-Jumped (into the garbage truck) – ensuring Dr Watson couldn’t see
-Got out and lay on the ground with blood (set up Dr W being hit)
-used dummy arm or ball in armpit to stop pulse

The most important thing isn’t the way in which Sherlock kills himself but why - and why Moriarty shoots himself.

To survive S must know M’s final motive i.e. disgrace and kill him, and so knows he must fake his death to play the game and bring M out into the open.

The key I think is the conversation before hand on the roof top – as Sherlock tells Moriarty “he isn’t one of the angels” a light shines very brightly and Moriarty looks up and to the left – over Sherlocks shoulder. This I think is either:

Molly, the IT Crowd reporter or the police on another roof top.

This indicates to Moriarty that the whole thing is a set-up, which could be right from the beginning i.e. Mycrofts Sherlock info to him, the inside job at the tower and prison – just to set him up from the start. Sherlock used his obession with him against him. To achieve this Sherlock must use himself as bait and play along.

Anyway that’s my thoughts :)

http://profile.yahoo.com/CY7SS23USHNWFD5PLKAIIIEZNI emma

Also just want to add:

Sherlock was going to “kill” himself when he hears Moriarty can call everything off. Sherlocks plan must be to ensure M thinks he’s dead - implicate M in the killing and clear his name (maybe using the survaillence stuff Moriarty planted in Sherlock’s room on the roof top??)

When M finds out this has all been a set up he’s too vain to call everything off and admit he’s beaten so kills himself to ensure Sherlock must jump.

That is all!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

I
was just thinking, in the original conan doyle story…

————————————————————–

“In “The Adventure of the Empty House”, Holmes says to
Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his
adversary to his death down the Reichenbach Falls. He states, “I have some
knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling,
which has more than once been very useful to me”.

(from wikipedia)

—————————————————————–

So, maybe sherlock has some hidden skill that he has yet to reveal that enabled
him to fall and hit the truck. Maybe he’s had some circus training that he
hasn’t mentioned yet. The way he extended his arms did make me think of a
trapese artist. Maybe I’m overthinking it though ;0)
http://keithsww.blogspot.com/ keith s

I agree that Sherlock jumped, that the cyclist was a plant to distract or nobble Watson, and that Molly was in on it.

But there is still another problem. What about the three would-be assassins of Holmes’s dear ones?

Watson is called to the landlady, proving he is alive but he says nothing to to her about Holmes. It is possible that this convinces the would be killer of the Landlady that Holmes did indeed die as Watson is alive. That leaves Lestrade and Watson left to their fates.

Which means the discussions of camera angles and Watson’s line of sight are irrelevant unless we know exactly where the gunman is, he afterall is the one that has to be convinced that Holmes jumps and is dead not Watson. It is equally plausible that Holmes kept Watson standing in a particular spot in order to keep him out of a line of fire.

I think such an operation would require Mycroft and the secret service.

Molly is needed for either spare blood, a corpse (maybe the sherlock lookalike) or some special drugs. Or Sherlock probes her mind for Moriarty’s weakspot or DNA, although I don’t know what he would do with any of that.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

i know we don’t know what the sniper’s line of sight was BUT if he witnessed some trickery then he would have shot watson so we have to assume his line of sight was obscured too.
It is a conundrum and no mistake though!

Anonymous

At the beggining of the show, there is dummie hanged under their ceiling and Sherlock told John: “it’s clear that he did not commited suicide”. Does someone think it could be related in any way to Sherlock’s fake suicide?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

IMO, that’s just to plant the idea in our minds that a suicide can be faked. Nothing more compliicated than that.
TARDISkey123

I just posted a comment about that before reading this comment, but you are right! There is something more to the dummy being there. I know Sherlock likes his experiments and that could be one of the ways to throw us off the case, but the dummy was dressed in similar clothing to Sherlock and looked roughly about the same height. The dummy was obviously meant to be noticed. There must be more to it…

http://profile.yahoo.com/OSUJGP2FS62ZFOVI3ENC7P4H7U MichelleC

I totally agree that it was Sherlock that jumped and landed on something to break his fall. I’m not sure if he fell all the way into the truck, but maybe when he was talking to john, someone could have gotten out some large cushion to fill that etched out rectangle that the truck parks in front of? Maybe the truck drives the cushion away and it has to be the right size and in the right place to fit perfectly and quickly into the truck. The homeless network can help with this part…Its also possible that they have set up some sort of net in the time that Sherlock is explaining that he is a fake. I think it is Sherlock’s body with fake blood and some way to have an unreadable pulse (some sort of medicine, ball in armpit, or a tape to cut off circulation, or John has been drugged by the biker some how)

This may be far fetched… but what if the entire episode (except for the end cemetery stuff) is John telling his therapist what happened and he just pieced together the story and filled in the details to make Sherlock out to be the hero he wanted Sherlock to be. It seems a little out of character for Sherlock to care about others more than himself or to get emotional about it. I suppose he’s acting to convince John that he’s a fake. In the Brett version we see stuff from Watson’s point of view that do not actually happen– we see Sherlock and Moriarty fall together. This would explain Sherlock’s body hitting the ground and John just assuming that that happens even though he cannot actually see it. This is also far fetched… what if Moriarty and Sherlock are working together to fake their own deaths? They both need out of the spotlight and they both need each other to continue the game… What really went on in that cell? Where is Moriarty’s body?Could all of this be an act to test John? Questions to consider… what is the deeper meaning behind IOU than just i owe you a fall? It is too emphasized to just mean “im coming to get you”. what is the angel thing? it’s on the graffiti and mentioned twice…What about the screaming girl?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

what if Moriarty and Sherlock are working together to fake their own deaths?”

so what was with all the dialogue on the roof then?

“What really went on in that cell?”

they weren’t in the same cell, they were in adjacent cells

http://twitter.com/SolarMechanic Mike Carson

Just before his final confrontation with Moriarty, Sherlock meets with hospital pathologist and recurring character Molly Hooper. Molly has an unrequited love for Sherlock and everyone, including he, knows it. He tells her he thinks he’s going to die and asks her if she would still help him even if all his greatness turned out to be a lie. She agrees. Molly is the ace up Sherlocks sleeve because she’s loyal to him despite the careless and often cruel way he treats her. This means that even Moriarty doesn’t consider her someone he cares about which keeps her safe from his gunmen. This blind spot is all Holmes needs to prepare for his little fall.

The next two parts of the puzzle come during the final scene and are a bit trickier. When Watson arrives at the hospital and see’s Sherlock on the roof he tries to get to him but Holmes tells him to go back to where he got out of his taxi, ostensibly to stop the gunman from shooting him. What this actually does is place another, shorter building between the two, so Watson can still see Sherlock jump, but not land. To do that he has to round a corner onto the street. Next clue is the easiest to miss but possibly most revealing. As Watson rounds the corner to see Sherlock’s body, a flatbed type truck with an open back full of what appears to be bags of rubbish pulls away from a parked position right in front of the body as a team of strangely fast doctors and nurses rush over.

I know it’s a hospital, but they do seem to arrive almost instantly and cart him back inside with ridiculous speed.

Thus I surmise: Sherlock knew that Moriarty intended to leverage his friends against him to make him die in disgrace and therefore engineered the entire rooftop encounter. He knew Moriarty would sooner die than let Sherlock beat him which is exactly what he did. He showed Moriarty that as long as Moriarty was alive Sherlock had another option to save his friends without killing himself. He even let Jim believe he had fallen for the computer key code even though a basic binary translation of the code resulted in the message “there is no key”. This explains why he seemed to have been beaten when in fact he was just playing dumb. The next part is the jump. I believe that Sherlock arranged to have the truck full of bags be parked outside the hospital so that when he jumped he could land in it to break his fall, he could then jump out and onto the pavement where he could bash his head and play possum. This is backed up by his not wanting Watson to see where he would land. Another thing backing this up is the fact that the truck drives away from the scene fairly quickly. I don’t know about you but if a body landed beside my truck and a crowd started gathering I’d get out to see what the hell was going on.

I believe that Sherlock convinced Molly, possibly with the help of Mycroft, to help him survive a suicidal jump by way of padding his fall, then using her influence and Mycrofts resources, get him declared dead and buried. That just leaves the Why. That’s not so difficult. Moriarty may be dead but his network still exists and poses a threat to Sherlocks loved ones. The gunman with Watson in his sights has a good view of Moriarty blowing his brains out but still keeps his sights trained on his target, Watson, until the all clear. Sherlock still needs to be presumed dead so he can go about dismantling any systems Moriarty had in place and to ensure his friend’s safety.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-James-Menzies/1179846182 Ryan James Menzies

All I can say is “bravo” this is very good. If read up on other stories of Sherlock you’ll see that Arthur Conan Doyle says that Sherlock survived the fall but must have the world believe he’s dead to trick his remaining enemies, so your hypothesis and the end that he’ll pretend to be dead to dismantle his final enemies is exactly what I think he will do.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Cathy-Manners/592522123 Cathy Manners

After watching the episode again this afternoon before reading the posts on this site – I agree with Mike Carson about the truck (nice colourful bags of something very cushiony looking) and SH then lying down on the pavement – have a good look at the fall itself – SH is travelling down feet first but lands on the pavement fully horizontal face down and travelling from a sideways trajectory – easy to apply the blood to the “corpse”, for SH to play dead and for the crowd to keep JW at bay in the confusion .. … very small number of key people in the medical crowd must be trusted friends of Molly’s. Don’t think Mycroft was involved though – not enough time and we have to remember the rivalry/dislike between them … it would be more in character for SH to keep MH in the dark. SH lying to JW before jumping and then needing to stay “dead” lines up with SH’s concern that Moriatry’s “web” will still want to harm JW and possibly others. I’d be interested in how Mike makes sense of all the IOU plot points including the street art of “IOU” lettering with wings painted above on the wall outside 221B Baker street for instance and John’s cryptic I Owe U (you) in his words later at the grave? or are these just misdirects … have the writers been using misdirects much during the series? Still a bit unsure of SH saying to Molly ” I want YOU … surely helping him fake his death is not the same as him wanting HER. Anyway, waiting in REAL anticipation for the third series while cogitating on the Final Problem.

Anonymous

My idea (a mix of all the posts, my friend’s idea and mine) is that sherlock pushed moriaty off the building and john had been drugged by the gas thing from the previous episode- where you see what you think is real, we’re seeing sherlock fall because we’re looking through the eyes of john who thinks it’s sherlock, either that or the whole masky thing could work, would work for the girl screaming too, also Molly could have worked on the death certificates etc i don’t think sherlock jumped he doesn’t have any scars in the last shot from ‘jumping’ anyway. Not too sure, that’s just a compilation of ideas atm- another friend of mine reckons she has it but she won’t tell me!!

http://www.facebook.com/people/George-Nelson/1617686401 George Nelson

The problem with this theory is simple. sherlock isn’t trying to fool Watson. He needs to fool Everybody, including the assasins

Anonymous

I don’t have a theory yet – I need to watch the episode a few more times, I think. I do have a couple of common sense observations relating to some of the theories that have been expressed elsewhere though…

The main problem is that Holmes didn’t know that Moriarty was going to kill himself so, whatever he had planned would have had to be plausable if Moriarty were to look over the edge during or immediately following Holmes’ fall. This rules out a lot of the options, doesn’t it?

Ignoring this for a moment, jumping from a six storey building into a vehicle that is 15-20 feet away doesn’t really seem very possible either so, however he did it, I think Holmes jumped off the building AND hit the ground (or at least, something that looked like the ground!).

Thanks

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

sherlock asked moriarty to stand back so that he could have a private moment. Therefore buying sherlock time to do whatever he needed to do at the bottom as moriarty wouldn’t have been near the edge and not able to look over.

Anonymous

This is true BUT could he have relied on Moriarty to respect his plea for some privacy? The first thing I would have done would have been to go to the edge and see what had happened… I don’t think Holmes would have left this to chance having obviously gone to a great deal of trouble with the planning of the whole event. Supposing Moriarty had refused to retreat to ensure that there was not trickery? It just doesn’t hold together, for me. Whatever happened would have had to have APPEARED to be authentic.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

i understand what you’re saying but then how do you explain that when sherlock jumped he was facing the street but when we see the body, it is sideways on? That just doesn’t make sense as if he fell straight onto the pavement then his head would still be facing the street.

Anonymous

I don’t know what happened at the end of Sherlock’s fall but something must have broken his fall or he would have died. Whatever did this may well have interfered with his trajectory. A thin net may have been hard to see from six storeys up and he did appear to bounce!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000064742974 Isobel Beswick

or maybe justine its on the tip of ower noses

http://www.facebook.com/people/Jane-Upchurch/1290356655 Jane Upchurch

I suppose these master criminals do have a kind of etiquette – Moriarty would probably have given Sherlock his moment of privacy. Also because, if for any reason SH didn’t kill himself, his friends would have been killed – catch 22

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=505658852 Divya Kedia

ok, these can be simple queries but can someone pls tell me:

the meaning of the last envelope that was delivered just before Sherlock n Watson were arrested?

and also when Sherlock made Watson go to Baker Street at the end, why weren’t the cops keeping an eye on the rooms just in case one of them came back.. :)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

the gingerbread man was part of the whole fairytale thing and it had been “burnt to a crisp”.. Earlier on sherlock had asked moriarty how he was going to kill him, are you going to burn me? I think he said.

yes, good point, why weren’t they!?

YellowEternal

I thought the Ginger bread man also meant “Run”, as the police were coming for sherlock.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Emmie-Turner/100000138979603 Emmie Turner

I know it doesn’t seem important and I haven’t seen the episode for quiet a few days BUT isn’t it a bit odd that right after sherlock jumps off the building the ambulance are there in like, 2 seconds? It fits with the idea that John was out longer than with thought when he was knocked down. I’ll have to watch the episode again…

http://www.facebook.com/lmsendon Luis Mariel Sendon

they were on the rooftop of St. BArt’s hospital. an ambulance would be on hand. ;) and doctors as well..

Anonymous

I’ve thought of most of the ideas that people have posted here, including the truck that drives off just as John runs around the corner and sees the body on the floor. Here i believe you see the real holmes lying supposedly dead on the floor.

The reason he tells john to move backward and stand in a specific spot is so that there is a building covering his line of sight stopping him from seeing the impact of the body.

However i’m not sure who you see on the roof is holmes at all, the only proof of this is Holmes telling john to look up as he’s on the roof therefore making john and us believe its him holding the phone rather than a double, ready to jump into the rubbish truck that pulls away and him on the ground ready to lie down etc. The timescale between M shooting himself and John pulling up in the Taxi is unkown so Sherlock could have simply moved and watched from a location to see Johns movements and stop him moving again, then on the agreed moment of the jump get to the place where he is to lie down.

Just another theory and it doesn’t answer all questions, but its my favourite thought.
Anonymous

What if the truck at the bottom is a cherry picker and is positioned to break holmes’ fall with the bags in the back? Watson would not see it from behind the building when it was raised. Holmes would jump into that and out again, almost spontaneously and this would break his fall. Watson then gets knocked to the ground and it would give them enough time to fold the cherry picker back and then drive away, leaving holmes on the floor appearing dead.
Anonymous

3 Things I have thought of. I think Mycroft placed the 4 assassins in the baker street area to keep an eye on Sherlock & protect him, they were always there when he was in danger. I think it was odd Sherlock said Lestrade as one of the 3 names that were important to him, I notice he said the names to Moriarty and not the other way round to make sure Moriarty doesn’t consider Molly. Molly gave him that idea when she said she didn’t count. I think his plan began to form then, Moriarty had already hinted at this point there was to be a ‘fall’.
Also I think a body’s trajectory could change greatly on impact. That is all!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

“Also I think a body’s trajectory could change greatly on impact”

you think or you know? It’s really not something you can guess at without knowing for certain, is it?

shell-2k6

there are some very far fetched theories here and i think people are forgetting that the program needs to have a basis in reality. If it’s not plausable in real life then it’s not plausable in the show.

Having a double willing to commit suicide for you is too far fetched.
Having another dead body get plastic surgery between the time he talked to molly and appeared on the roof is too far fetched. and the mask thing, really? So a doctor like watson can’t tell between a real face and a mask. I’m not buying it.
Also people keep using the dummy hanging in sherlocks as some mysterious clue but that scene took place before moriarty had broken into tower bridge and while sherlock was bored and going over old unsolved cases.

I believe he knew he had to die and enlisted molly’s help knowing he could trust her and she wouldn’t be a target and maybe she was the only person in on the plan. Mycroft looked pretty downbeat and upset by the situation in his last scene which you think he wouldn’t be knowing his brother was alive. If i was going to fake my death i would want as little people to know as possible. Not a whole team of doctors who could blab to anyone at any time.

I’m certain of ways i know he didn’t do it but i can’t give a plausable reason as to what he did do except that it presumable took effect between him jumping and hitting the ground or the seconds after

one thing that is niggling at me (and i thought was strange as soon as i saw it before watching the rest of the episode) was mycfrot letting moriarty out after telling him his brother’s life story and knowing his obbsession with sherlock evident by him writing sherlock’s name all over his cell. He is a man of great importance who could make moriarty, who he considers himself the greatest criminal mastermind, disappear if he chose to but he let him go free to find his brother.
http://twitter.com/leebarnes Lee Barnes

I’ll just add a few things that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else.

There was a txt from SH to JM saying “I’ve got something of yours you might want back” yet nothing was mentioned about this. I believe this was the Sherlock mask used to kidnap the kids. When the footprints were discovered, SH mentioned that there were no heel prints because the kidnapper was showing a sign of anxiety – maybe, but more probably he was wanting to look taller (on the roof we see that SH is somewhat taller than JM). This mask was then used on the dead body.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=568396756 Justine Tennant Teeling

but there isn’t the technology in the world available to make a realistic mask that would fool anybody close up! At a distance maybe but definitely not at close range. I assumed the text was referring to the binary code but maybe not, maybe there is something else we’ve overlooked.

Anonymous

I thought it was the binary code because Moriarty, when he went to the flat, he tapped his fingers but Sherlock hadn’t realised until later that Moriarty was giving him the code. There was that exchange on the roof of the hospital when Sherlock in turn also tapped his fingers, communicating to Moriarty that he knew.

http://profile.yahoo.com/VFO6GPNNFYDCSDZMSSK7BOIIUE Groover

Its elementary clearly: He goes to Molly for help. He insists on meeting Moriarty on top of the hospital having Molly prepare a body with his clothes dressed ready to drop him. He confronts Moriarty and he is ready to fake it with the help of shocked Watson. All the crowd including the biker are people that Sherlock put up as helpers. He lands on the mattresses on the truck (clearly he falls). When Watson comes through after the biker hits him he is an emotionally wrecked man and Sherlock has the time to fix his dead man make up with a make up kit he has hidden in the truck. Comes down lying there and when poor Watson checks his pulse he has the little ball (he was playing with that IN the hospital) under his armpit thus stoping his blood circulation thus stoping his pulse knowing that Watson as an doctor will check it. The rest is history…

Anonymous

Yep – that’s pretty much what I thought after re-watching it after the writers said everyone missed a big clue. However, I think that Holmes landed in the truck, quickly set himself up as ‘the dead man’ and arranged himself on the pavement. Maybe Molly gave him adrug to suppress heart rate etc? Putting a mask on dead body is pretty unlikely to fool your best mate… saying that t I do quite like the mask theory to explain why the kids were terrified of him.

http://profile.yahoo.com/VFO6GPNNFYDCSDZMSSK7BOIIUE Groover

Dear Orrible, i think that the drug solution is not pausible. The drug would make him tottaly numb therefore unable to check his surroundings. I stay with the ball for that matter. Also, yes the mask is pretty possible for the reaction of the kids but not if you want to fool (as you said) your flatmate. I dont know if the (very good indeed) makers wanted to “plant” a clue in order to keeping the fans thinking about it (and waiting for the Season 3!!). May i say that the fact that Sherlock appeard in the end and kept watching Watson, it kind put me off. I’d rather liked a mystery zoomed out black dressed man in the background to keep the mystery alive. No need to show him alive in the end, performing the miracle that Watson asked for…

Digitrix

If we didn’t see him alive, we would have assumed him to be dead. So if the show came back, people who don’t go on sites like this would be very confused

http://profile.yahoo.com/VFO6GPNNFYDCSDZMSSK7BOIIUE Groover

Riiiiight

Anonymous

MIRRORS. The writing is backwards on the floor at 1.15 in the YouTube clip “Sherlock’s Fall”.
Anonymous

And BUS STOP is backwards when he’s lying on the ground. This has to be something…
Anonymous

The writer says that everyone has missed a big clue. So why did Sherlock toss his phone onto the roof before he jumped?

TARDISkey123

It was most likely for someone to find and it had his so called confession on it – everything he said to John”

Anonymous

Elementary, in the second episode, The Hounds of Baskerville, Watson asks the genetic scientist Dr Stapleton about cloning. Sherlock is clearly listening. Remember she said, its possible just not ethical, however Sherlock himself told Moriarty that he’s no angel. That’s what he goes to Molly for help with, his clone.
It’s farfetched but come on its Sherlock.
But if that is the case, is Moriarty one too.
dean paddock

moffat said we missed something something out of charecter. right. well how often does sherlock CRY?????

TARDISkey123

He fake cryed in “The Great Game” and seemed to almost cry in “The Hounds of Baskerville” I think it was the claiming to be a fake/ fraud that was the out of character

dean paddock

so what if that wasnt sherlock on the roof what if it was an imposter (kidnaper) and sherlock told him what to say through a mic in his ear then someone (homeless network?) took it off the body when everyone was gathered around him. probably a bit far off but who cares
Anonymous

Molly arranged for a look-alike dead corpse to be on the back of that lorry in the street. Sherlock jumped off the roof landed on the lorry and pushed the corpse onto the pavement for everyone to see. The lorry then drove off with the real live Sherlock on the back.

TARDISkey123

But it WAS Sherlock on the ground, John even saw the face. Sherlock choose Bart’s hospital specific and when he “jumped” he was taken back into the hospital where Molly was waiting. I think he jumped from the building, landed in the truck (John couldent see this because there was a row of garages blocking the view of where Sherlock landed) and whilst John was unconcious the crowd (most likely involved) smeered blood on him and when John went to take the pulse he might have read it wrong as he was most likely still weak from the blow or Sherlock held his pulse or whatever (like what was in the Sherlock Holmes movie when Watson went to take the guys pulse but couldent feel it)… That’s what I think lol

Anonymous

Hi Tardiskey123,
I thought maybe it was a lookalike corpse because of how Irene Adler managed to fool even Sherlock into thinking a dead lookalike was really her on the slab. Although we did get a look at his face it was so smeared in blood and covered by his black hair that really it could have been anyone. Molly was obviously standing in the wings ready to verify the corpse was Sherlock but would anyone else test his DNA ? probably not.
Viv

Subject: [cultfix] Re: Sherlock: The Fall – How did he do it?

TARDISkey123

That is true, you may be right. Only personally i doubt it. But you could be right :)

Anonymous

Hi Tardiskey123,
Yes, none of us will know for sure until the next series- but whatever the plot line, I’m sure it will be absolutely fantastic ! This is the best thing I have seen on telly for ages.
Viv

Subject: [cultfix] Re: Sherlock: The Fall – How did he do it?

Anonymous

John falls over bumps head gets nocked out for a long Sherlock is switched with a corpse (as said by vivsedgefield) Sherlocks fake corps falls and hits the ground but its a set up everyones in it the crowd surrounding the corps slips Sherlock (the real sherlock) in and Sherlock plays dead.
Anonymous

Newspaper. ‘Scandal in Belgravia’ when IA has ‘personalised’ SH text alert. Check it out. Mycroft and Elizabeth R both owe SH a favour big enough. Also, go back to the ‘repel’ theme in this episode. Wires? lookalikes? no. magnetics.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001622971711 Marc Troy Bradbury

in the previous episode “the woman” faked her own death by using a double could sherlocks connection with her help create a double for Sherlock ???
http://profile.yahoo.com/BIWGE66FV4Q374QEHH65OB5QFI Alex

The out of character thing that sherlock did was cry, so something must have made him cry. Possibly a drug. In the woman episode, she took a drug that mimics death. Sherlock could have asked molly for this. Possibly the drug lowers heart rate and relaxes muscle so when sherlock lands the impact is spread more evenly and doesnt hurt himself badly enough to kill him. (its why when people faint they dont hurt themselves) The drug may have made him cry, hence why he wanted more time when he asked for a moment alone, to make sure it would work in time. Molly may have claimed morietys death as sherlocks. I think its a lot simpler and cleaner than jumping and landing on a truck then replacing a body.

TARDISkey123

I think Sherlock asking for a moment of privacy was him stalling Moriarty to try and come up with a quick idea and he then thought of the didgets hence him saying “you’re not going to do it? So the killers can be called off, there must be a recall code or a word or a number?”

I think, personally, the out of character thing was the fact that Sherlock tryed to convince John that he was a fake and referring to everything as a “magic trick”. After Sherlock becoming so famous and to always have the need to show off his uniqe ability and then just claim hes a fraud and try to convince the only person who really understands him and thinks of him as amazing that hes a fraud really is out of character.
http://twitter.com/emiliakeifer Emilia Jakobsson

No, I don’t think that crying was out of character, because in the first episode with Irene Adler he cries outside her house, and that’s just because he is a very good actor. :) Good theory though.

http://twitter.com/grincat Andrey Stanislavsky

Sherlock is seen playing with a bouncy rubber ball a couple of times (in the lab).
A truck of such balls could be a good way to prevent injury from falling.

TARDISkey123

rubber bouncy balls are mostly a solid rubber material to give it the bounce. Jumping into a truck full of them from that height will hurt badly!

http://profile.yahoo.com/UFPSE7ZB6RCBTNMZWE2CNDVKRU Merlin

When inserted under the armpit, a ‘bouncy ball’ has the ability to make the pulse in that arm undetectable. That is why John pronounced him dead.

Anonymous

OK: for the lazies who did not bother going back the the first episode to look at the newspaper clue after my last post – the headline was something like ‘major rebuild for historic hospital’. There is something connected the the structure/foundations of Barts and its surrounding area that enabled SH to pull this off. I stick by my first anlysis that it was magnetics.
Jumping into squash balls is just not cool enough for this series . Something had to differentiate between SH and JM as they went off the roof. SH had every intention of taking them both over (but in the hope he would survive).
Anonymous

I wonder whether the ‘empty room’ in the flat below 221b baker street will feature in the next series? It was featured in ‘The Great Game’ series 1.
Anonymous

I guess the real question is, how? I think that’s rather un-important. Any number of ways could be put into play. The person falling wasn’t Sherlock, he fell into an object allowing him to survive and with any type of drug and make up could fake his death and I’m sure there are some other creative ideas. What we do know is he did survived and he was clearly aware of what Jim Ms plan was when he ended up on the rooftop. It had to become clear to Sherlock J.M. end game was to put S.H. in such despair and without another choice as to end his own life, the ultimate ending Moriarty could possibly ask for. Thus putting Sherlock in a position to help create the perfect illusion of his own demise and thus allowing him to have the upper hand in JMs own downward fall. It will be fun to watch it play out but I hope the shows writers didn’t shoot their collective wad to early. I would love to see this show continue for years…Great stuff!
TARDISkey123

I’m waiting for Colonel Sebastian Moran to come in Series 3.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1830534172 Miguel R Moreno

I kinda wondered why it happened in the morning. Did Jim and Sherlock sort something out?
http://www.facebook.com/Mireille.Nieuwenhuis.aka.Espolet.Luna Mireille Nieuwenhuis

JM owed him a fall
TARDISkey123

Rewatching the episode earlier to day at the beginning when John came out of the Shower there was a manikin hanging from the cieling wearing Sherlock’s clothes and it was also meant to be taken into note as John asked about it and we were given a close up of it. Maybe that comes into play??
http://www.facebook.com/grant.elias Grant Elias

I submitted some of my findings a few days ago but they haven’t appeared here. What happened to them? Was I too close to the truth for comfort?! (Joke!!) Seriously, did I post incorrectly?

http://www.facebook.com/grant.elias Grant Elias

That one went straight on but the original said it had to be checked by a moderator! Will try again!

http://doctormerlock.blogspot.com/ Mockingjay

It might’ve had to be checked by a moderator…. because it might’ve been true!!! Lol jk

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000493180810 Polly Davies

I reckon that Molly disguised a dead body from her work as sherlock. Then maybe sherlock jumped into a dustbin or a lorry with a load of cushions that molly was driving. She chucked out the disguised body when watson was knocked down and then she and sherlock drove off. What i find suspicious is how molly wasn’t at the funeral, Molly obviously had a massive crush on sherlock, so surley she’d go to the funeral, unless she new something…?

http://www.facebook.com/riseoftheteddybears Valeyard12andaHalf

What funeral? That bit at the end wasn’t the funeral, as the ground has already been laid, and there is a headstone in place. You have to wait sometime before a headstone can be placed on a grave. It is more likely John and Mrs Hudson visiting his grave because they still believe him and miss him and love him

http://www.facebook.com/grant.elias Grant Elias

I don’t know whether this helps to answer the main questions but I
have spotted something that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned
elsewhere: there are 2 different rooftop locations in the final scenes
and 2 ‘Sherlocks’!

The ‘Sherlock’ that Watson sees is standing near the corner of the
Pathological Department building, approximately above the gap between
the double window and the first single window. However, the wall that
the ‘Sherlock’ who has been with Moriarty steps up onto is a short wall
at the end of a narrow strip of roof. This is clearly a much shorter
wall than the one seen from the ground.

Another clue, and the thing that got me thinking, is that we see very
good close-ups of the wall that they are sitting or standing on. From
the roof view, where Moriarty sits and later Sherlock stands, the wall
is quite high and appears to be covered in some form of cladding. It is
very smooth and quite uniform dark grey. You can actually see where
the cladding material has been joined. However, when we see the
‘Sherlock’ stepping onto the wall which overlooks the bus stop below,
close-up views show a light grey stone, mottled by age. No cladding at
all. At times we see the close-up of the Sherlock at the end of the
building on the mottled stonework, switching quickly to a rear shot of
the Sherlock standing on the wall with cladding!

Looking at this a bit more closely we can locate exactly where the
two sites are. On the roof scene with Moriarty we look directly down
the length of the roof area to where Moriarty, and later Holmes, are
sitting or standing. Straight ahead is a distinctive building which is
clearly parallel to the wall that they are sitting on.

With the aid of Google Maps and street view it is very easy to find
the location where the scene was filmed. Go to Google Maps and search for “St. Bartholomew Hospital Museum” (exactly as it is here, there is a nearby site which is incorrect), on my search it is item B. Turn on Satellite view if not already. You can locate the
building from overhead and see an area which fits the bill for the
Moriarty/Holmes roof scene (marked as St Bartholomew Hospital Museum):
an elongated area with all the right wall angles etc. Directly across
from this is the roof of a building which could match the one seen
behind Moriarty sitting on the wall. Now drop to a street view. Turn
to look directly away from the hospital et voila, there is the building
seen behind Moriarty in the film. So the roof area is where the scene
was filmed. It is half way down the length of the hospital building and
looking back at the hospital building from street view it looks like
it’s a later addition joining two old buildings and the roof area sits
on top of this new section.

The location of the ‘Sherlock’ seen near the corner of the building
is easy to see from street view. Indeed, watching the video footage of
the fall you see a window with a sheet of paper sitting against it low
down (top row of windows, 4th window from the left). On Google street
view it is still there! At least it is at the time of writing!

So what happened? Well, just knowing that there are 2 locations
doesn’t give all of the answers but does allow possible solutions.
There are lots of theories already stated about true and fake
‘Sherlocks’ and the use of cadavers or Moriarty’s body or Sherlock
doubles. If there are 2 locations then there appear to be 2 people
standing in those locations. Given that we see both falling straight
down (no leap sideways), the one standing towards the corner of the
building is likely the one that, at least initially, ends up on the
ground below, being attended to by the paramedics. So what of the
‘Sherlock’ who jumped off the middle section? Look closely at Google
Maps overhead view and we see that the wall is set back from the edge of
the building and so it looks like there is a rooftop below the wall.
Sherlock jumps, and lands safely on the roof below.

There are obvious problems with this, none less than, why would
Moriarty choose a wall with a safe jump to a rooftop below? I don’t
know the answer to this one, except that maybe it was small enough to
jump over and he knew that Sherlock would jump over it to ensure the
safety of his friends.

Also, what about the 2 people standing on a rooftop at the same time,
surely this would be seen? Again, I don’t know. Possibly it was
because the central rooftop is set back and out of sight of those
viewing from below. We know that Sherlock was very careful to get
Watson into a particular location behind the small building below. But
what about the snipers? At least one person had to be watching to
ensure that Sherlock died before calling off the others. Could Sherlock
have known where he could remain in view at least until he had jumped,
and to appear to fall the rest of the way to ensure the call-off?

And the ‘Sherlock’ dead on the ground? Could he have made his
partial jump and then somehow got to the ground in time to replace the
second ‘Sherlock’ (with the help of Molly, Mycroft etc)? Nope, don’t
know that one, but if he had planned all of this before the event then
there could have been a way. Or was it a Sherlock double all along? It
seems very likely that either Moriarty himself using a mask, or one of
his stooges, had been a look-alike causing the girl to scream when she
saw Sherlock. What if the look-alike was pushed from the rooftop and so
didn’t need to be replaced by Sherlock at all?

Or is this all just a filming issue? The central rooftop was the
best place to film the scenes with Moriarty, but the corner area was the
best to show Sherlock from the ground. I don’t believe so. Too much
attention to detail has gone into the entire series to allow such an
easily spottable lack of continuity. I don’t know exactly how but I
think this is key to how Sherlock was seen to jump, seen to fall and
die, and yet survived.

BTW I’m sure that a lot of the ideas expressed by others are correct. I
don’t think he jumped into the rubbish truck, although I do think it
was likely used to obscure the view of others. If the Sherlock on the
ground was genuine then I think that the ball in the armpit to stop his
pulse is very likely, and a fake doctor holding his neck pulse to stop
Watson from checking it is also probable. I also think that Watson was
on the ground for a reasonable amount of time after being hit by the
bike, which I also think was setup! And… I don’t think that Moriarty is
dead, he’s needed too much for the 3rd series! I do think it was all
pre-planned and I’m sure that the final answers will be as excellent as
the series demands!

http://www.facebook.com/grant.elias Grant Elias

Was struggling with why both the real Sherlock and the fake one had to
be seen to jump. Then realised that the real Sherlock (the middle roof
with Moriarty) had to be seen to jump as the snipers would have known
that he was there and would have been looking at that spot waiting for
the jump. They knew where Moriarty was so expected Sherlock to jump from
there. Meanwhile the fake Sherlock had to jump/fall because he/she/it needed to hit
the ground.

So, both jump, the real one onto a rooftop below
that was out of sight of the snipers, and then gets to the ground
through some prearranged rapid route. The fake is pushed off by a helper
(or possibly even Sherlock himself if he can run across the roof
quickly enough) and falls to the ground. This one is replaced by the
real one when he gets down to the ground, under cover of the rubbish truck. Yes it
would take quite a while but we don’t know how long Watson was down for
after he was hit by the bike, and everyone else down there could have
been setup by Holmes before the event.

BTW interesting point
made by TARDISkey123 that earlier there was a
manikin dressed in Sherlock’s clothes and attention was drawn to it.
Likely that these were used to dress the fake Sherlock before the event.

I need to go back and watch the whole thing again, it’s all there, I’m sure it is!

http://www.facebook.com/grant.elias Grant Elias

OK, rewatched all, still no great advances but am a little concerned re the 2 locations as twice we see Holmes and Moriarty look over the edge (from the central rooftop) and the camera switches to the shot clearly from the ‘corner of the building’ view overlooking the suicide point. Either there are 2 locations and the view switch is to keep us thinking there is only 1, or there is some disapointingly bad continuity errors in the making of the film. The latter would be surprising given other attention to detail.

I think it would be reasonable to hope that the writers could let us know if this is a continuity error so that we can exclude the 2 locations theory (please let us know, it’s only fair!!). If we don’t hear then I’ll keep going with this theory!

Anonymous

I believe this was the Sherlock mask used to kidnap the kids
Anonymous

There was another on the roof.
Already departed.
Who once had a mask made for another occasion.
There was a lorry.
Did he fall or was he pushed?
Who is the he?
http://doctormerlock.blogspot.com/ Mockingjay

Oh, guys, COME ON, isn’t it obvious?

Sherlock flapped his arms and flew off.

Lulu_98

obviously :D
much better than my long winded theory that i posted a second ago

god.incarnate

he jumped landed on the back of the truck rolled off lay on the floor and played dead helped by mycroft and the woman in the morgue to make it all official
Lulu_98

I have this idea that i have had since i saw the episode but i didn’t think to post it til now i have read through all the comments and liked loads but i realised something that know one has picked up on in detail its really simple and fits in with a few of the theory’s… but not all tell me what you think please!

My theory:
There are two Sherlock’s one on the ’side of the angels’ and one on the ‘side of the devil’.
the side of the devil was created by Moriarty obviously he had help .. possibly from Dr stapleton in episode two who said cloning was possible. (links in to why moffat says Sherlock character was different/not the same)

Moriarty kept saying he was on the side of the angels and there all ways got two be 2 sides of some one ( i first thought that Moriarty was on the side of the devil vs Sherlock on the side of the angels…but i changed my mind) he also stated that he realised Sherlock was him meaning that he created him…but if he knew that why would he kill himself? i personally don’t think he is dead (i hope he is not) because Sherlock turned around and we nor Sherlock saw the shot and fall which meant it could of bean blanks and he could of rested head on a bag of fake blood so it would slowly seep out giving the appearance of his death. (all done before Sherlock could turn around again to see the body)

this links in with why he needed molly to check DNA etc

i owe u a fall. why?? why does Moriarty owe Sherlock a fall maybe it means push me over the end of the building or your replica … ok that’s just stupid back to theory

also were forgetting about Irene Adler she owes Sherlock for him saving her life maybe she was in on this or she gave him a place to stay while in hiding.
the bouncy ball doesn’t fit in to this cos it would mean the Sherlock replica is alive when i think he is dead .
some points:
my friend said the shirt changed from purple (talking to Moriarty) white (falling) purple (on the ground) not sure if its true.

white outlined area could be were a mattress is place cos it is were he fell in.
lady sitting on a bench near Sherlock fall destination on phone with bags could be molly and Sherlock could of called her too??
bike distracted Watson not sure how long he was knocked out for?
I also agree with most of these comments points like why he tossed he phone etc etc…

series3 :
i think that Watson will have flash backs to the day Sherlock died and will keep ‘seanig Sherlock’then Sherlock revels him self he doesn’t now if his eyes are tricking him blah blah blah then Sherlock reveals what we’ve all bean waiting for :D
mwanderson

For my tuppence worth, I think that, like most people, Molly was in on the “suicide”. Here’s the sequence:

Sherlock has already told Molly he’s going to die.

He also knows when he’s to “die” – the act originally being for Moriarty’s benefit.

With Molly’s help he has dressed some of his homeless network up as hospital porters, nurses and passers-by.

He has also arranged for John Watson to be out of the way, although he didn’t bank on him turning up hence why he was adamant John stayed “where [he was]” in case he saw the whole fake incident happening. John’s grief would also have been the icing on the cake in convincing Moriarty that Sherlock was dead.

Just before he falls, an open-topped caged truck with plenty of bags of hospital laundry (or rubbish) leaves the hospital and pulls up below.

Sherlock leaps face forward off the roof – and this an important fact because he needs to see where he’s going, diving into the open-topped laundry van, the bags cushioning his fall.

Molly is in the van, jumps out and helps Sherlock roll onto the pavement, squirting blood from a pouch filched from the hospital supplies over Sherlock’s face.

John, having been knocked to the ground by a courier (again possibly one of Sherlock’s network) is dazed, in shock and some way away, unable to see the details of the event at street level.

The van pulls away, taking evidence of the cushioned fall with it.

The “shocked” passersby mill around Sherlock, keeping those not in the know at bay, and even “confirming” that Sherlock is dead to John. One woman even forcibly pulls his hand from Sherlock’s wrist so that John cannot take a proper pulse.

A gurney from the hospital arrives amazingly fast, and ferries Sherlock’s body in through a loading bay (a loading bay! Even that was suspicious).

John is left wandering, dazed, to believe his friend is dead.

- – The rest happens off-screen – -

Molly whisks the body into the morgue and is able to perhaps exchange the breathing Sherlock for a “John Doe” of similar height, weight and hair colour. A fall from that height, face down would have left severe facial damage so identification would have been left to the coroner… someone Mycroft could easily have bought off (or intimidated). He is, after all, feeling guilty for betraying his brother.

He is also capable of organising the funeral and legal arrangements, leaving Sherlock to live in peace after becoming too much of a celebrity for his own liking. Shades of Moffat’s latest series of “Doctor Who” me thinks.

This then means, just as a plot line from “The Hound of the Baskervilles” was never used in the previous episode, Sherlock can go about in secret using a fake identity created for him by Mycroft.

- -

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I think Sherlock faked his own death.

http://www.facebook.com/mviaene Michiel Viaene

except, we can see the body hitting the ground and not rolling from the truck

mwanderson

I’m not so sure – I think we saw what the director wanted us to see. We saw Sherlock plummet face down – key point there so he could see where to land – and then we cut to a body rolling on the ground. Again, a key point is the body rolling… A body falling from a height hits the ground and may “bounce” a little but it certainly wouldn’t roll. You have to ask yourself why Sherlock was SO insistent John Watson stay where he was… It was so he wouldnt see Sherlock fall into the rubbish bags, cushioning his fall and then rolling onto the ground. If he had it would have ruined Sherlock’s plan and put John in more danger. It would also have ruiined it for us as the viewer. Remember that as the viewer we identify with the everyman John Watson is rather than the cold, superbrain Sherlock is. Sherlock understands that he has to “die” convincingly for what is to come. What that is I have no idea.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1111488209 Ryan Armstrong

Well to start off, he talked to molly who works in a morgue with DEAD BODIES to get a dead body arranged. He then sorted it so that theres a skip truck below the building the skip has the body inside. Sherlock then get’s john distracted while he jumps and controls his decent into the skip and the throws the body out onto the pavement while the truck drives off with sherlock alive inside the skip. Mycroft was in on it, so he could have got his people to spread it around. I know he was in on it as in the scene after sherlock’s ‘death’ he smirked when he ead the newspaper like he’s saying ‘ They fell for it’ after all, if he wasn’t in on it, then he would look more shocked than he did.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jane-Upchurch/1290356655 Jane Upchurch

I think someone would have noticed an open parachute as it flew around in London!!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jane-Upchurch/1290356655 Jane Upchurch

When the writers talk of something “out of character” (I haven’t seen their comment) are they really referring to SH? I would have thought Jim Moriarty killing himself is far more out of character than anything SH did!! I mean, why kill yourself in only the second series when there are obviously going to be more? More importantly, why kill yourself and miss all the fun? After the long “game” between M and SH, why miss your final triumph over your enemy? Doesn’t make sense to me!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003462912347 Lucy Corin

By killing himself he FORCED Sherlock to jump. That was his victory over him. And as he said, no one was going to make him do something he didnt want to do.
cscox

Moriary never reappears in the original stories after the Falls. If the writers are keeping to that part of it, that could explain it. It is disappointing, however. Every fairy tale needs a villain.
http://www.facebook.com/mviaene Michiel Viaene

You seem to be forgetting the fact that Moriarty is stark raving mad.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002899781460 Aimee Cooper

Hospital staff moved the body before forensics got there. The body shouldn’t of been moved untill the police inspected the scene.That must tie in with how he did it. Still working on how though…

Lulu_98

yeah thats a good point and one i thought of too!!
cscox

Hospital staff would automatically try to revive someone if there was a chance he was still alive, regardless of crime scene. Just because John couldn’t find a pulse didn’t mean the other medical people didn’t. Being on hospital grounds made it more likely they’d move him inside.

Cotsios

It is elementary indeed.
Molly works at that hospital i believe, as a coroner. So she could help either identify a fake corpse as Holmes (since she knew him there would be no need for others to do it), or even maybe pronounce real Holmes as dead while he is still alive. The second guess is far-fetched since the nurses and doctors of Bart’s that rushed to the scene could probably see through the trick.
But the real beauty is how he did the jump. Dr Watson watches him on the roof. He sees him jump… He sees him drop all the way down? NO. Sherlock had the Dr stand at an exact point where a shorter building blocked his view to the ground. Remember? he HAD to take a turn to see Holmes lying down.
But there was a man down and people saw that he fell… But NOT that he had jumped. So the movie suggests that the combined knowledge of Dr Watson and the crowd on the pavement equals a dead detective.
What really happened was that the man on the roof jumped on a truck (watch it carefully) parked there (something like bags with laundry in the back of it) and the truck drives away as the camera closes in. Another man fell to the ground beginning his trip at a floor lower than the rooftop at which Dr Watson had no visual contact due to the building in front of the hospital.
Also remember that the body of Pr. Moriarty was not reported found (missing clue?).
So the most probable scenario is that Moriarty was disguised as Holmes when Dr Watson was not there and someone threw it later out of a window (maybe Molly). At the same time Holmes was taking a London tour on top of some dirty “cushions”.
Nothing suggests that Moriarty, Dr Watson, Ms Hudson or anyone else was involved. Hence i think something like this is the most elegant “solution” to the final problem.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003462912347 Lucy Corin

Well, how could Holmes have disguised the dead Moriarty’s dead body as himself? Then after “disguising” him (which would involve plastic surgery) get him down to a lower level of the hospital for someone to throw the body off when it is extremely clear the Sherlock does not leave the roof top before he jumps. We see Moriarty get shot and then his dead body lying on the ground and then Sherlock is standing on the ledge on the phone to John! He doesnt leave the roof and there is no way Moriarty could have been moved and “disguised” quickly enough.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Richard-Fenske/749353519 Richard Fenske

Tying into a post above, it would seem that Moriarty had a double of Sherlock already, in order to have the kidnapped girl be afraid of Sherlock. So perhaps Sherlock found his impersonater, killed him, and had Molly throw him out the lower floor, while Sherlock landed in the truck.

Grant Elias

I just can’t believe that the writers would have him jump into a rubbish truck. It’s not clever enough and simply unbelievable! There weren’t many bags in the truck and it was a small area to land in. It would have been too risky and just not good enough for SH. I don’t think anyone could survive a fall from that height even if they landed on rubbish bags, and even if they had some drug on-board to make them floppy! Holmes has a brilliant mind, he’s not a stunt man!

I’m sure there must be another solution (or at least I’ll be extremely disappointed if not!). I’m confident that there were 2 ‘jumps’ in 2 locations from the rooftop, the real SH jumping to a rooftop just below, and the fake falling to the ground (see my other post below). If this were the case then once he had jumped there could have been any number of quick routes to the ground that he could have pre-arranged. This would all be wrapped up in him insisting that Watson stays in a particular location (to block the view of the real SH?), and also knowing that the snipers would have been looking at where they knew SH and JM were located, both views likely obscured from each other.

Other ideas all good, homeless network all in on it including fake medics etc, biker intentionally knocking Watson over, rubbish truck there to obscure view as the suicide scene is completed, possibly the SH mask used on a fake body, and others that I can’t remember now!
Lulu_98

In an episode of doctor who doctor had a replica seeing as it’s the same writer he could have done the same with Sherlock :)
Nick Ferrazza

Has anyone else stopped to think about Irene Adler’s fake death in Episode 4? Sherlock was sure that it was her body, but sure enough it wasn’t and if my memory serves me correctly (which it probably does because I watched the episode twice) it never revealed how Adler had done it. Perhaps Sherlock worked it out and took a similar approach. The only difference is Adler’s face was unrecognisable while we all clearly saw Sherlock’s.
valentynXTC

i don’t know if anyone has mentioned it because i cannot be bothered to read through any more comments, but i haven’t see anyone mention the little girl who was scared of Sherlock after she had been kidnapped, i think it’s possible that facial reconstructive surgery could have been used on the actual kidnapper so that he looked like Sherlock (not an idea missing from Doyle’s books), after which Moriarty may have wanted him killed off, to tie up any loose ends, providing Sherlock with a dead body double, he could have landed in the bin, as seems to be the general consensus, and laid a dead version of himself in the spot he would have landed, either there would be no need for a DNA test, because people could confirm it looks like him, or Molly helped out there, which is probably more likely.
claire_forrest

i don’t have a theory but i just thought i would point something out that some of you seem to have missed. watson took sherlock’s pulse, there are drugs that can slow a person’s pulse down to give the illusion of death but it would be very difficult to fool a doctor using this method. so it stands to reason that the man may not have actually been sherlock but he HAD died from his injuries. so some of the theoris here are redundant. just saying, sorry

Lulu_98

He could have used a bouncy ball which stops his pulse – this is mentioned in many theories….. Just saying :)

Daisy Denny

Plastic surgery on a fresh corpse kept on ice. Thawed out and replaced by some willing accomplishes. Doctor was present to bear witness, then knocked down for the the switch to occur. Only a convincing death would stop the hits.
Sophia Jones

i bet you anything john will wake up and realize he imagined it all. that’s happened b4 in moffat shows……

Lulu_98

lol -Probably
:)

http://www.facebook.com/RicardoTryka Ricardo Barbosa

When SH climb to jump the secon time when calls John, i saw some blood on the edge, when before doesnt have any blood there. Maybe the blood was from Moriaty, I’m not sure. And Molly help to, when he ask for help, i dont know exactlty what, but maybe with the corpses.
Other thing, when he jumps, he as perpendicular to the building, and the fall its the same, but when shows him on the floor, his parallel to the building and not perpendicular. Maybe he had something to trim the fall, and to stop the blood circulation in his arme, he only need a ball in his armipts…
But only in the third season we will know.. I am sure that there is a great explanation and I am eager to know it, but until there, we only have suspicious =D

PS: My english is not great, soo, sorry for some wrong words, and things with no sense =D

Lulu_98

dont woory it al made sence and your theroy is perfectly valid until we know the anwser. :)

Lulu_98

One
thing that has been bugging me was why they moved the body before the police investigation
started and police gave approval for it to be moved. Help!!! :)
http://twitter.com/MirabilisDave Dave Morris

He didn’t even have to jump on the truck. He’s on the phone to John, whom he tells to stay in the street. For all we know, the whole time they’re having that conversation, Sherlock is making his way down to the ground floor. Then Molly pushes a corpse (which she got from the morgue) off the roof. Splat. One of the Irregulars cycles by and knocks John down, giving Sherlock time to run out and lie in the street while the truck drives off with the body from the morgue. Maybe Sherlock is given a drug to slow his heart rate. John faints (that’s handy) and Molly’s colleagues wheel Sherlock into the hospital.

Alternatively, maybe he did actually jump onto the truck. Although in that case the writers may not realize that he really would be dead :)But wait… Was there no formal identification before burial? Why bother to remain dead, if the only reason for pretending to die was to call off Moriarty’s assassins? Why tell John that he was a fraud all along? Why believe that Moriarty would actually be telling the truth when he says that Sherlock’s suicide will stop the assassins? Why not check Moriarty’s body when he’s obviously only pretended to shoot himself? (And why not chuck the little fucker off the roof for good measure?)
Ella McElligott

Just something to point out, when John arrives at St Barts, Moriarty has already killed himself and is out of John’s view. This fitted in quite well because if John had seen Moriarty, he would not have believed Sherlock’s suicide was genuine. Maybe Sherlock made Moriarty kill himself?
Also, when Sherlock shakes Moriarty’s hand, Moriarty is shot (even if it is by himself!)
This is like when Sherlock shakes the assasins hand and the assasin gets shot. Not sure if any of thats relevant or not, just something to mention. ;D
Purple_Rush

There was also a sniper in clear range of SH and John.. who was under Moriarty’s orders to not shoot John only if he sees SH fall. Doesn’t that kind of invalidate the theories of a body switch upon hitting the ground, or Sherlock falling on a soft mattress which the bus/ truck helps move quickly away because John was knocked over/ his view was obstructed? Do you think SH could have taken into account the sniper’s vantage point in planning his fake death?

No doubt Molly would have played a key role in “proving” his death.. its the fall itself that has me all confounded! 2013!! *sigh*
Goraknor

I’de like to add another bit to this. Moriarty has only been in a few episodes and i don’t think has been utilised completely, are people sure that the person who we see on the screen in the real Moriarty, or possibly the actor he’s portrayed as near the end of season 2.

He seems to recieve alot of telephone calls which could simply be further instructions, I’#m dubious they would kill off Holmes arch enemy so early without a twist.
cscox

OK, so I watched the finale of Season 2 two days ago, and woke up last night trying to figure out how SH survived the fall. I, too, theorized: A) SH grabbed Moriarty at the last minute and threw him over. Closer examination (yes, I watched it again) showed no switch could have happened because a live body stepped off that ledge. The body that hit the ground had SH’s coat and scarf and those were Sherlock’s eyes. B) Several other people were on the scene, so the switch also couldn’t have happened once the body hit. Hence, no switch. Watch (or remember) the windmilling and flapping he did as he fell. The body appeared to land chest first, arms close to the head and bounced slightly. Now go Google “How to Survive a 6-story Fall.” I believe the clue is that he created plenty of wind resistance with the coat to survive the fall. He protected his head, but got hurt enough to bleed, likely a concussion, certainly unconscious, possibly cardiac arrest, all of which Molly would have been prepared for. Whew. Maybe I can sleep now. Or at least be pacified until the next extraordinary season. Thank you Mr Moffat and Mr Gatiss and the ladies Vertue.
Sarah Arboleda

I re-watched last night and I think the trick is that there is no trick. Sherlock is a man of science, not a magician. Moriarty commends Sherlock for finding a “high building,” but of all of the skyscrapers in London, how lucky that Sherlock would pick the hospital that Molly works in.

I don’t think he switched the bodies or used a dummy. I think Sherlock fell, having made calculations as to both the likelihood of surviving a fall from that height, and the possibility of survival if a hospital crew could get to him right away.

Then Molly can cover up his death with a body from the morgue.

Now the other question is Moriarty. Where wasn’t there even a line about his death in the paper? Wouldn’t they have been keen to call it a murder-suicide, or even a double-suicide?

And how does someone shoot themselves through the mouth and not have an enormous entrance would out the back of their skull?

I think that Sherlock’s early line in the show, when talking about his disdain for the deerstalker hat is also meant to be a metaphor for himself and Moiraty — they are two sides of the same coin: two fronts. And the final puzzle is how they both manage to “stay alive.”
mariemyller

we know that there have to be a sherlock mask!! Sherlocks finds the mask and put on a random dead.
but yes i also think that its very strange that we don’t hear anything about Moriaty’s dead???
argh i can’t wait in one and a half Freaking YEAR!!!
http://www.facebook.com/RussellHoward12 Kieran Smith

Well I think that it was Sherlock who jumped off the building and due to many things he survived.
It wasn’t a fake person who jumped off the building because it is as clear as day that Sherlock chucked the phone away and didn’t have time to switch to another person after finishing the call to john.
There is a drug that can make a persons pulse pretty much un-traceable even to the most trained doctor and the side effects of this drug is watering eyes and a running nose, as you can see after Jim shots himself Sherlock holds his nose to stop it running and during the call his eyes start to water but some people would claim that he was crying because of what was about to happen but we know Sherlock well and he doesn’t show his emotions that well.
People have fell over 10,000 feet in the past and have survived and when Sherlock was falling he was using his body to cushion the fall by learning how to fall right and the impact knocked him out and caused some damage. The man on the bike was in on it and knocked John down so that the crowd could get to him before John could. The crowd I feel was in on it too because did have a homeless network who could always work for some money from the person who uses their help so much in cases. I have also heard about the rubber ball theory were we see Sherlock playing with one before he goes up to the rooftop and the theory is that if you place a rubber ball under your arm pit you can stop the blood from entering the arm and it can stop your arm from having a pulse.
Jim is sadly dead and isn’t going to come back due to the fact that Steven has said that Jim is dead and isn’t appearing in the new series of Sherlock. Jim died in the reichenbach falls and this has stayed to to canon. Feel free to question my answer.

Anirudh Rohit

FYI…… THE RUBBER BALL!!!!!! Remember? Know this.,,,, A rubber ball when place under one’s arm reduces the heart rate and the pulse stops momentarily!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=548334218 Rachel Goldberg

Facts:

1) Sherlock is alive.
2) Molly Hooper is involved.
3) Sherlock jumped off of *a* roof. We clearly see *him* falling from somewhere. With John “keep[ing] [his] eyes fixed on [Sherlock]“, we know that between the “note” and the landing that there is no possible way for a switch to occur at this time.
4) John did not get a chance to take his pulse.
5) Despite being right outside a hospital, an ambulance arrives.
6) The paramedics from said ambulance take Sherlock not into the ambulance, not into the hospital, but into an alleyway. (Speculation: Maybe a backdoor to the hospital. Maybe not.)
7) The hospital is very old. (Speculation: Doesn’t seem to be getting much business despite its size.)
8) Moriarty sees something before he kills himself. His “change of heart” toward Sherlock was most certainly not just being convinced by the determination in his eyes. What this thing is: unknown.

Conclusion? Not enough data. Once we find the missing thing, I believe the pieces should fall into place. Steven Moffat has said that all the clues to figuring it out are there. Thoughts?
smithgj4

It must surely be something to do with the van. when the camera changes to the aerial shot you can see the van leaving the scene quite calmly at slow speed (when someone had just splashed down onto the pavement beside it). Mycroft likely found the “double” that seemed to be used to kidnap the girl and boy. Sherlock jumps into the van, the “double” gets pushed out of the van. Molly identifies the body and hey presto, series 3. Can’t wait.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1835915624 Heike Ellrich

I think he is surviving, as said before, because of his calculations of the height of the building and his way of falling down. It is a very reluctant and waiving type of falling down, so he prepares to hit the ground and is not jumping to death. Definitely. And the drug which stops the heart or at least slows the pulse down massively, is mentioned by Sherlock in the same episode: it is the Rhododendron ponticum!
So it is clear, that there is a body- change thing in the morgue by Molly, as there is a double running around and working for Jim (abduction of the kids form the boarding school). And that he (Sherlock) sets the rules to were the “final problem” is to be solved. He says “rooftop of St Bart’s” so he knows he is going to die, but is the one who has control about it. “It’s a game. And one I’m not willing to play..”
And, finally, I think the idea with the homeless network might be the correct thing. Have you ever seen a paramedic or doctor shaking someone at the shoulder who might have severe spine fractures and could still be alive?? Very unlikely…I think we are on the right track here…and Jim..well, he isn’t mentioned in the papers later on, is he? So, he might as well be alive still..
Jim…could you fix it for me, please?

Sherlock: The Fall – How did he do it?

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